Key points at a glance
- A collaboration pays off when the creator's audience lives in your area and matches your guests. The follower count alone says little.
- Check every request: real posts, real comments, a local audience. Sudden jumps in followers and empty comments are warning signs of bought reach.
- Agree in writing beforehand on what you give and what you get: food, plus-ones, number and type of posts, timing, usage rights.
- A free meal is compensation too. In Austria and Germany alike, the post must be clearly recognisable as advertising, and the creator and the venue share responsibility for that.
- Measure success with your own code, your own link and by asking guests, not with likes.
This post is general information and does not replace legal or tax advice. Rules change and some differ between federal states: check the details with your chamber of commerce (WKO) or IHK, the competent authority or your tax adviser.
What influencer collaborations can and can't do
A recommendation from someone you follow feels more credible than an ad. That is the core of influencer marketing. For a venue, a well-made video or an honest blog article can bring in new guests who would never have discovered you otherwise, for example for an opening, a new menu or a special event. It often also produces photos and videos that you can use yourself, with permission.
What a collaboration won't do: fill your tables for good. The effect of a single post is usually gone after a few days. If you want to keep new guests, you need a great experience on site, a well-kept Google profile, genuine reviews and channels of your own. So treat collaborations as an amplifier for something that already works, and as one building block of your online marketing plan.
Finding the right creators
What matters most is not size but fit. A Vienna food account with 8,000 followers who almost all live in Vienna is worth more to a small neighbourhood restaurant there than a travel account with 300,000 followers spread across Europe. Guests who can't reach your venue don't fill tables.
| Size | Typically | Right for venues if |
|---|---|---|
| Under 10,000 followers | Local food accounts, city blogs, hobby foodies | The audience lives in your city; often the best choice for single venues |
| 10,000 to 100,000 | Regional food and lifestyle creators, city magazines | Region and style fit; more for openings, events, several locations |
| Over 100,000 | National creators, travel and celebrity accounts | You want to reach tourists or become known nationwide; usually with a fee |
- Location pages and hashtags: Look on Instagram and TikTok at who posts with your city or neighbourhood as the location and regularly features venues.
- Your own guests: Often people with a small, loyal audience who love your place already follow you. They are the most credible advocates you can get.
- Local blogs and city magazines: Many cities have food blogs or online magazines that cover new openings. This overlaps with classic press relations.
- Style and values: Does the look fit your venue? An account full of fast-food challenges doesn't suit a fine-dining restaurant, and a vegan account doesn't suit a steakhouse.
How Instagram and TikTok work for venues is explained in the guides Instagram for restaurants and TikTok for restaurants.
Assessing requests: how to spot a good offer
Many collaborations don't start with your search but with a message. Some are professional, some are mass emails to every venue in town. Take ten minutes and look closely at the profile before you say yes. A polite no is perfectly fine.
Quick check before you agree
- The request names your venue and shows the person has looked into what you offer
- The profile features venues regularly, not just occasionally
- Previous collaborations are visibly labelled as advertising
- The comments under posts are real, with questions and conversations
- According to the insights, most of the audience lives in your country and region
- The person says clearly what they will post, when and on which channels
- They are happy to put the agreement briefly in writing
Ask for a screenshot of the insights from the app: where the audience lives by city and country, age, and the reach of recent posts and Stories. Serious creators have these numbers at hand and send them without fuss. Anyone who refuses usually has a reason.
How to get it right
- Ask specifically which posts are planned
- Schedule the visit at a quiet time, for example midweek
- Set a frame: menu, drinks, number of people
- Explicitly allow honest coverage
Better not
- Say yes out of politeness although the profile doesn't fit
- Promise unlimited food and drinks for a whole group
- Block your best table on a Friday night
- Demand a positive review or a certain number of stars
Spotting fake followers and bought reach
Followers, likes and comments can be bought. An account with 50,000 followers can therefore reach fewer real people than one with 5,000. No single figure proves fraud, but several warning signs together should make you suspicious.
| Warning sign | How to recognise it |
|---|---|
| Followers out of proportion to engagement | Tens of thousands of followers but only a handful of comments and few likes per post |
| Empty comments | Lots of comments like “Nice!”, “🔥🔥” or “Love it” from accounts without a profile picture or with odd names |
| Sudden jumps | The follower count rises by thousands in a day without any post doing particularly well |
| An audience far away | According to the insights, a large share of followers live in countries whose language the account doesn't even use |
| Erratic reach | One post has 100,000 views, all others barely 500, for no apparent reason |
| Lots of followers, no history | A young profile with few posts but a big reach |
Compensation and agreement
With smaller local creators, an invitation to eat is the usual compensation. Bigger accounts often ask for a fee on top. Both can be fair as long as it is clear what you get in return. A short written agreement by email is enough in most cases and saves misunderstandings on both sides.
What the venue provides
What is included? For example a menu for two with two drinks each, or attending the opening. Name plus-ones and extras explicitly.
What the creator provides
How many posts, which formats (Reel, Story, blog article), on which channels and by when. A frame like “one Reel and three Stories within two weeks” is common.
Labelling
Put in writing that every post will be clearly labelled as advertising, for example with “Werbung” or “Anzeige” (German for advertisement) at the start and the platform's paid partnership feature.
Content and freedom
You may check facts such as name, address and opening hours in advance. The opinion stays with the creator. Prescribed praise sounds fake and is not a good idea.
Usage rights
May you use photos and videos on your website, your channels or in ads? For how long, with credit? This has to be agreed explicitly.
Measuring
Agree on your own code or link and ask for the post insights after about four weeks.
The day itself matters too: brief your team, schedule the visit at a quiet time and make sure there is good light at the table. Nothing needs staging, but a seat by the window helps any photo. What makes a dish look appetising on a phone is covered in the guide Food photography with a smartphone. For giveaways on a creator's account, a voucher makes a good prize; create a print-ready one with the gift voucher generator.
A voucher for the giveaway
Create a voucher in your venue's style as the prize for a giveaway with a creator, print-ready and free.
Labelling advertising in Austria and Germany
As soon as a creator receives something for a post, the post is as a rule advertising and must be recognisable as such. In Austria this follows from, among others, § 6 E-Commerce-Gesetz (ECG) and the Act against Unfair Competition (UWG), which prohibits covert advertising. In Germany, § 6 Digitale-Dienste-Gesetz (DDG), the Interstate Media Treaty (Medienstaatsvertrag) and § 5a of the German UWG apply. Under § 5a(4) of the German UWG, for posts that benefit another business it is presumed that compensation was given unless the creator credibly shows otherwise.
- A free meal counts too: In their guide, the German media authorities (Medienanstalten) explicitly name products, trips and invitations as possible compensation. A dinner on the house is no different.
- Clear and at the start: Words like “Werbung” or “Anzeige” clearly visible at the beginning of the post or in the video, not hidden at the end among twenty hashtags.
- German on German-language channels: According to the Medienanstalten, English abbreviations like #ad or #sponsored are not enough on German-language accounts.
- Platform feature on top: Labelling a post as a paid partnership on Instagram or TikTok makes sense but, in the widely held view, doesn't replace a clear note in the post itself.
- Responsibility on both sides: Labelling is primarily the creator's job. But the venue can be liable too if it initiates unlabelled advertising or benefits from it. So always agree on labelling.
Measuring success: guests, not likes
Likes and views are nice, but they don't pay the rent. What counts is whether the collaboration made people book, order or drop by. You can never measure that to the exact guest, but simple methods give you a good estimate.
| Method | How it works | What you learn |
|---|---|---|
| Your own code | A code like “LENA10” for a drink on the house or a discount that only the creator's audience knows | How many guests came directly through the post |
| Your own link | A link to your website with tracking in the link (UTM parameters), for example to your booking page | Visits and bookings via the post |
| The creator's insights | Screenshots of reach, views, saves and link clicks after about a week | How many people actually saw the post |
| Asking guests | Your team asks new guests how they heard about you and notes it down | The simplest and often most honest measurement |
| Comparing with previous weeks | Compare bookings and sales in the two weeks after the post with last year or previous weeks | Whether anything moved overall |
So that visitors from a post don't hit a dead end, you need a website that instantly shows the menu, opening hours and booking on a phone. How to analyse visits and bookings in a privacy-friendly way is explained in the guide Website analytics for venues. After every collaboration, take stock briefly: what did it cost, how many guests did it bring, and would you do it again? Over time you will see which creators suit you.
The website the post links to
See in the free preview how your venue looks on a phone with menu, opening hours and booking, ready for new guests from every collaboration.
A free preview of your venue website, designed by us.
Sources
- gesetze-im-internet.de: § 5a UWG, misleading by omission (Germany)
- gesetze-im-internet.de: § 6 DDG, special obligations for commercial communications (Germany)
- Die Medienanstalten: guide to labelling advertising in online media (May 2025)
- RIS: E-Commerce-Gesetz (ECG), § 6 commercial communication (Austria)
- RIS: Act against Unfair Competition, UWG (Austria)
