Social media works for hospitality because food is content people already want to watch, so yes, it is worth doing properly. A short video of a dish being plated or a coffee being poured can reach locals who have never walked past your door, and occasionally far beyond them. Get Known films, edits, posts and manages the conversation for cafes, restaurants, bars and venues, so the work happens without you living on your phone.
Food comes with movement, sound and payoff already built in: the pour, the sizzle, the cheese pull, the glaze going on. TikTok and Instagram Reels decide who sees a video based on how long people watch it, and people watch food to the end. That is why a venue with a small following can still get a video seen widely, because the platforms rank the video, not the account. Retail has to manufacture something watchable, while you make it every morning before the first order.
A camera crew wandering your dining room on a Saturday night is a problem, so that is not how we work. Get Known batches filming into a single session, timed around prep or a quieter service, and captures enough dishes, pours and faces in one visit to cover weeks of posting. Nobody is asked to remake a dish for the camera mid rush, and your staff are not filming daily on their phones. The kitchen keeps moving, and the footage still looks like your venue on a real day, because it is.
People follow people, and in hospitality the person is half the product. The chef explaining why the special exists, the barista who knows every regular's order, the owner unpacking the morning produce delivery: these work because they are the same reasons customers pick you over the chain up the road. Nobody needs to perform for the camera, they need to be the person guests already meet at the counter. We work out who on your team is comfortable on camera and build the content around them.
Most venues only need to win their own suburb, and the platforms help, because they show food videos to nearby people who watch similar content. Hospitality is also the rare niche where a video can jump past the suburb entirely and turn a venue into a destination people travel for. One documented example from our client work, quoted with permission: Frida of La Donuts wrote to us on 6 August 2024, "After we started posting my videos went viral. I had lines out the door, customers from all over Australia, sales through the roof." That is one venue's message, not a promise, but it is a ceiling most local businesses do not have.
Your Google reviews and your social comments are the same conversation, and in hospitality people read the replies before they book. A calm, specific response to a rough review tells the next customer more about your venue than the review itself, while a defensive one confirms it. We handle replies as part of management: thanking the good ones, answering the hard ones without arguing, and flagging anything that points to a repeat problem in service so you hear about it early.
If your rating is low and recent reviews keep describing the same problem, fix that before you post anything, because social media sends new people straight into the experience the reviews describe, and they will write the same reviews faster. The same goes for capacity: if the kitchen is maxed every weekend and you cannot take more covers, paying to create demand you cannot serve mostly buys you angry comments about wait times. We say this to venue owners in the first conversation, even though it costs us work, because filling a venue that is not ready helps nobody. Social media multiplies what is already true about your venue, good or bad.
Yes, because TikTok and Instagram Reels show food videos to nearby people who watch similar content, so a good video reaches locals who have never heard of the venue. Food is one of the few categories where viewers regularly act on what they see by booking a table or walking in. It does not fix food or service problems, it puts your venue in front of more people.
Filming is batched into a single session rather than spread across the week, usually scheduled around prep or a quieter service. One visit captures enough dishes, drinks and behind the scenes footage to cover weeks of posting. Staff are never pulled off the floor mid rush, and dishes are filmed as they are genuinely made rather than staged.
No, but someone from the venue should be, because faces build a following in a way anonymous food shots do not. It can be the chef, a barista or a front of house regular, whoever is naturally comfortable. Short, unscripted moments almost always come across better than anything rehearsed.
Yes, calmly and specifically, because future customers judge a venue by its reply more than by the review itself. Acknowledge the issue, skip the argument, and say what has changed. Silence suggests the criticism was fair, and a defensive reply does more damage than the original review.
Often not yet, and it is worth being honest about that. If the kitchen and floor are at capacity, creating more demand mostly generates complaints about waits and missed bookings. It makes sense once there is room to grow, such as quiet weekdays, a new menu, a function space or a second site to fill.
Part of our social media management service, which covers every industry we work across. Our founder Nicholas Remondos also writes longer guides at nicholasremondos.com.
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