This is the one thing in restaurant marketing that everyone needs to do

Undeniably one of the biggest trends of 2023 was restaurant brands leveraging influencers on social media to sell their products. These influencers resonate with the coveted Gen Z demographic and help position brands top of mind, even if just for a fleeting moment. And apparently they’re very effective at convincing others to try a menu item. Consider Chipotle’s fajita quesadilla campaign with TikTok influencers Alexis Frost and Keith Lee, for example. The 2023 promotion helped generate two of the company’s top digital sales days of all time.

Influencer marketing is certainly nothing new, but it is reaching a fever pitch and, in fact, the industry has increased by nearly $20 billion in the past seven years. Restaurants in particular are well positioned to capitalize on this trend. According to CreatorIQ, more than 437,000 creators posted about food and beverage brands more than 1.2 million times, driving nearly 75.5 billion impressions, 3 billion engagements and a whopping $4.8 billion in earned media value (EMV). And those numbers are just from the first half of 2023.