In October 2023, Easy Street Burgers co-owner Alfred Asatryan noticed TikTok reviewer Keith Lee walk into his Studio City restaurant. The former MMA fighter had been ascending into virality by visiting restaurants, eating the food in his car, and rating dishes he ate on a 10-point scale.

Lee tasted Easy Street’s jalapeño burger, double cheeseburger, and double bacon cheeseburger, then rated the latter two with unprecedented perfect 10s. “This is the best burger I’ve ever had, let alone in LA,” declared Lee.

At the time, Asatryan didn’t fully grasp the magnitude of Lee’s review. Lee’s millions of followers were about to know everything about Easy Street Burgers, which opened in 2019 as a pop-up and became a brick-and-mortar restaurant in 2022. But as the hours passed, enthusiastic comments began to appear on Easy Street’s Instagram and TikTok pages. “One comment said they were booking a flight to visit and try our burgers,” says Asatryan. “Others told us to ‘Rev up our fryers and hire the Avengers because [they’re] coming!’”

When Asatryan arrived at Easy Street the following day — hours before the doors opened at 11 a.m. — hundreds of diners had already formed a line around the block. As the team prepped for service, more people joined the growing queue along Lankershim Boulevard.

Since the onset of the pandemic, in a world where Los Angeles restaurants are vying for an even more limited share of attention and consumer dollars, social media marketing through influencers can make all the difference. Online food content illustrates a booming and interconnected system involving content creators, restaurants, and digital marketing. Restaurants can hire paid social media managers who reach out to influencers with a potential “partnership,” lingo requesting a free meal, or even cash for a favorable review. In 2017, social media became the top restaurant marketing tool. It signaled that social platforms for restaurants were no longer simple window dressing to complement quality food and service; a restaurant’s social media approach was now a crucial part of a successful business plan, as relevant as leasing the optimal location and hiring the right staff. It also meant embracing the challenges of social media: Restaurants in 2024 now have to navigate the wild world of content creators and influencers and understand the good and sometimes ugly parts that come along with the reward of a viral positive review.

As Asatryan unlocked the doors the day after Lee’s review dropped on TikTok, an ocean of burger fans entered his shop. People ordered and waited patiently on the premises. There was nowhere to sit. Cheeseburgers and Cajun fries were quickly consumed on tables, on the sidewalk, or on top of car hoods. Over the next three months, the entire block was perpetually surrounded from open to close. He and his brother, co-founder Freddy Asatryan, hired seven more people to help. Wait times averaged one to two hours, with wealthy and desperate fans even offering staff hundreds of dollars to avoid waiting in line. Alfred had to turn off third-party delivery apps to focus every effort on those waiting at the door. “It was incredible and overwhelming,” says Alfred.

Lee’s post on Easy Street Burgers eventually gained over 320,000 views, 155 comments, and 14,000 likes, an astounding level of engagement for a small business in Los Angeles. Things slowed for a bit, but then Lee invited hip-hop artist Cardi B to try Easy Street Burgers in March 2024. The new post also went viral and brought even more customers to hover in front of Easy Street’s yellow and black facade, but this time the restaurant was ready. “We learned our lessons from before. We knew what to do,” Alfred says, noting that Easy Street’s revenue doubled after Lee’s first review and grew an additional 25 percent after the Cardi B video.

Taco Chico

Meanwhile, across town in Tustin, chef Thomas Ortega waited patiently for a content creator to post a series of TikTok videos meant to promote his casual taqueria Taco Chico. In July 2022, Ortega paid the influencer $1,500 for social media promotional services only for the creator to allegedly ghost him. “This guy offered me a multi-video package where he’d shoot a bunch of TikToks and post them for me, but he then disappeared,” says Ortega, a veteran restaurant owner, who also operates Amor y Tacos and Sunny on South in Cerritos, and Amorcito in Long Beach. “I had to figure out how to get in touch with him because he stopped answering my calls. He finally posted just one video.”

Though he felt scammed in that one instance, Ortega still sees the value in promoting his restaurants on platforms like TikTok and Instagram. He now works with Long Nguyen aka Food With Zen, a reputable social media manager and digital creator, to guide him through the process.

To get a clear understanding of how this burgeoning community operates in Los Angeles, below are four types of restaurant content creators and influencers.

Alex Cottrell

Restaurant critic creator

Alex Cottrell, also known as the LA Try Guy, follows a similar structure to Las Vegas-based Keith Lee. Both fall under the category of restaurant critic and content creator. After moving from Arkansas to LA in 2020, Cottrell started creating content as a side hustle to augment income from his full-time tech sales job. After noticing that most creators avoided South LA, Cottrell found his niche. Four years later, LA Try Guy now has 175,000 TikTok followers and 204,000 on Instagram. Cottrell’s biggest following (and financial return) comes from YouTube, where he has more than 682,000 subscribers.

When he visits restaurants, Cottrell visits as an ordinary customer, recording reviews with his phone and documenting reactions to each dish either just outside the restaurant or at a table inside. Though restaurants approach him to visit, Cottrell says he pays for every meal. However, Cottrell does charge a fee to create ad content for brands like Snapple, Metro, Pepsi, and McDonald’s. In 2024 alone, LA Try Guy has reviewed over 50 South LA restaurants, including Inglewood’s Sammiche Shoppe, Santa Rosa on Vermont and 43rd, and the double teriyaki sandwich from Pit Burger with rapper and comedian Slink Johnson in tow.

Cottrell has some long-term goals for his work, saying he wants to host and produce a cooking competition at some point. “I want my own TV show,” he proclaims. “It’s called So You Think You Can Cook? It’ll be like American Idol but for food.”

Content creator chefs

Chefs are also taking control of their marketing by creating content in which their cooking is the focus. Court Cafe owner and chef Calvin Johnson started leaning into a content creator role for his three restaurants, which include Court Cafes in Westchester and Las Vegas, and the Bleu Kitchen Garlic Noodle Bar in Las Vegas. Though Court Cafe’s Instagram has 230,000 followers, his following on TikTok as Bleu Kitchen has 45,000 followers and 537,000 on Instagram. His hundreds of posts about his restaurants and recipe hacks have proven effective with a 40 percent increase in sales. “Now that I have stepped into the content creator community, it has helped my restaurants grow,” says Johnson. “People want to feel like they know you to support you.”

Culinary explorers

On a warm weekday, Cher Carlton has a few stops to make. She departs from her Santa Clarita home and might stop for a matcha or coffee from the Loaf before heading to work as a marketing coordinator for the kitchen utensils manufacturer, Matfer Bourgeat. Carlton might squeeze in practicing her golf swing in the middle of the day at the Wilson & Harding driving range, or head to the beach to surf with friends while documenting her meals throughout the entire Southern California region as Cher Good Eats.

“My goal is to try one new restaurant a week,” says Carlton. “I sometimes average two to three, because I go to coffee shops for matcha or chai lattes, plus a baked good. It gets a little crazy, depending on if the weekend really turns up.”

Though she rates her meals, Carlton pays for each but does not have a monetized account. Cher Good Eats’ TikTok account has fewer than 10,000 followers, but she’s amassed more than 795,000 total likes since she started creating content more consistently in 2020.

Carlton watches where other content creators dine and uses word of mouth to determine where her next meal comes from: “You just can’t stay in your little nook and have to discern whether they are a trusted source,” says Carlton. “For me, it’s about the vibe. And I vibe with Latina Foodie LA.”

Valeria Hidalgo

Content creator marketers

Maria Viera, also known as Latina Foodie LA, mentally goes over the tasks during her nearly hour-long drive to Vietnamese-inspired brunch restaurant NẾP Cafe in Fountain Valley. The restaurant’s owners had already paid Viera for a set of review videos, but this time she’s doing it without her entire camera team. As she sets up her camera, lights, and monitor, Viera speaks with the cooks and servers to determine what dishes she’ll order. As the staff prepares the Vietnamese salad, mango sticky rice, filet mignon, and coconut coffee, Viera points her camera to get short video clips of NẾP Cafe’s dining room and exterior.

When the food arrives on the table, Viera centers herself in the frame while glancing at her monitor to see the footage. She does multiple takes of tasting food, records reactions, and packs up her equipment for the drive home. By the time Viera finishes editing and voiceover for the video, it’ll reach her account’s more than 264,000 TikTok followers and more than 104,000 Instagram followers. As one of Southern California’s most prolific creators, her social media marketing videos have gained hundreds of thousands of views. With a production calendar that is steadily booked five to six days per week, Latina Foodie LA is a booming restaurant content creator.

While some creators trade reviews for a free meal, Viera’s business doesn’t follow that model. Early on, Viera wasn’t sure how much to charge restaurant clients. Her fee accounts for the high production value, which requires multiple 4K cameras, a sound booth, and a staff of seven people that includes a PR manager, an account manager, an editor, and at least four on-call videographers. Her tiered pricing system allows restaurants to find a price that fits their needs, from affordable to more extensive packages that necessitate a larger team to film and edit complex promotional videos.

“Every day, I’m editing five to six hours a day, and it’s a lot,” she says, noting that her team is composed of friends and family. “Even my 14-year-old sister gets paid, but her money goes towards a college fund.”

Though she’s open to every cuisine, her social media marketing company focuses on mostly LA’s Latino-owned restaurants. Though her mother is Mexican and her father is Salvadoran, Viera grew up as a “no sabo,” referring to being a non-Spanish-speaking kid, which inspired her to further explore her heritage. “I felt in my gut, heart, and soul that Latina Foodie LA was something I was meant to do,” says Viera.

Viera started logging food reviews with her sister in mid-2020 when many restaurants and food businesses were struggling or closing amid the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. She started posting for free, but as more restaurants asked her to create videos, Viera began offering them paid social media marketing services.

Nayomie Mendoza, the co-owner of Cuernavaca’s Grill in Downtown LA and Bell, first hired Viera in 2022 to create a series of promotional videos for her family-owned restaurant. In May 2024, Viera produced a video where she stands on a street corner hyping up the restaurant’s chile rellenos. Viera walks through Cuernavaca’s while describing the room and Mendoza family recipes. Viera makes sure the viewer sees a dramatic melted cheese pull from each dish before taking a bite of chile relleno, chile relleno burrito, and chilaquiles. That video has 716,000 views.

“Working with Maria has been vital to us,” says Mendoza. “We’ve worked with so many influencers, but love that she stands for the Latino community. Not only is she covering the food, but she’s also telling stories and she does it so well by integrating the food, people, and community into it. It takes talent to do that.”

Mendoza says that every video that Viera has produced about Cuernavaca’s Grill has gotten over half a million views, which could account for the 41 percent increase in sales she’s seen at her Bell location. “Views are cool but her work also results in sales. For our Valentine’s Day event, she helped get 200 people in the door,” says Mendoza.

Though Viera, Carlton, Johnson, and Cottrell make up just a short list of LA content creators, Hotville Chicken’s Kim Prince hasn’t always found it effective for her business. She currently manages Hotville’s social media and says that content creator services start at $1,000, which she finds too high for independent restaurants. “Most mom-and-pop businesses don’t have a budget like that,” says Prince. “They need to approach us with the understanding that if we don’t make enough money by the end of the week, the restaurant can fold.”

Amor y Tacos owner Ortega says content creators typically secure more social media followers for his restaurants, but he also finds value in traditional media. “After I do a morning show for KTLA or KCAL9, that brings in the most business,” says Ortega. “ABC7 came in into my taqueria Amorcito in September. That brought more people than any influencer ever brought into my restaurants.”

Cuernavaca’s Grill’s Mendoza noticed a shift beginning in 2024. She’s regularly approached by content creators for more complex marketing packages, as well as bigger brands looking to invest in content creators. She turned them down and continued to work with Viera.

What’s not so new is that restaurant owners are adapting. Ortega sees social media as a long-standing practice of operating restaurants and necessary to keep up with the competition. “You have to evolve or get left behind,” says Ortega. “So many restaurants aren’t packed on the daily anymore. You just have to focus on your business and appreciate the hustle.”