Why India’s restaurants need better tastemakers — not “reeling influencers”!
The Last Word
By Anoothi Vishal
A recent expedition to a restaurant (that I will not name) left me with a rather sour taste in my mouth.
Nothing wrong with the food and drink. But the company that evening left me wanting to get back home very quickly. The restaurant’s publicists had got together a bunch of “influencers”, aka creators who probably have some following on Instagram, and who usually go to restaurants as part of a barter arrangement (stories in return for food and drink) or are paid per reel a few thousands (from 2K to 10-15 K and a few lakhs if the influencer is a minor celebrity; though usually it is fashion and beauty brands that took this route, many F&B brands and restaurants are doing this now). None of the influencers were even remotely known that evening, so am assuming this was “barter”, though these days, as creator and influencer Bhavjeet Sehgal tells me agencies also invite one main person to guest list who then calls a bunch of say 30 influencers for around Rs 50-60,000.
The idea in this case was of course virality — to kickstart a new menu (which seems to have sunk without a trace since). A bunch of ladies arrived, looked around rather vacuously and went back posting pictures that on closer examination looked all the same, and had the same hashtags and desultory, meaningless one-line captions. It was really a non-event.
Even though I hardly ever go to restaurant or menu/chef promotions and launches (this was a very rare exception), and generally manage to avoid this circus which is now a bane of the Indian food media and dining communities, as a citizen of the online world, I do see many such attempts at “virality”. And like at Cannes, it’s pretty much an empty can amounting to some sound and fury in the best scenario but usually amounting to nothing when it comes to the business of restaurants.
Why? Not because the “influencer/creator” economy is not thriving in India. But because numbers do not ensure customer interest, visits and certainly not “stickiness” or conversion and loyalty. The restaurant business is built on repeat customers. For this column, I spoke to many restaurateurs and marketing in-charges of restaurants as well as to a slew of influencers/creators in the ecosystem. What emerges is this:
Word of mouth generated from a few credible tastemakers still is the best bet when it comes to what will get people to the table. Especially with upscale and luxury restaurants, if people are paying even 3-5,000 Rs per head (for luxury restaurants it is much more; Indians are easily spending Rs 10,000 plus for lavish, unique, exclusive and alcohol-accompanied experiences), they are not going because of some Insta story or reel. Ask yourself, how do you choose restaurants? Do you believe “content” by a majority of so-called influencers influences any one? Or, is this a case of brands and brand marketing departments with incomplete understanding of restaurants, lining up metrics even as sales flail and the restaurant loses money? Haven’t we seen n examples of the latter?
A recent Kofluence report “Decoding Influence: Annual Research Report 2026” has had the newspapers excited. India’s influencer marketing sector was valued at INR 3000-5000 crore in 2025, is growing by 22 CAGR and expected to reach INR 5000 crore by 2027. That influencer marketing has become a core advertising channel for brands globally is evident, including in hospitality segments. Virality does also generate queues — for desserts, sandwiches and matcha coffee, not to mention dosas in Mumbai and Delhi. There are ramen joints and 10-12 seater chef studios in high demand too because of online influencer-created FOMO. But as you slice this pie, there are a few other things that become evident. One: QSR restaurants work differently from upscale dine-ins. This should be obvious to everyone but for some reason isn’t and thus I should make the point that the demographic they target is different, the price points lower. Buzz may thus work here, but its longevity is still questionable, as seems to be the case with one icecream sensation I recently walked past—and saw no queues outside contrary to what Instagram had me believe.
When it comes to expensive or even moderately expensive restaurants, the ballgame is entirely different.
I spoke to my friends Aditi Dugar of Masque restaurant and Mukta Kapoor of Nisaba, both of who have very successfully marketed and shaped two of India’s hottest luxury restaurants currently: Masque and Nisaba. Both do not believe in the sort of virality and paid influencer marketing that many restaurants are desperately clutching at like proverbial straws when their product fails. Instead, restaurants like Masque and Nisaba choose carefully who they seek out to build their image– instead of offering free meals as “barter” to anyone with large followings, or paying content creators. Word of mouth is what they say works, and a personal connect. Mukta personally supervises the social media handle of Nisaba and answers all feedback herself, not trusting any agency. Aditi, who is an influencer herself in a way not understood by the media, has created a community around Masque pretty successfully. “Friends of Masque” involves a vibrant South Bombay social set, globally prominent chefs, as well as carefully collected food media, which may include writers, editors, and yes “influencers” but those who are kind of known and involved with luxury or food over the years. Restaurants like Masque, Nisaba and a few others who have been successfully marketing and communicating their brands, obviously measure “influence” via a different lens than how many thousands or millions of views even with engagement someone’s reel gets.
On the other hand, some restaurant marketing people I spoke to admitted that no influencer can really guarantee how many views their content will get and yet restaurants use them almost like outdoor advertising: it’s cheap, and the content populates a brand’s page. To which the natural turn of thought should be: Does any content on any brand page really influence any one?
I was going through another set of numbers for influencer marketing globally. According to an Emarketer piece, US spending is growing by more than 15 per cent in 2026 and the segment is expected to reach USD 13.7 billion by 2027. Yet, as per another data by Nielsen, an overwhelming 92 per cent of consumers trust reccos from individuals like friends and family, and 26 per cent consumers distrust influencer marketing (far above the 11 per cent who reported distrusting advertising).
Globally, as AI begins to replace “influencers” or creators, and personalised algorithm led advertisements that pop-up on your phone the moment you enter a mall or search a category or even speak about a theme, the battle will be not for “buzz” to reach maximum and indiscriminate number of viewers, but for taste.
Who are the people we trust as tastemakers?
If you have watched The Devil Wears Prada Part 2, you would have realised that this is a movie of our generation, centred not so much around fashion as an industry, but media as an industry. It was particularly resonant with me, because I started out in the late 1990s, early 2000s, when print magazines and newspapers had uncontrolled power, and editors and critics much like Miranda Priestly were the gatekeepers of not just news but taste. We trusted a critic and therefore went to a movie or to a restaurant. When I became the youngest food critic in the country at The Indian Express at 25 years of age, even Delhi’s L-G then ostensibly read my reviews (I was told)!
The online revolution and social media have ended that world. But print magazines and newspapers now desperately seeking relevance had surrendered their credibility and expertise way back. Now, as they report what so and so said on Instagram or pick up trends from what is going around digitally rather than actually having their ear to the ground, it is obviously going to be a losing battle. But the medium is in fact not important. The debate is not about print vs digital but about quantity vs quality.
Today’s democratisation of the media is good in many ways —creators can and do run their own media empires, and information and knowledge flow far more easily than earlier past editors and hierarchies that gatekept. But as opinion flows freely, and influence is measured by virality, leading to an erosion in trust, we are at a tipping point both globally and in India. People and consumers of information are increasingly looking at new moderators. We can see this in the coming up of all sorts of communities with special interests: gourmands, luxury travellers, travellers with children, coffee drinkers, wine and whisky drinkers, street food fans, luxury bag collectors, luxury fashion consumers, affordable and mass lifestyle consumers, those interested in home décor, high end home décor, and so on. Because of our digital realities, we in fact live in silos— the news and world we get on our phones has a confirmation bias, and may be completely different from what someone else even within the same home is exposed to.
Today’s opinion makers or tastemakers must thus be champions of their own industries and communities because very few are now going to influence a large chunk of people. Politicians, filmstars, music and sports celebrities aside, all the mini-influencers are at best influential only in their own worlds. But even here, a tastemaker can be a tastemaker aka a Miranda Priestley only basis old-world expertise, credibility and connections that the digital world had done away with, in a paradigm where “reach” was equivalent to “influence”. It is this false equivalence that is now giving way.
The best and most successful restaurants have already understood this, perhaps intuitively. You can increasingly see chefs being built up as brands because people trust people (with expertise, and emotions) not “brands” or companies. You also have businessmen, advisors, consultants, PR people, marketers all building personal brands. A few restaurateurs are doing that too. And yes, media people too, so that you now log in to listen to (or read) X, Y and Z rather than a channel or paper. The only way to create a trusted brand within the media and naturally therefore the food media space is via expertise, having a point of view, uniqueness, credibility, and being able to talk to a dedicated community with relevance, which can be done via multiple platforms, including the magazine I have built up, which has been viewed as credible and alternative voice for creatives in the hospitality industry and for evolved luxury consumers of the dining public at large, or podcasts, or events and so on.
We are in the midst of a huge media churn. A restaurant may use a creator to make content as advertisement, but a smart restaurant will not advertise—it will influence the tastemaker. Just as of old!
