Almost every restaurant in Strasbourg has, at some point, given a free meal to someone who promised exposure in return. Sometimes it works. More often the post disappears into a Story after 24 hours, the account is mostly followed by people outside the region, and the restaurant is left wondering what it actually got for the cost of two plates and a bottle of wine. Influencer marketing for restaurants isn't a bad idea — it's just usually done without any of the screening that makes it worth doing.
The first filter should be geography, not follower count. A creator with 3,000 followers who are mostly based in Strasbourg, Kehl, or Offenburg is worth far more than one with 30,000 followers scattered across France with no local concentration. Before agreeing to anything, it's worth asking to see their audience breakdown by city, or simply checking who comments and where those accounts are based — a handful of Alsatian names in the comments is a better signal than the total follower count on the profile.
The second filter is what the creator actually posts, not what they say they'll post. Someone whose feed is full of well-lit, well-composed food photos will likely deliver something usable; someone whose recent posts are blurry, dark, or shot at odd angles will deliver the same for a restaurant, free meal or not. Reviewing a creator's last ten posts takes five minutes and predicts the outcome far better than any conversation about "great content" beforehand.
Clear terms before the meal, not after, prevent most of the disappointment. A simple agreement covering how many posts versus Stories, whether the restaurant can repost the content afterward, and roughly when it will go live turns a vague favor into something both sides can actually follow through on. Restaurants that skip this step are the ones most likely to end up with nothing but an empty table and a vague promise that "it's coming soon."
None of this replaces the restaurant's own content — it complements it. A local creator can reach an audience a restaurant's own account never will, but their photos are rarely lit or composed for a menu, a delivery app listing, or a Google Business Profile, where consistency and quality control matter more than authenticity alone. The restaurants getting the most out of influencer collaborations tend to be the same ones already investing in their own professional photos: the influencer content drives discovery, and the owned content is what actually convinces someone to book a table or place an order once they land on the page.