Bars and restaurants: what changes when the product gets eaten

Hospitality is where most local collaborations happen, and also where the same mistakes repeat most. The product is perishable, the service happens live and there is no second take.

Timing matters more than in any other sector

At 10pm on a Saturday you cannot look after anyone who has come to film. And an empty room at 5pm on a Tuesday looks bleak on camera. The sweet spot is usually the start of service: there is atmosphere, the kitchen is not drowning and you can step out for a minute.

What almost always gets told badly

The pretty plate. It gets photographed, it gets posted and it says nothing: every plate is pretty in a photo.

What does work is origin and decisions. Where the fish comes from, why that cut, who does the kneading and at what hour. The chain next door cannot replicate that, and it is exactly what separates a recommendation from an advert.

Prepare for the aftermath

This is hospitality's most expensive mistake: the collaboration works, people turn up at the weekend and you serve them badly because you had not planned for it. Content that brings customers into an overwhelmed service produces worse reviews than doing nothing at all.

If you expect it to land, warn your team, check the stock of whatever dish appears in the video and decide in advance what you do when it runs out.

And one thing about reviews

Never make payment conditional on the review being positive. Besides being obvious to everyone, it strips away the only thing that makes a recommendation worth anything: that whoever sees it knows it is honest.