Restaurant owner absolutely shuts down two influencers for asking for free meals

A restaurant owner had enough of influencers hoping to score a free meal and gave two of them a piece of his mind in a lengthy response.

You might think promotion by an influencer would be a dream for restaurant owners, especially if it only costs them a free meal for one or two people.

Well, you'd be wrong if this Australian restaurant owner’s response is anything to go by.

In fact, this owner’s response might put any and all influencers ever trying to score a free dining experience in exchange for some positive online promotion.

Elle Groves, who runs the Two Teaspoons account with her friend Annie Knight, messaged an unnamed restaurant to see if she could dine in for free.

For the meal she promised to post a glowing review of the spot on her social media pages.

However Groves and Knight have amassed 7,000 followers, so not exactly the biggest of online followings. The restaurant they were hoping to 'promote' has a whopping 23,500 followers on Instagram, so they might be helping them more than the other way around.

Screenshots of the heated exchanges were uploaded by Australian food writer John Lethlean back in 2022.

"Hey guys! My friend and I have a food page together - @twoteaspooons - and saw your restaurant and thought it looked amazing!" Groves wrote in the message.

"We would love to come and try it out in exchange for some stories on our personal accounts, and a post and stories on our food page accounts.

"Would you guys be interested in doing this collab? If not, we completely understand. We can't wait to hear from you XXX"

The restaurant owner could have hit them back with a firm no but decided to go for an absolute banger of a reply.

"Hey, Elle apologies for the delay...I've been grappling with how much rage to demonstrate/throw in your direction," he said.

"But it's even worse when COVID is still very much a thing, affecting small businesses like us devastatingly for two years now.”

They continued: “Maybe give it a year or so and see how the business landscape looks, and see if you can amass enough followers for your 'collabs' to actually be of benefit to the venues you approach so naively, instead of them being only of benefit to you."

An absolute mic drop moment.

Groves did go on to defend her actions, speaking to the Mail Online saying she never requested free food and how 'it is always left open to them to what they want to offer'.

Either way, influencers might want to rethink the approach and just... pay for the food you are considering reviewing?