US$10,000 for one Instagram post? How food influencers can make or break restaurants

Food influencer Ashley Rodriguez captures footage on a food influencer job at a restaurant in California. — Los Angeles Times/TNS

LOS ANGELES: In more than 20 years at his family’s restaurant, Joel Gonzalez had never seen anything like it. Around 6pm on March 25, 2021, he looked up to find a line stretching out the door of Mariscos Corona, the Van Nuys restaurant he runs with his sister.

For the next two hours, the siblings did their best to manage the surge of customers eagerly requesting the restaurant’s signature dishes: aguachile-stuffed avocados and surf-and-turf burritos.