The easiest alternative to DMing influencers one by one is to let them come to you. Instead of sending message after message, you put out one offer that says what you’d like, what you’re offering and when you can host, and creators who suit it ask to visit. There are four main ways to do it: organise it yourself with email and a spreadsheet, host an influencer event, pay an agency to run it, or use an influencer platform like Joli that checks the creators, books the visits into your diary and collects the content for you, while you still choose everyone who comes in.
Why DMing Influencers Takes So Long
Messaging creators works for your first few visits, and then it starts to take over your week. You scroll hashtags to find people, plenty of them never reply, the ones who do want to move the date, and after the visit you’re chasing them to see what they posted. None of it is difficult, but it all takes time, and it usually lands on whoever runs your social media on top of everything else.
Ifeyinwa, owner of Chuku’s, knows that feeling well:
We’re a small team and it was so hard to manage the back-and-forth ourselves with influencers, but with Joli, it’s so much easier to manage, and it takes the pressure off asking people for content.
Comptoir had the same problem. Their team spent a few hours each month searching Instagram and messaging creators one by one, and it was hard to keep track of who had been in touch and where each visit was up to. Read how Comptoir turned that around.
Your Options at a Glance
| Option | How It Works | Good For | The Catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Email and a spreadsheet | You find creators and email each one | Trying it with a handful of creators | Hours of work per visit, and you check every creator yourself |
| An influencer event | You invite a group of creators to one evening | Openings, new menus and quiet nights | A burst of posts, then nothing until the next one |
| An agency | They find, book and follow up with creators for you | Groups that want it all done for them | A monthly fee, and less say over who comes in |
| An influencer platform | You post one offer and creators apply | Venues that want new content every month | A subscription, and you still pick each creator |
1. Do It Yourself with Email and a Spreadsheet
If you only want to work with a few creators, you can keep doing it yourself and make it much less painful:
- Email instead of DMing. Most creators put a business email in their bio, and an email won’t get buried in a message request folder.
- Write one template. Say what you’re offering, the dates you can host and what makes the visit worth filming, then personalise the first line for each creator.
- Add a “work with us” line to your bio. It invites creators to email you, so some of them start the conversation instead of you.
- Keep a spreadsheet. Track who you contacted, who replied, when they’re coming in and what they posted afterwards.
The catch is time. Every visit still needs a message, a back-and-forth on dates, a reminder and a follow-up, and you have to check each creator yourself by looking at whether their followers are near you, whether real people comment on their posts and how much of what they share is food and drink. Our guide to attracting food influencers to your restaurant covers what to look for.
2. Host an Influencer Event
An influencer event is an evening where you invite a group of creators at once, usually for an opening, a new menu or a tasting. Instead of arranging 20 separate visits, you plan one night, and because creators tend to share it with their followers around the same time, you get a wave of posts from different accounts.
It also gives creators something worth filming. A full room, a busy kitchen and real guests enjoying themselves can’t be recreated by a studio or an AI tool, and that’s what makes events work. The catch is that the content arrives in one burst and then stops, so most venues pair events with a campaign that runs all year. Here’s why always-on campaigns work better than one-off pushes.
You don’t have to send the invitations by hand either. On Joli you can set a campaign up as an event, creators apply for a place, and you choose who comes.
3. Work with an Agency
An influencer or hospitality marketing agency runs the whole thing for you. A good one will plan the campaign with you, find creators (often people they already know), agree what each creator gets, book the visits, let your team know who’s coming and send you a report afterwards. Many also offer PR, events and paid social, which suits groups that want one partner for all of their marketing.
You pay for that with a monthly fee, and you usually have less say over exactly who comes in. If you’re talking to agencies, it’s worth asking:
- Where do your creators come from, and how do you check them?
- Can we approve every creator before they visit?
- Who can use the content afterwards, and can we run it as ads?
- What will you report on, and how often?
Our guide to hospitality marketing agencies in London covers what they do and what they cost. It isn’t always one or the other, and some agencies run their clients’ creator campaigns through Joli.
4. Use an Influencer Platform
An influencer platform is an app where you post your offer once, creators who suit it apply, and the platform handles the booking and follow-up. There are two kinds, and for a restaurant the difference matters.
General marketplaces cover every industry and are mostly used to buy content about products, which creators film at home. They’re useful for content to run as ads, but they aren’t built around a creator coming in for a meal, so the dates, the reminders and making sure your floor team knows who’s coming are still down to you.
Hospitality platforms are built around a visit. The offer, the booking, the reminder and the content all sit in one place, and creators are picked for their food and drink content. Joli is one of these, so here’s how it works in practice.
How Joli Works
Joli is the influencer marketing platform built for UK hospitality. Restaurants, bars, hotels and venues use it to work with 10,358 vetted creators without DMs, chasing dates or chasing files.
Post One Campaign
A campaign is a short description of what you’re promoting, what you’re offering creators and when they can come in. You choose how visits work: any time during your opening hours, set dates and times, a one-off event, or an offer creators can use whenever suits them. You can cap how many visits each site gets, so you never have more creators than your team can look after.
Campaign Assistant Checks It as You Go
While you set up a campaign, our Campaign Assistant reads it through and tells you what might put creators off. It flags a description that’s too short or too long, photos that look blurry or like an advert, an offer that looks low for the size of creators you’d like to attract, and missing details such as whether drinks or a plus one are included. It also checks your dates and times, because the more flexible you can be, the more creators will apply, and if you’d like a hand it can rewrite your description for you.
Only Vetted Creators Can Apply
Every creator is based in the UK and reviewed by our team before they can apply to anything. We check that real people engage with their posts and watch their videos, and creators need at least 5% engagement, or 3.5% if they have more than 10,000 followers. At least a quarter of what they share has to be food and drink, and their content has to be good enough to represent your venue. Only 8% of the creators we review are approved, and on top of that you can set your own requirements for each campaign, such as follower range, engagement or where their audience is.
Joli cuts time and cost while connecting us with relevant, vetted influencers who help our business grow.
Garrett, founder of Butchies
You Choose Who Visits
When a creator applies, you see their audience, where their followers are, their recent content and how it performed before you say yes or no. The team at TGI Fridays uses that to pick creators who fit the brand, then messages them directly to tailor each visit. If you’d rather not review every application, you can set criteria and let creators who meet them book straight in.
Visits Go Straight into Your Diary
Approved visits land in your Joli diary with all the details attached, and if you use ResDiary, Access Collins, TheFork or Booked it, they go straight into your booking system too, so your floor team knows who’s coming. Creators confirm their attendance 24 hours before they arrive.
Joli has been a breeze to use, we’ve seen some great content come from it, and with its integration with Access Collins, it’s made something which could’ve been a whole job, an effortless task!
Dean, Digital and Social Manager at NQ64
The Content Comes Back to You
When creators post, their posts, reels and stories land in your content library automatically, with reach, views and engagement for each campaign and site, so nobody is screenshotting stories or asking for files.
It adds up. So far in 2026, creators have applied to visit brands on Joli more than 53,000 times. Brands have hosted more than 8,800 of those visits, which have added close to 30,000 posts, reels and stories to their content libraries, more than three per visit on average. In a DM inbox, every one of those conversations would have started with you.
Figures are from Joli platform data, 1 January to 10 November 2026.
Gifted Visits, Paid Collaborations and Ads
Most campaigns on Joli are gifted, with creators visiting as your guest and sharing what they enjoyed with their followers. If you want bigger creators, you can run paid collaborations with creators who have more than 30,000 followers, which include 12 weeks of rights to use their content. If you need videos to run as ads, Ad Studio has creators film them for you, with permission to use them in your ads already included. Our guide to gifted visits, paid collaborations and videos for ads explains when each one makes sense.
To be clear about the trade-offs, Joli is built for hospitality, so it isn’t right for a product brand selling online, and someone on your team still sets up the campaign and replies to applications, ideally within two days so the best creators don’t book somewhere else first.
How to Choose
Ask these questions of any option, including Joli:
- How are creators checked? Look for checks on engagement, real followers and how much of their content is food and drink.
- How do visits get booked? The best setups put visits straight into your booking system, so your team knows who’s coming.
- What happens if someone doesn’t turn up? Ask about confirmations, reminders and what happens to creators who cancel late.
- How do you get the content back? It should land somewhere you can find it, not arrive weeks later over WeTransfer.
- Can you use the content in ads? A gifted post and the right to run it as an ad are different things, so check before you spend money promoting it.
- Are the creators near your customers? A platform with plenty of creators in another city or another industry won’t help a restaurant in Leeds.
- What does it cost all-in? Add up any fees and the cost of each meal, then compare that with the hours your team spends on DMs today.
If you’d rather hand the whole thing over, an agency is the right fit. If you’re trying it with a handful of creators, email and a spreadsheet will do, and an influencer event works well for an opening or a new menu. If you want fresh content every month without anyone chasing creators, an influencer platform built for hospitality is the closest fit.
See how other restaurants use Joli, read more customer stories, check our pricing or book a demo to see it working for your venue.
Related reading: How to Attract UK Food Influencers to Your Restaurant | Working With Creators on Joli: Answers to the Questions Brands Ask Us Most | Gifted, UGC or Paid? How to Choose the Right Creator Mix for Your Venue
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best alternative to DMing influencers for a restaurant?
The best alternative is to let creators come to you, and how you do that depends on how much you want to organise yourself: email and a spreadsheet suit a few visits, an influencer event gets lots of creators in at once, an agency runs it for you, and an influencer platform such as Joli lets you post one offer, choose from vetted creators who apply and keep bookings, reminders and content in one place.
What is an influencer event?
An influencer event is an evening where a restaurant invites a group of creators at once, usually for an opening, a new menu or a tasting, so instead of arranging every visit separately you plan one night, and creators tend to share it with their followers around the same time.
Do I have to pay influencers to visit my restaurant?
Many restaurant collaborations are gifted, where you invite a creator in as your guest and they share what they enjoyed with their followers, and paid collaborations make sense when you want bigger creators, an agreed set of posts or permission to run their content as ads.
How does Joli check creators?
Every creator is reviewed by our team before they can apply to anything, and we look at how many people engage with their posts, whether people actually watch their videos, how much of their content is food and drink and whether it's good enough to represent your venue, which is why only 8% of the creators we review are approved.
How do I stop influencers not showing up?
Confirm every visit in writing, remind the creator the day before and favour creators with a record of turning up. On Joli, creators confirm their attendance 24 hours before a visit, and attendance is one of the things we look at when deciding which creators get the best opportunities.
Is an influencer platform better than an agency?
It depends on how much you want to hand over, because an agency plans and runs campaigns for you for a monthly fee, while a platform gives your team the tools to run them yourselves, so you keep control of who visits and pay less for management, though someone on your side still sets up the campaign and chooses the creators.
Can I use influencer content in my own ads?
You can with the creator's permission or a usage-rights agreement, so check what's included before you put ad spend behind a creator's video. On Joli, paid collaborations include 12 weeks of usage rights and Ad Studio videos come with the rights for your ads already cleared.
