Posted by
I open Instagram and see a group of restaurant workers dancing in perfect sync to Bad Bunny, waving bunches of coriander in the air. It’s funny, and clearly the hundreds of thousands of people who hit “like” agreed. Curious, I tap the profile. It’s a cevichería called Las Gaviotas, in Peru. I live in Porto, so there’s almost no chance I’ll ever have lunch there. I keep scrolling, ready for whatever Instagram lines up next.
That Reel did its job: it entertained me. What it didn’t do was turn me into a customer — not now, and probably not ever.
This is where I think a lot of businesses read social media wrong. We’ve decided the whole point of it is to go viral, to wake up famous overnight. So we wait for the one Reel, or the one influencer collaboration, that puts the place on everyone’s radar all at once and for good. But if the people watching are scattered across the globe and will never walk through your door, what have you actually gained?
The best restaurant marketing is usually boring
Going viral is exciting. The first time a collaboration we ran at Rippla went viral, the whole team was celebrating — of course we were!
But virality isn’t a strategy. Whatever the content “gurus” promise, you can’t predict it, you can’t schedule it, and you can’t build a business on it. Plenty of owners are still waiting for the video that changes everything overnight. The truth is far less glamorous.
Most restaurants that do well aren’t built on one big moment. They’re built on hundreds of small ones: a steady stream of content, regular mentions from creators, fresh Google reviews, customers posting Stories, familiarity that stacks up week after week. Nobody brags about this kind of marketing. But it’s what keeps your restaurant in mind when someone nearby is deciding where to eat tonight.
A million views don’t always mean a million guests
Back to Las Gaviotas. That Reel reached me in Porto. It probably reached people in London, New York, Tokyo and Sydney too. That’s how Instagram works: when something performs, the algorithm keeps pushing it to more and more people.
Good for the view count. Not always good for the business.
For a local restaurant, views aren’t worth the same. Someone who lives ten minutes away is worth far more than someone on the other side of the planet. One might become a regular. The other keeps scrolling and forgets your name by the next video.
And local visibility isn’t a nice-to-have any more — it’s increasingly where the decision gets made. In one survey of diners, 42% said they’d sooner turn to social media than a search engine like Google to find somewhere new to eat. That shift is real, but it only helps you if the people doing the searching are close enough to book a table.
The algorithm doesn’t care where your viewers live — it rewards whatever holds attention. You should care, because your goal isn’t to entertain the internet. It’s to stay visible to the people who might actually book a table this weekend. Given the choice, I’ll take 10,000 views from locals over a million from people who’ll never find your door.
How to stay on the local radar?
In practice, that looks less glamorous than chasing a hit. It’s working with creators whose followers live in your city, not the ones with the biggest numbers. It’s making your place easy to post from — a corner with decent light, a dish that photographs as well as it tastes, your handle somewhere people can find it. It’s replying to Google reviews and resharing the Stories guests already tag you in, because that’s content too, and it costs nothing.
Mostly it’s repetition. One creator visit won’t change your month. A steady rhythm of them, week after week, is what makes yours the name that surfaces when a group of friends is arguing about where to go on Friday.
It’s slower and quieter than a viral spike, and it compounds in a way a one-off almost never does. You won’t have a single number to brag about. You’ll have something better: a room that fills up on a normal Tuesday.
Virality is a bonus, not the goal
If your Reel reaches a million people, celebrate it. It can build awareness, catch some press, and open doors you didn’t expect. For some businesses that’s the whole point: if you’re Netflix launching a series or a global brand launching a product, reaching everyone everywhere is exactly the objective.
A neighbourhood restaurant, café or bar is playing a different game. Your success doesn’t ride on how many strangers around the world saw your video. It rides on whether you’re the place people nearby picture when they’re planning a family lunch, a date night, or a lazy weekend with friends.
So I’d rather build around what I can actually shape: showing up consistently, reaching the right local audience, and giving people enough reasons to remember me.
I really do hope the team at Las Gaviotas keeps making brilliant Reels. I just hope they’d trade one more view from me for one more guest in Lima.
