It started with $500 and a comped meal at Hollywood Thai.
That’s what the family-run Thai Town restaurant paid an influencer in exchange for a single social media post. When that post didn’t immediately materialize, the owners aired their frustrations on Instagram. The internet responded, roiling with online comments that publicly called out the influencer, who has more than 1.5 million followers on Instagram.
There are few rules of engagement when family-run restaurants hire social media personalities to post about them. A recent spate of clashes involving influencers and small businesses highlights the messiness and pitfalls of trying to survive in a fraught restaurant industry with little revenue to spare while navigating the hyper-saturated attention economy.
Some restaurateurs say social media influencers help spread the word and provide valuable marketing; others say it’s hard to tell whether their posts result in new customers at all.
In recent months, some paying restaurants in Los Angeles say they have been professionally “ghosted” and the fallout has resulted in deleted accounts, threats from a purported lawyer, allegations of purchased followers, and countless harassing comments left on creators’ accounts.
For a few years, Mahidol “Joe” Pimpa’s Hollywood Thai restaurant felt busy, with Thai tourists and other restaurant owners stopping by for satay, curries and specialties such as pad Thai Sukhothai. But since the pandemic, business has slowed to a trickle. In late 2025 the restaurateur hired a part-time social media manager and began working with influencers in exchange for food. In January, they collaborated with influencer Christian Garcia for a payment of $500 and nearly $100 of food. Garcia did not post until April 3 following online pile-ons by commenters and other influencers.
Garcia said that during his visit, Pimpa told him to take his time in posting the video, including up to “a couple months.” Pimpa denied ever having told Garcia this.
“Taking advantage of any business really is not great, but a small, family-owned business?” said Hollywood Thai social media manager Grace Lee, who coordinated the deal. “It’s so low, to me.”
Garcia said the ordeal was a misunderstanding and that the restaurant has defamed him. He says he is now involving his attorney but declined to discuss the matter further.
In messages reviewed by The Times, Garcia told Hollywood Thai that his video editor was delayed in finalizing the reel. Then he stopped responding for weeks. “This got very messy for no reason,” said Garcia.
Garcia, who has posted restaurant reviews and other content for roughly one-and-a-half years, said he got into the food-influencer trade after learning some influencers can make between $500 and $1,000 for a single post. He said that he did not reach out to Hollywood Thai himself but that it was his own social media manager with access to his account requesting $575 to post one Instagram reel. Pimpa’s social media manager countered with $500 plus comped food and drink that totaled roughly $90.
Lee said that since Hollywood Thai began working with influencers, the owners typically have not paid for posts but instead comp four or five dishes of the influencer’s choosing. They made an exception for Garcia.
“I took a look at his page,” Lee said. “I should have looked further into the engagement.” A community note on Garcia’s Hollywood Thai post challenged the source of his followers. Garcia denied buying followers or engagement. “I’m not gonna go on my social media and make myself a story,” Garcia said. “I believe in ‘you reap what you sow,’ and everything comes to light. ”
Prisma Varela, Garcia’s videographer of more than one year, attended the shoot and confirmed that Pimpa said there was no rush to post. She said she has attended more than 50 food shoots with the influencer, and none have resulted in backlash or unhappiness like this.
After months of nudging from Hollywood Thai and recent posts calling for accountability — including some by prominent social media figures such as @DaadiSnacks and @etchaskej, the latter of whom tracked allegations of discrimination at local chain Great White last year — Garcia posted a video.
Pimpa said the restaurant is changing its policy, going forward. “I’m not gonna pay anybody to come in like that anymore.”
Garcia and Varela are also changing their practices, requiring signed contracts before they visit and film an establishment.
Garcia said that his restaurant collaborations and other partnerships have since slowed down. The content creator received hateful comments and messages after the Hollywood Thai dispute, including some targeting his weight and race.
“If people look at it like, ‘Oh, this guy scammed a local business,’ of course that’s messed up,” he said. “But the thing is, I delivered and I apologized. … Hollywood Thai doesn’t want to show those things. They want to play victims.”
The public outpouring for Hollywood Thai was loud. Pimpa said he has seen a slight bump in business but is unsure iwhether he can credit it to the newfound online support. Pimpa said he never received an apology from Garcia, but that other L.A. restaurateurs reached out to sympathize.
Relentless Brewing and Spirits in Eagle Rock was one of them. Co-owner Doris Hess also recently shared her story online.
On June 1, 2025, influencer and rapper Richard Lee, or Bap Ross (@yox_rick), received a party for his friend’s birthday at Relentless in exchange for a social media video. Hess said she requested posting the video before June 12, 2025, for her business’ six-year anniversary. Lee didn’t post until April 2026.
Hess said she provided $800 of food and drink, plus $400 later paid by her social media manager.
Weeks went by without Lee posting a video on Relentless, but Hess said Lee explained that he wanted to wait to post until after No Kings Day. When nudged again, Lee said he was traveling and a family member had recently died. Then, Hess said he stopped responding. Throughout the year, Hess kept seeing his posts about other restaurants but never her own.
“I did one last Instagram message to him like, ‘This is really not cool. We’re both Korean. How could you do that to a female small-business owner?’ ” she said. “It didn’t look like it went through, so it looked like he’d blocked us.”
Lee did not respond to requests for comment.
When Hess saw Hollywood Thai’s turmoil, she felt she needed to speak up online. Followers and content creator Ed Choi shared Hess’ story, and on April 22, Lee posted an apology video and refunded Relentless Brewing $1,500.
“I [messed] up, especially in this line of work where people trust you with their business, they trust you with their time, their money, I took full advantage,” Lee said in the video, adding, “I got overpromised [sic], I got overwhelmed and I failed to deliver.”
The next day he posted the video of his 2025 visit to Relentless Brewing and called the business “an absolute gem.” The restaurant’s account commented on the post, thanking him “for making it right.”
“Overall, would I not have influencers come in again? No,” said Hess. “I definitely will invite influencers to come in. Will I pay them large sums of money? … No, absolutely not.”
Another flashpoint occurred when an Echo Park restaurant called out a pair of influencer twin sisters Sarah and Leah Marie Talabi.
Earlier this year Leah Marie Talabi messaged Echo Park restaurant and teahouse Men & Beasts, which serves plant-based Chinese cuisine. In exchange for posts, owners Alex Falco and Minty Zhu agreed to provide a meal for Talabi and her sister.
Falco said he ended up providing six people with one drink, one appetizer, one entrée and one dessert each in exchange for one Instagram reel, one TikTok and one Instagram story mention. Talabi listed the names of additional food influencers and food publications, including Food Journal Magazine.
“Everyone will post!” Leah Marie Talabi wrote in a message to the restaurant.
The meal’s total came to just under $500. On a slow night Men & Beasts might generate $2,000 or $2,500 in sales, so the owners said they felt the financial impact.
“For $500 of that to be gone to an influencer who didn’t come through with the content she promised is a big, big blow,” Falco said.
Falco said Talabi immediately posted about the meal to her Instagram stories, which disappeared after 24 hours, but never posted a reel, photo or TikTok, which are more permanent. A few days after the meal, the restaurant reached out to her about her promised posts; they continued for weeks, but in messages reviewed by The Times, she viewed their messages but never responded.
“We started reaching out to these other accounts that she mentioned were coming with her,” Falco said. When Falco and Zhu messaged Food Journal Magazine’s Instagram account to inquire about the posts, a representative responded that no one from the organization had attended the dinner.
Men & Beasts posted about the experience, and others on social media began to call out Talabi.
DaadiSnacks posted videos regarding the Talabi twins, including one detailing a cease and desist he received via email from a lawyer that he says doesn’t exist. The creator behind the DaadiSnacks account, who does not reveal his full name, told The Times he is in communication with the State Bar of California regarding the email and would not comment further.
The Talabi twins didn’t respond to questions regarding the lawyer but said in an email that they would prefer to use their platform “not to engage in false TikTok gossip, but instead to highlight small business owners and the hardworking people behind them, Men & Beasts being one of the best examples of that.” They added that they appreciate co-owner Zhu, the restaurant’s tea program and its plant-based cuisine.
Following public backlash Leah Marie Talabi made her Instagram account private, then temporarily deleted it, though the sisters’ joint account on TikTok still posts regularly. Falco said they never responded to the restaurant.
Despite all of this, Falco said Men & Beasts will continue to work with influencers because, especially for independent businesses, it’s difficult to reach new audiences without a large marketing budget. Staff regularly ask customers how they heard of the restaurant, and according to Falco, four of five times they’ll have seen it in a social media post — almost always made by a diner or content creator.
After their incident with Talabi, they’ve slowed the cadence of their collaborations and are more discerning about who they work with, but fully expect to hire influencers for marketing in the future.
“If we don’t work with influencers,” Falco said, “then our options for reaching new customers are pretty limited.”
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