Miranda Mounts knows her social media audience is hungry to experience Charlotte’s hottest restaurants.
Her marketing company, Where to Eat Charlotte, works with restaurant owners to increase awareness and drive traffic to their businesses.
“Every restaurant starts with a story or an idea,” she says. “We share a deeper dive into why the restaurant is what it is, and what makes every restaurant special. It’s not just dining out, it’s (making the) connection.”
As of August, Mounts’ Instagram account, (@wheretoeatcharlotte) had more than 191,000 followers. Eager to connect with her audience, Charlotte restaurants such as Mal Pan, Yama Asian Fusion and Community Matters Cafe are paying for social media posts, videos, story bundles and promotions via the Instagram, Facebook and Tik Tok channels. Her features on openings, new offerings, specials and latest deals typically score thousands of engagements. These likes, comments and shares are the coin-of-the-realm for restaurateurs seeking diners with dollars to spend.
Collaboration is key for Charlotte restaurateur Andre Lomeli, who has worked with Mounts for two years to promote his Mexican restaurants Mal Pan and El Malo. “We have an annual package of posts with Miranda,” he says, along with separate efforts to boost late-night or brunch specials. “They drive traffic. We see sales spike for up to a month after the posts. It absolutely works for us.”
Originally from Columbus, Ohio, Mounts, 30, moved to North Carolina to play varsity volleyball at UNC Wilmington. After earning a bachelor’s in communications and media studies, she worked in sales for a seafood wholesale company. She moved to Charlotte in 2018 and started a food blog for fun, reflecting her love for restaurants.
“About a year in and as my audience grew, restaurant owners began asking if I could do an exchange, if they could give me free food to do a post. My business has evolved from that.”
Mounts doesn’t view herself as a food critic, unlike dozens of others who cover North Carolina restaurants for media outlets or their own digital programs. Her limited liability corporation has expanded with a podcast that debuted in July; a revamped website featuring curated restaurant guides and a periodic newsletter. She has tapped a consultant to help her with marketing, new products and pricing.
Of Instagram’s 104 million Instagram users, 10.2 million are considered influencers, capable of swaying purchasing decisions and audience behavior, according to the Influencity research firm. That’s four times as many people with such influence as in 2020, the group says.
Like many influencers, Mounts’ most valued asset is probably the skill of reflecting her personality through colorful, creative posts. She offers a plucky girl-next-door, wiser-sister vibe that appeals to women and men alike.
“Social media is integral to being successful as a restaurant,” says Corri Smith, owner of Charlotte-based Black Wednesday, a public relations and social media firm. “These are small businesses. They don’t have huge budgets for billboards, automated websites or commercials on TV. They rely on more organic forms of marketing, such as social media, online reviews and word of mouth.”
Influencers add value by “putting together directives, what to do, where to go, where to eat, what’s cool, what’s new,” she says. “People are looking for direction, they don’t know where to go, and (a recommendation) makes their lives easy. There’s a big opportunity there for people that want to make other people’s lives easy.”
That’s especially true for the crowd in the 18-44 age range who make up 78% of Mounts’ audience. They are most coveted by many restaurant owners because of their dining out habits.
For diners belonging to Gen Z (born between 1997 and 2012), and the Millennial cadre born between 1981 and 1996, eating out is a frequent, planned-for expense. About 36% of the those cohorts plan to splurge on dining out, according to a McKinsey & Co. report.
Smith says influencers tend to fall into three categories, with “micro-influencers” having fewer than 10,000 followers and may get paid with a free meal as a trade. The next tier of as many as 40,000 followers seeks a combination of trade and payment, while those with bigger followings are most likely to charge fees for various services.
Fees are always negotiable and vary widely by service, product and influencer. But Smith says a rule of thumb is a cost of about $11 per thousand followers. So someone with 100,000 followers might be able to charge Restaurant X more than $1,000 for an Instagram post.
A key selling point of social media is that sales data can help evaluate a campaign’s effectiveness. But other metrics are less tied to immediate revenue returns and might focus on brand burnishing, for example. “The launch of a seasonal menu or introducing a new promotion, we’re looking at influencers to have an ongoing relationship with restaurant clients,” Smith says.
Mounts says her fees are competitive, given her reach, engagement rate, and quality of work. “There’s an extensive process before we highlight a restaurant,” she says, noting she checks health department ratings, visits each restaurant and meets the owner to see if the business aligns with her standards and values. “We work with a variety of budgets and are flexible with how we showcase our clients.”
It’s a larger mission for Mounts than just advising her followers where to eat. “There’s a deeper passion rooted in something a lot bigger, though. We’re highlighting stories,”
she says. “That’s a calling to me, it’s connecting these people to
an experience, and of course to the food.” ■
