Good morning and welcome back to **The Vittles Podcast! **You can listen to our back catalogue of episodes with the likes of Koya’s Shuko Oda, Super 8’s Songsoo Kim, Chishuru’s Joké Bakare, Ferhat Dirik of Mangal 2, Gemma Bell, the writer Ruby Tandoh, Farsin Rabiee and Ziad Halub from Logma, Will Gleave and more. If you prefer to watch your podcasts, you can now do so on our YouTube channel!
In today’s episode, we go behind the scenes of the cover story from our third print issue, ‘The Influencers’. To read the piece in print, alongside dozens of other stories – including a list of 30 of the most influential restaurants from the last 75 years and *the *piece on restaurant supplier Natoora – you can order your copy here.
Today’s very special episode of the Vittles podcast is with journalist and editor Stephen Buranyi, who spent six months reporting and investigating the world of restaurant influencers for our Issue 3 cover story, titled ‘Who’s Paying for All of This?
When he set out reporting at the beginning of this year, Stephen, an experienced reporter, soon realised the London restaurant influencer industry was much more tight-lipped than he’d anticipated, more discreet ‘than the civil service’. ‘I found in general here people did not wanna talk,’ he tells us in today’s conversation. ‘I think there’s a sense that they don’t want anyone to know how this whole thing actually works.’
Eventually, he found people who would talk. In this podcast, we learn more about how those conversations came about, why ‘a lot of restaurateurs and PRs find influencers a little bit distasteful and a bit vulgar,’ but also why they rely on them nonetheless, even when they claim they don’t. He gets into the humans behind the characters that pop up in our feeds every day, drooling, screaming, and waxing lyrical; a largely male band of content creators who have, in many ways, become the dominant force in food media today.
We also examine the influencer industry as an extension of the advertising industry, and the problems both influencers and PRs encounter when influencers lose their audience’s trust. Stephen gets at the structural, algorithmic forces underpinning influencers’ past success, their anxiety about the future, where influencing might be going next, and - most importantly - how everyone is getting paid. We also delve into the reporting process itself: the shocks and surprises, what didn’t make it into the final piece and without too many spoilers, try to figure out how all this happened.
We hope you enjoy it.
Like our recent podcasts, this episode is free to listen to for all subscribers. You can listen to it here in Substack, on Apple Podcasts or through Spotify. If you’re so inclined, please like, share, rate and comment wherever you get your podcasts. A massive thanks as usual to Lucy Dearlove, our producer and to the whole team at Young Space for hosting our recording sessions.
As with the recent episodes we’ve put out with Shuko Oda, ▶Ziad Halub and Farsin Rabiee, and ▶Will Gleave, you can also watch this episode on YouTube. For that, huge thanks to our videographer Zaineb Abelque and editor Callum Winter.
Thank you for listening, reading, watching and supporting our work.
Next up, Adam will be in conversation with Anna Higham, the celebrated owner of beloved bakery Quince, discussing heritage grains, the hype bakery scene and what to expect from Clementine, her new all-day cafe, which is due to open in Islington this October. We’ll see you then.
The Vittles Podcast is hosted by
Vittles Restaurantseditor.[Adam Coghlan]
Stephen Buranyiis a writer based in London. He is an editor and writer at theGuardian.
Lucy Dearloveis an audio producer, sound designer and writer originally from North East England, now based in St Leonards-on-Sea. Her food podcast,, is a two-time winner of the Fortnum & Mason Podcast of the Year Award.[Lecker]The full
masthead can be foundVittles[here].
