The reel deal: Behind the scenes with Santa Cruz’s first food influencers

A pair of hands opens two halves of a tin foil-wrapped breakfast burrito, luring viewers to halt their Instagram scrolling. The opening shot of this quick-cut video, what Instagram calls a reel, is close up, showing packed filling and melted cheese, while a voiceover filters over a pop song. “Let me tell you where you can get the best breakfast burritos in Santa Cruz,” it says, moments before a clean-cut guy in a pink tank top appears, talking animatedly through the screen.

“What’s up guys! Daniel J here with Double Meat Please, and we’re here at Busy Bees Café. They’re some of the best breakfast burritos in town. Let’s see what they’ve got,” says Daniel West, one half of the Instagram duo Double Meat Please. West punches the talking points – the ingredients, the business’ hours, why viewers should go there – over glimpses of the burrito-making process and enticing shots of crispy bacon and soft scrambled egg smothered in hollandaise. It’s all shot by Marcus Trawick, the cameraman and West’s best friend. 

The format is light and fun, but the impact is real. This reel gained almost 60,000 views, and those numbers can translate to a tangible effect on businesses that are featured in the videos, sometimes within 24 hours of being posted, some business owners say. 

Santa Cruz’s slow build

Food influencers have been a part of Instagram since it launched in 2010. Social media influencers often focus on particular topics, building followings and then “influencing” those followers to try or buy products or services. Influencers exist and earn a reputation on social media first. They’re common in larger metropolitan areas, but it’s only recently that two active accounts have earned significant followings in Santa Cruz County. 

Santa Cruz native Monica Multer’s account Santa Cruz Bucket List (@SantaCruzBucketList on Instagram) has 53,000 followers, and broadly captures her “favorite things” about her hometown, from hiking trails to tide pools, in dreamy, picturesque reels and photos. The frequency of posting varies depending on her schedule, but during active periods she posts five times a week, and two or three of those tend to be food- or drink-related, most lasting about 6 seconds. 

With around 11,500 followers, West and Trawick’s energetic videos focus on their favorite local restaurants and pop-ups, typically homing in on a single, high-impact menu item, like the eggs Benedict breakfast burrito at Busy Bees Cafe and Catering in Capitola or brisket bao dumplings with Szechuan consomé at Full Steam Dumpling in Santa Cruz. Each video is 30 seconds to a minute long.

Neither is a food professional; they’re hobbyists, who create entertaining videos online for fun, they say. And they note they’re not in it for money or fame. With the exception of a single paid-by-the-business promotion, neither Santa Cruz Bucket List or Double Meat Please has been paid by businesses to create their posts. They say the vast majority of the food they eat is paid for with their own money. As restaurants have started to catch on, they occasionally get meals or items for free, both say, but it’s not the norm. 

That’s a different approach than much of the rest of the influencing industry. Typically, influencers engage in paid partnerships, often lucrative national ones, once their followings hit high numbers, usually by creating posts for companies that pay them to promote certain products. Instagram has rules that this content should be clearly presented to the viewer, including using specific hashtags like #ad and #sponsoredcontent, but it’s not always enforced. Money exchanges within it can be murky. Some influencers have even been accused of extorting restaurants for free meals.

With the exception of one paid client on Santa Cruz Bucket List, West, Trawick and Multer have kept their accounts free of such promotions, they say, but as their audiences have grown, it’s created new business opportunities. West and Trawick have launched a creative agency to create photos and videos for local restaurants, and Multer works for Visit Santa Cruz County writing blog posts for its website. Any indirect revenue they’ve earned as a result of their pages is still “very much a side hustle,” both say. 

The goal was always to have fun and share information about local businesses they loved, says West: “There’s a lot of good quality food that not that many people know about. But since we’re in the space of food, and we know people in the food industry, we’re able to find out about it.” Creating videos for the account has introduced them to people in the restaurant industry, and some of their leads come from members of West’s gym, West Fitness Santa Cruz in Soquel, like Eddie Alaniz of Coffee Conspiracy and Saucey’z food truck owner Rob Sanders. 

When Multer first started Santa Cruz Bucket List in 2018, she noticed a distinct difference between influencing here versus larger metropolitan areas. “In San Francisco, they’ve made that connection very clearly that if you’re talked about on Instagram, it matters in real life, too. Santa Cruz was slower in the uptake of that,” says Multer. “I think that’s partially the reason why there aren’t a ton of foodie influencers here, because it’s much harder to break in and prove the value of it here than it is a place in San Francisco where everybody and their mother is an influencer.”

Spheres of influence

But businesses have begun to notice. Busy Bees owner Ty Pearce’s Capitola cafe has been in numerous Double Meat Please videos, and says he notices an uptick in sales on the specific item within one or two days. “We know for sure that whatever he posted is going to be the hot item for the day, and to prepare for our sales going up,” says Pearce. “Sometimes if we’re busy and we haven’t looked to see what’s been posted, and we’re like, why are we selling so many Reuben sandwiches, for instance, we’ll know Daniel must have posted it.” 

Last summer, Double Meat Please made a video about Jacob Wilkens’ pop-up Pizza Bones. He says people came to try the pizza specifically because of the video, and it helped increase Pizza Bones’ social media presence. The effects, Wilkens says, can be long-reaching; he still gets customers who say they’ve been trying to get to a pop-up “for months” after seeing a video online. 

Others agree that a social media presence is vital, but that it can be difficult to determine whether or not a post, even a viral one, directly translates to sales. Sometimes there’s a surge of customers asking for a specific item, and other times the effects are more nuanced. Nevertheless, business owners say the posts have some positive impact. 

Marilee Powers’ sandwich shop Seabright Deli is featured in reels by Santa Cruz Bucket List, Double Meat Please and influencers from outside. She says the effects are difficult for her to quantify directly, but she believes it makes a difference. 

“There are only two times when I could actually document that the people were here because of influencers. Other than that, I just have to assume that if it’s being played half a million times, people are seeing it and they’re being influenced to come in,” says Powers.

Jayne Droese, who owns La Marea Cafe in Capitola, agrees. One of the sourdough bagels at her cafe was featured in a Santa Cruz Bucket List video on the best bagels in the area. The direct effects were difficult to track, but she thinks it at least translated to new followers on La Marea’s Instagram account. Those followers can become real sales, especially by people ordering through delivery services like DoorDash. “People are definitely watching. For a small town like Santa Cruz it’s really important. I try my best to post something every day just to keep people engaged,” says Droese.

These local influencers are clearly trying to navigate a way forward, amid the potential pitfalls of the trade, and the questions of real impact. 

Multer creates her posts by piecing together footage she takes while eating at restaurants or being outside. But increasingly she has conversations with restaurants about how they’re featured, and collaborates directly with interested businesses that fit into the Santa Cruz Bucket List vibe. 

Her posts are still organic and unpaid, with the exception of one local client, she says. Matthew Lemon says he paid $250 to Multer about five times over the past two years to create reels to promote his pop-up, Cracked Cookies, which sells chewy brownie-like cookies in flavors like toffee, chocolate and peanut butter, and funfetti birthday cake. He describes the partnership as “invaluable,” and sees immediate direct effects from each post. “The first one she did I got almost 1,000 followers in a few days. At my next pop-up I sold out super quickly. People in line would say, ‘I saw you on Instagram.’ It definitely makes a difference to driving people to your pop-ups, especially small ones like us,” says Lemon. 

When posts like Lemon’s are paid for directly by a business, influencers are supposed to mark it as an advertisement. However, there isn’t anything on Multer’s Cracked Cookies videos to distinguish them from her other content. 

Multer said she did mark it as sponsored content when she posted it, and wasn’t sure why it wasn’t presented that way. But, she says, circumstances like this are a reason why she doesn’t believe she’ll pursue more paid collaborations in the future.

“I might go a different route and make different kinds of bucket list guides where the lines are less gray and less confusing. The last thing we want to do is mislead people,” she says.

Branching out

In May, West and Trawick harnessed the media skills they developed to create better content for their Instagram page and launched Double Meat Please as a content creation company. It offers clients a range of services, including photography, videos and social media management. So far, they’ve worked with at least seven local clients, including Cilantros in Watsonville and Oblò Cocktails and Kitchen in Santa Cruz. 

If their clients express a desire to be featured on the Instagram page, they say they try to find a way to do so that feels authentic, West says, but it’s never guaranteed. “We will create something to highlight, to elevate their business and bring people awareness of what’s going on,” without necessarily endorsing it, says West, like noting a happy hour or special event. 

“Someone asked us recently, if someone pays you to come to the restaurant, how do we know what you’re highlighting is genuine? It’s a great question,” says West. “We have different ways to kind of help them out. And we’ve been to restaurants where we have not enjoyed anything, and we haven’t posted it.”

After watching some of her favorites close during the pandemic, Multer hopes Santa Cruz Bucket List can help support local businesses she enjoys. “The idea that a little post on social media could get 10 more people in that door, maybe that could make a difference,” says Multer. “That’s highly optimistic, but I’m sure that it means something to those business owners and those are the people I want to support.”

Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here.