Sydney food influencer Mick Teasdale takes aim at those who ‘just want a free meal’

Hospitality marketer and food influencer is over the negative connotations caaused by those in it for the freebies. His advice? Know your way around a kitchen first.

A prominent Sydney food influencer admits there is a “negative connotation” when it comes to food influencers but is determined to fix it.

Mick Teasdale runs his own hospitality marketing company The Hungry Diner, which manages more than 200 food influencers, including himself.

“There’s a negative connotation and then there’s a really positive one and the negative is really hanging over right now,” said Teasdale of food influencers. “There are people who just want a free meal, but they aren’t the people I work with.”

Earlier this year two food influencers from @twoteaspoons, Elle Groves and Annie Knight, came under fire for asking for free meals for restaurants struggling under the financial fallout of Covid.

Teasdale adds the influencers he works with, including himself, support the hospitality industry. “You have to understand your way around a kitchen first. If you can’t cook pretty technical meal or understand how to chop an onion or how to build a stock and just want to look pretty at a table full of food and have a cup of coffee, that’s not me.”

Mick Teasdale, an influencer who goes by "Mick: The Hungry Diner”. Picture: Richard Dobson

“In my community, we love food and we love helping the industry. It’s a sense of family.”

Teasdale’s marketing agency has worked with established restaurants like Botswana Butchery, White & Wong’s and Tommy’s Darlinghurst. He also has a range of different types of influencers — from single mothers to couples with disposable incomes — who he invites to restaurant events and openings.

“No one is paid to attend these events. Our job is to try and make the restaurant money.”

“Every job I’ve ever had has always been in food and it’s because I love it.”

Teasdale is also responsible for bringing the new food delivery platform TableVibe, to Australia.

The app, which aims to take on the established giants of UberEats, doesn’t charge the restaurant commission and instead takes a cut of the delivery free from the customer. On average it claims to save the restaurant 70 per cent of their third party, online ordering fees.

“It’s a tough market for people in hospitality but what I’m trying to do is entice people within my community to get out there. Technology is making us lazy, but hopefully when people see the content they feel they have to visit that new bar or restaurant immediately.”