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Name: Food porn.
Age: Entered common parlance around the 1980s – Rosalind Coward used the term in her 1984 book Female Desire (one of its earliest documented uses).
Appearance: A total restaurant killer.
Your thesis is that nice-looking food is destroying the restaurant industry? Yes, and I’m sticking with it.
Why? Because if you make your food look nice, it attracts the wrong sort of customers, that’s why.
And by “wrong sort of customers” you mean? Influencers, obviously.
Why are influencers so bad? They’re only taking pictures of food. If only it were that simple. Legendary restaurateur Jeremy King says that influencers are now rocking up to his restaurants with suitcases full of outfit changes. It’s an “influenza-like outbreak”, he wrote in the Standard.
That cannot possibly be true. Apparently it is. His restaurant The Park in Bayswater, west London, has a beautiful set of toilets, which are now being clogged by obnoxious selfie-takers. He says that one group of women, who brought their own sound system, took so long in there that they blocked access for other diners.
Scandalous. How does he plan to stop this? He’s put up a sign.
That’ll do it. But the point is, Instagrammers are not just ruining the toilets in one restaurant. The legendary French bakery Poilâne has recently gone into receivership, after posting more than €2m in losses back in 2024.
Too many people taking nice toilet photos? No, but the blame is, in part, being laid at the feet of influencers anyway.
Why? Because, it says, it can’t compete with jazzy new bakeries, such as the popular chain The French Bastards, that have more social media pull. Poilâne is famed for its big, round sourdough loaves, but newer artisanal bakeries are able to offer the wider range of loaves and pastries that gen Z supposedly craves.
Is that the only reason? Other reasons, according to the bakery’s director Apollonia Poilâne, include rising flour prices, rising labour costs and the fact that French people aren’t eating enough bread.
And what’s the situation now? At the time of writing, Poilâne’s stores in Paris and London remain open. “We’re reworking all the basics to enable Poilâne to bounce back … There are very few bakeries like us, known throughout the world,” says Poilâne.
And what’s to be done about the influencers? It depends who you are. If you want to attract influencers, you should probably invest in Instagrammable backdrops or nice toilets or whatever it is that attracts influencers these days.
And if you’re Jeremy King? Well, that’s the opposite problem. His toilets are clearly too nice. He’s really going to have to go in there heavy-handed if he’s going to fix that. Bust a few pipes maybe, flood a couple of cubicles. Miss the toilet by a couple of inches, if you know what I mean.
Gross. Gross but necessary.
Do say: “I’ll have the prawn cocktail.”
Don’t say: “Send it straight to the toilet, please.”
