There are worse problems for a restaurant than having a queue out of the door. At a time when hospitality businesses are dealing with rising costs, squeezed margins and increasingly cautious consumers, the sight of people prepared to wait for a table, a pastry or even a jacket potato can look like the ultimate marketing success story.
A recent Guardian article explored the increasingly familiar phenomenon of viral restaurant queues and the extraordinary speed at which TikTok, Instagram and creator recommendations can turn an unknown dish into the thing everyone suddenly needs to try. It also highlighted the other side of that success: businesses struggling to cope with unexpected volumes, staff under pressure, customers waiting far longer than anticipated and the possibility that a restaurant becomes known for one viral moment rather than the wider experience it has worked to create.
For hospitality businesses, that raises a more interesting question than simply how to generate the next spike in views. What happens once awareness is no longer the problem, and how do you turn an extraordinary burst of attention into a business people still care about when the algorithm moves on?
Virality solves one problem and can create several more
Going viral can change the trajectory of a business incredibly quickly. Social media removes many of the traditional barriers between a small hospitality brand and a huge audience. A clever piece of content, an enthusiastic creator recommendation or an unexpectedly photogenic dish can reach millions of people before a conventional campaign has made it through its first approval meeting.
That can be transformational, but restaurant operations rarely scale at the same speed as an algorithm. Kitchens have finite capacity, teams can only serve so many customers and a venue designed for one level of demand can suddenly find itself dealing with several times that number. Stock runs out, queues lengthen and employees who were hired to deliver hospitality find themselves managing crowd control instead.
The customer arriving after watching ten enthusiastic TikToks also comes with heightened expectations. Forty-five minutes spent queuing inevitably changes how somebody judges a £12 sandwich or £6 pastry. The product is no longer being evaluated solely on its own merits. It also has to justify the hype, the wait and the version of the experience social media has created before the customer even arrives.
The useful measure therefore isn’t simply how many people are in the queue. It’s what happens after they reach the front of it.
A viral hit can be the beginning rather than the whole story
Some hospitality businesses have shown how social attention can develop into something much broader than a single viral moment.
Fallow is a good example. Social content has become part of the way the London restaurant group communicates rather than an occasional promotional tool. Its audiences see chefs, ingredients, techniques, dishes and the reality of running the restaurants, gradually becoming familiar with the wider business rather than being given one hero item to chase.
Joe & The Juice offers another version of the same challenge. Its Tunacado became a genuine TikTok phenomenon, creating huge awareness around one product. The opportunity after that moment was to use the attention as an entry point into the wider brand, giving those customers more reasons to return rather than relying indefinitely on one sandwich remaining culturally hot.
That distinction matters. Virality can introduce someone to a restaurant remarkably efficiently. Brand building gives them a reason to remember it.
Don’t let one dish become the whole brand
Social algorithms naturally simplify businesses. “You have to try this” works brilliantly in a 20-second video, but restaurants are rarely built around only one product, one photograph or one moment.
The danger comes when the hero item begins to eclipse everything else. Customers arrive asking for exactly what they’ve seen online, creators continue producing variations of the same content because they know it performs, and gradually the brand and the viral dish become almost interchangeable.
This is where marketing and creator strategy become particularly important. While the attention is there, the business has an opportunity to widen the story. Content can introduce the founder, another signature dish, the provenance of ingredients, the team behind the scenes or the experience that makes the restaurant worth returning to after the initial curiosity has been satisfied.
The creator mix can evolve, too. At the start, a high-reach creator capable of generating an enormous spike in awareness may be exactly what the business needs. Once everybody has heard of the place, creators with smaller but highly engaged audiences can become equally, and sometimes more, valuable. Local credibility, trusted recommendations and the ability to explain why a restaurant is worth returning to can do more for longevity than another million-view video saying everyone needs to queue for the same thing.
The objective has changed, so the creator strategy should change with it.
Turn attention into an audience
One of the biggest missed opportunities around viral demand can happen after the customer has paid. Thousands of people may arrive because of TikTok, yet the business can know very little about them once they walk out of the door. If the relationship starts and ends with one transaction, every future visit effectively has to be won again through somebody else’s algorithm.
A period of intense popularity is an opportunity to build a customer base the business can communicate with directly. Reservations, loyalty programmes, CRM, email and thoughtful follow-up can turn some of those first-time visitors into people who have an ongoing relationship with the brand. They can later be introduced to a new menu, another opening, an event or simply reminded why they enjoyed the experience in the first place.
The same principle applies to social audiences. If somebody discovers the restaurant through one viral Reel but finds a distinctive personality, strong storytelling and consistently interesting content when they visit the brand’s own channels, there is far more chance they will stay.
Millions of views are incredibly valuable, but they belong to the platform. A customer relationship belongs to the business.
Protect the experience that created the hype
There is another risk in chasing viral success too aggressively: the experience itself can start to suffer. The original recommendation may have been enthusiastic because a creator discovered somewhere exciting, received brilliant service and genuinely loved what they ate. Once hundreds of people arrive wanting to recreate that experience at exactly the same time, it becomes harder for the team to deliver it in the same way.
Operational responses such as virtual queues, pre-orders and clearer communication about waiting times can help, but so can being thoughtful about further amplification. If the restaurant is already overwhelmed, inviting another wave of high-reach creators simply because the first one worked may create impressive numbers without adding much commercial value.
Creator marketing should reflect what the business needs now, rather than repeatedly recreating the strategy that made it viral in the first place.
That also protects the people behind the brand. Hospitality is already a difficult industry in which to recruit, retain and motivate teams. A viral moment that creates permanently overstretched staff and a worse customer experience is unlikely to be a sustainable definition of success.
The real test comes when the queue disappears
Queues are wonderfully visible. They create social proof, attract attention from people walking past and generate even more content. It’s easy to understand why they become shorthand for a successful opening. But a queue is a moment in time.
The more revealing questions come later. Have people returned? Are customers discovering the wider menu? Does the business have a direct relationship with the audience it acquired? Has the restaurant developed an identity beyond the one thing that originally went viral? And when social media has inevitably found its next obsession, is there still a reason to come?
That’s where the difference between viral marketing and sustainable brand building becomes much clearer.
At United Influence, the focus is never just creator marketing, but a brand and marketing strategy that integrates all aspects of the marketing mix and connects creator marketing with the wider commercial ambitions of a business. Sometimes that means generating awareness. For a brand fortunate enough to already have huge attention, the challenge becomes turning that awareness into something with greater depth: a broader story, stronger creator relationships, repeat customers and a business that can outlast the trend that first put it on the map.
Going viral can fill a restaurant almost overnight. Building a brand people still want to visit long after the queue disappears takes a little more strategy.