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Key Takeaways
- The team behind a popular restaurant in London cracked the code for authentic content sharing and built a massive audience.
- The restaurant creators never set out to become YouTube stars. It just happened.
- Their philosophy for anyone trying to make it on YouTube is to keep it scrappy and authentic. Make your restaurant the main character.
Some restaurants use YouTube to market their business, and some use it to help build one.
Inside Fallow in London, the restaurant is buzzing with customers. On social media, it’s even busier.
When Will Murray and his business partner, Jack Croft, started posting videos years back as a way to bring attention to their restaurant. Little did they know, they would eventually become YouTubers.
“If you can craft a narrative and you can create long-form content that people really engage with, they are the type of people that are gonna come and eat at your restaurant,” Murray says.
The strategy paid off massively for the restaurant. Murray says they started making content four years ago, their social media grew 333%, and the combined platforms now generate between 85 million and 110 million views a month. The main driver behind why they started posting was to give people a window into the business.
“Creating the restaurant and the business is the hard part. Creating a good window into it is actually more straightforward,” he says.
Murray, Croft and even the restaurant became recurring characters. Instead of chasing trends, the team documented what was already happening behind the scenes.
One of the biggest breakthroughs came from a quiet Saturday brunch. The team created the Royale with Cheese, a laminated croissant inspired by Pulp Fiction, and shared a photo online. It generated roughly 1.6 million views and helped fill Saturday brunch for the next four months. Today, Fallow serves about 1,000 guests on a typical Saturday.
For Murray, it was another reminder that good storytelling could do more than build an audience. It could help build a business.
Here’s their approach to storytelling
Murray says you don’t need to have super expensive equipment to get started on YouTube. Even though you’ll see a lot of videos that look super polished on the site, there are ways to create high-quality videos with just basic equipment.
“The first bit of advice I got was, ‘Scrappy, not Spielberg,’” Murray says. “So keep it scrappy. Keep it organic. If all you’ve got is a phone, you’re more than capable of getting millions and millions of views online. Don’t overcomplicate it.”
One of Murray’s favorite creators is Canadian restaurateur Steve Droulis, not because of polished production, but because he’s authentic.
“He just seems like a bloke. Turns on the camera, you get what you get. I just love it because it’s completely authentic and organic to what he does,” Murray says.
Murray also points to Michelin-starred chef Adam Byatt, whose videos couldn’t be more different. Whether it’s simple cooking videos or classical French techniques, Murray says the best creators all have one thing in common.
“If you don’t want to do it, don’t do it. People will see that straight away,” he says. “The UK is a really, really tough industry at the moment. There’s just not enough meat on the bone unless you’re willing to engage massively with social media and pull every lever that’s available to you.”
For Murray, the goal was never to become a YouTuber. It was to give people a reason to walk through Fallow’s front door. The cameras, the views and the subscribers all came later.
“Running a business is tougher than ever with soaring costs in every different aspect, so communicating to your audience is more important than ever,” he says.
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