A cat cafe, a shoe brand and a London cake maker are among the owners saying no to freebie requests and calling creators out in public.
Small-business owners have long chased the one influencer post that could fill their shop for a week. Now a growing number of them are pushing back. According to The Guardian‘s Zing Tsjeng, entrepreneurs in the US and UK are tired of free-product requests that never turn into posts, demanding guests and reviews that don’t match what happened, and some are taking the fight to social media themselves.
The receipts came from the security camera
The lead example is Nicole Flanagin, who owns Brews and Mews, a cat cafe in Lenoir, North Carolina. A local influencer with more than 170,000 followers posted a TikTok saying she and her daughter were turned away from an unnamed animal cafe and that staff just stood there while the child cried. Flanagin knew it was her place. The cafe only lets children aged six and under in during set sessions to protect its foster cats.
She checked the CCTV. According to JournalArta‘s Matthew Jonathan, the time-stamped footage showed the creator talking with a staffer for less than 40 seconds before she and her child looked at the cats in the window and left quietly. Flanagin posted the clip on the cafe’s TikTok, where it has passed 640,000 views. The creator deleted her review and posted an apology, saying she was “upset as a parent and clicked that post button before I really thought about what would happen.”
“Why is your opinion any more valid or important than mine or somebody else’s?” Flanagin told The Guardian. “I don’t regret defending myself.”
Free products, no posts
Lucy Herron, founder of British shoe brand Sloafer, told the paper that influencers “absolutely catapulted” her business and that one good post can sell 50 pairs in a day. But she also sent a £225 pair to a reality-show personality who at first said she couldn’t thank the brand publicly because of tax concerns, then finally posted a dark photo where the shoes were barely visible.
London restaurant owner Hubert Zanier of Kipferl described a creator with 100,000 followers who ran up a £300 bill with her family in 2024 and then put off posting for months. New York baker David Maffei of Halfsies Cookie Company now posts the boldest freebie asks on Instagram. When one bride-to-be with 1,300 followers called herself a “beginner influencer,” he answered, “And I’m a beginner astronaut.”
Some owners have stopped saying yes at all
Essex balloon artist Anastasia Powers says she gets up to 10 free requests a month and turns them all down. “Collaborations don’t pay for my petrol, my lights, my stock,” she told The Guardian. She is also in a WhatsApp group with other owners who share the worst messages.
London cake maker Reshmi Bennett made headlines after an assistant for Made in Chelsea’s Binky Felstead asked for a gifted birthday cake. Bennett called it out on Instagram. A representative for Felstead said it was “a standard inquiry” offering social media exposure in exchange for a cake. Bennett now filters emails with the words “sponsorship” or “collaboration” into spam.
The pushback goes beyond single shops. The Guardian reported that London’s Borough Market now requires a permit for anyone filming with more than a two-person crew or professional-grade gear.
Not every creator is the problem
Josh Wheeler, founder of PR agency Be Broadcast, told the paper he has seen “nightmares and angels” in every category of influencer. His advice for businesses is to spell out what they expect up front and get it in writing. Zanier still works with creators, too. “Just because some of them might be black sheep, it doesn’t mean that they’re all crooked,” he said.
The takeaway
For creators, free stuff was never really free. It is a trade, and small businesses are keeping score in public now. The creators who treat a gifted meal or product like a real deal, with a clear post and an honest review, will keep getting invited back. The ones who don’t may end up as the next viral callout.
Image: AI-generated illustration.
