“Influencer ‘Collabs’ Are Bleeding Irish Food Businesses Dry: Why a 7‑Day Post Can Cost You €100,000 in Sales”

Irish food businesses are being asked to burn months of graft for a seven‑day splash on someone else’s grid. That is the reality behind the “collab” quotes landing into inboxes from Irish influencers and media houses.

This is not partnership. For most independent Irish food producers, it is a financially reckless, one‑sided transaction dressed up as “supporting local”.

The email that says it all

Here’s the kind of message Irish producers are sharing quietly, because they feel half‑mad even questioning it:

“We had 5 different quotes from 5 influencers – one with 22k followers, one with 150k+ followers, one with 50k followers. Almost all are in the range of €2,000–€3,000 and we are not allowed to reshare their content after 7 days.We also had quotes from some online media houses ranging from €3,000–€6,000 for a mention on their grid.We don’t know if there is any regulation around online influencer marketing. It’s all so vague.”

Let’s translate that into plain language:

• Pay €2,000–€3,000 for one post on someone else’s account.

• You can’t reuse the content you’ve paid for after a week.

• Pay €3,000–€6,000 to a media house for the privilege of being “mentioned” on their grid.

All of this is being pitched to small Irish food businesses that are already buying Irish product, paying Irish wages, handing 23% VAT straight to Revenue, and trying to keep the lights on through the most margin‑starved period hospitality has seen in years.​​

The maths influencers don’t want to see

Here’s the part that rarely makes it into the glossy media kit: what it actually takes for a small Irish food business to have €3,000 spare.

Using real Irish food‑business numbers:

• To have €3,000 left over as real cash, a typical small Irish food business usually has to generate between €30,000 and €60,000 in sales, depending on its true net profit margin after VAT, labour and overhead.​

• Labour plus overheads can chew up 40–80% of total costs, while the 23% VAT on taxable items goes straight to Revenue. None of that is money you can spend on marketing.​

• Many independent food‑led businesses are running on razor‑thin net margins – often in the 3–7% range at best, with sector data showing average net profit around 0.8% and many operations hovering at break‑even.​​

Run the basic scenarios from the attached analysis:

• At a 10% net margin, you must do €30,000 in sales to have €3,000 spare.

• At a 5% net margin, you must do €60,000 in sales.

• At a 3% net margin (very common for stressed food businesses), you must do €100,000 in sales to get that same €3,000.​

So when an influencer drops a €3,000 quote for a single post, what they are really asking is this:

“Hand over the profit you made from somewhere between €40,000 and €100,000 worth of trading so I can talk about you once and then delete your rights to the content after a week.”​

Read that again and tell any food producer that this is “just marketing”.

Why this feels arrogant, detached and toxic

When you put the real numbers beside the asks, the tone of the current influencer market towards small Irish food businesses starts to look less like entrepreneurship and more like extraction.

1. Pricing built on fantasy margins

These quotes look like they were set for high‑margin beauty or SaaS products, not for a sector where:

• Average net profit in Irish food‑led hospitality is around 0.8%, and many are in survival mode.​​

• A “good” month can mean simply not going backwards.

To call €2,000–€3,000 a casual “collab” fee in that context is detached at best. For many independents, it is the equivalent of months of profit, a VAT bill, a quarter’s energy costs, or the difference between keeping staff and cutting hours.​

2. Ignoring the basic ROI test

Analysis lays out the minimum bar for this to be financially sane:

• Marketing ROI is usually measured as (Revenue−Investment)/Investment(Revenue−Investment)/Investment.​

• Many small‑business guides see 2:1 (200%) as the bare minimum – get €2 back for every €1 spent.​

• A “good” return is often seen as 5:1 (500%) – get €5 back for every €1.​

For a €3,000 influencer fee, that means:

• At 2:1, you need at least €6,000 in additional revenue just to scrape the minimum line.

• At 5:1, you need around €15,000 in additional revenue to call it a strong success.​

Now add the brutal reality of margins:

• At a 1% net margin, if the campaign magically delivers €9,000 in extra sales (a 3:1 revenue‑to‑spend ratio), that turns into €90 extra profit against a €3,000 outlay.​

• To actually put €3,000 extra profit in the bank at a 1% margin, you would need €300,000 in additional sales – something a small “tiny mention” campaign will not come close to touching.​

Calling this a “no‑brainer” for small food businesses is not marketing savvy. It is ignorant of how violently hard those euros are to earn in this sector.

3. “Supporting Irish” with one hand, extracting with the other

The messaging from influencers is often drenched in “I love supporting small Irish brands”. Yet the commercial terms say something very different:

• The producer has already bought ingredients, paid staff, covered rent, power, fuel, insurance and VAT.

• On top of that, they are being told that “support” looks like handing over the profit from tens of thousands of euro in trade for a single week of content they cannot reuse.​

That is not solidarity. It is disconnected from what “supporting Irish” actually means in a kitchen, a bakery, a roastery or a small distillery working off real invoices and real overdrafts.

4. Control without responsibility

Then there’s the rights grab:

• Pay thousands, but you are not allowed to reshare the content after seven days.

• The influencer retains the asset; your use is rationed like a scarce commodity.

Imagine a professional photographer or videographer turning to a small business and saying:

“It’s €3,000 for the shoot, but you may only use the photos for seven days, ever.”

For that price point, in any other professional context, the client would expect broad usage rights and at least medium‑term value. In the influencer world, the norm being pushed on micro‑producers is: “Pay big, disappear fast, own nothing.”

That is arrogant.

Regulation is coming – but not to save your margin

There is a lot of noise about regulation in the influencer space, but it is almost entirely consumer‑facing, not small‑business‑protecting.

• The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC) and the Advertising Standards Authority have issued guidance forcing influencers to clearly label paid, gifted and own‑brand content. Misleading consumers is now firmly on the radar.​

• Public trust in influencers is already fragile – recent Irish reporting shows many consumers are sceptical and often trust clear brand ads more than influencer posts.​

All of that may improve transparency for the person scrolling. It does nothing to question whether it is ethical, in a 0.8%‑margin industry, to charge a struggling producer €3,000 for a seven‑day mention while blocking them from even reusing the content.​​

There is no regulation stopping an influencer from charging whatever a desperate brand will agree to. The only line of defence a food business has is understanding its own numbers and being willing to say “no”.

The question every Irish food business must ask

Before saying yes to any influencer or media quote in this climate, every Irish food business should ask two simple questions:

1. How much do we have to sell to earn this money in the first place?

   • At 3–7% net margins, are you comfortable trading €40,000–€100,000 just to free the €3,000 being requested?​

2. What specific uplift can this person realistically deliver – and how will we track it?

   • Can you see a believable path to €9,000–€15,000 in incremental sales off the back of this campaign, with trackable codes, landing pages or offers?​

   • Or are you paying for a vague warm feeling and a disappearing story highlight?

If you cannot answer those questions with hard numbers, it is not a collaboration. It is a punt with money you probably cannot afford to lose.

A challenge to Irish influencers and agencies

If influencers and agencies in Ireland genuinely care about small food businesses, the change has to start with them.

That looks like:

• Learning the real economics of Irish hospitality and food production – 0.8% average net profit is not an urban myth, it is the lived balance sheet.​​

• Pricing in a way that recognises a producer may need to trade tens of thousands of euro just to pay one invoice.

• Offering fair content rights: if a producer pays thousands, they should be able to use that content properly, not watch it vanish after seven days.

• Sharing and co‑owning risk through performance‑based fees, longer‑term partnerships and clear, measurable sales objectives.

Until then, small Irish food businesses are right to look at €2,000–€3,000 one‑week posts and say, very plainly:

“This is not support. This is you asking me to fund your lifestyle with the profit from my survival.”

And they are right to walk away.

A PR campaign with a brilliant agent is a much smarter approach to business and yields phenomenal results compared to this bullshit!