The Ivy restaurateur Jeremy King blasts social media influencers and content creators for 'ruining restaurants'

Jeremy King, 71, who is behind top eateries including The Ivy, The Wolseley and Le Caprice, says he is fed up with content creators flooding his restaurants.

He slammed the “influenza-like outbreak” of influencers who have “lost respect," as they sweep across the UK food scene.

Mr King says his most recently opened restaurant, The Park, in Bayswater, London, has been particularly badly affected.

The Park, which opened in the summer of 2024, developed a "dedicated following from local and further afield" when it first opened.

But when recognition began to increase, Mr King soon started to notice a “proliferation of guests coming in with what appeared to be the sole purpose of taking and posting fashion photographs, using the restaurant as a background.”

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“This might seem innocuous and even flattering in itself — but not when it starts to affect other customers and indeed cross the line on privacy,” he wrote in the Standard.

He later added: “It seems this was all engendered by our bathrooms trending on TikTok, a platform we don’t inhabit.

“We started to find customers arriving with suitcases and tripods then ordering very little, often leaving the table as the food arrived and being absent for long periods.

“We would often be cajoling women out of the loos to eat their meal and when they eventually returned to the table they would complain that the food was cold and refuse to pay for it.”

He eventually decided “enough was enough” after finding that ten women had transformed the loos into changing rooms, kitted out with their own sound system. 

Mr King claimed a content creator couple had arrived hours later armed with a suitcase and a tripod and were turned away.

He said there was one “particularly entitled” and “very aggressive” woman who told him she was entitled to a photoshoot as the restaurant was a public place and there was no signage banning photos in the bathroom. 

She also allegedly argued her following would help the restaurant gain traction.

This prompted Mr King to erect signs in the bathroom specifying the photos are banned. He has also employed security and altered the advice on the website to clarify that this type of filming was not allowed.

“Of course, the perpetrators wanted retribution”, he wrote after receiving 12 one-star reviews from “thwarted influencers” during a single weekend. 

While the reviews have since been taken down from Google Mr King admitted that they have still been damaging.

Mr King said that some influencers have “lost respect” and that has been “replaced by a sense of entitlement."

"When respect is replaced by a sense of entitlement, you're going to have flashpoints,” he told The Times.

He added: “When people are turning up with a suitcase because they're going to change outfits, then that steps over the line. When people say to me 'I can do whatever I want, this is a public place,' that's completely wrong."

But some influencers have sought to distance themselves from content creators behaving poorly in public, claiming the vast majority act “respectfully”.

Gerry del Guercio, who runs Bite Twice Food Reviews alongside his friend Paul Delany, argues the pair “blend in” when visiting eating spots. 

“As long as you’re respectful, there’s no reason why anyone should dislike you being there,” he said.  

This is not the first time fury and food "vloggers" has erupted. 

Last year, Chris D’Sylva, who owns Dorian in Notting Hill, asked “social scumbags” to stop requesting free food in exchange for online coverage. 

In April, Harrods banned people from eating in its famous food hall after being flooded with TikTokkers filming their dining experiences and uploading the videos online.

A sign was placed in the luxury department store asking customers to "refrain from consuming purchased food within the store."

Mr King was the chief executive of Corbin and King which owned, amongst others, The Wolseley, The Delaunay and Brasserie Zédel.

The company went into administration in 2022 before the Thai hotel group Minor International won a bitter battle for control of the business, paying £60million to take control. 

He now runs Jeremy King Restaurants, which owns The Park, The Arlington and Simpson’s in The Strand.