Philip Davis and Aris Yeager are the founders of Storytime, a mobile app featuring a marketplace that connects local food influencers with restaurants. The idea came from their frustration with how influencer marketing had been handled in the past.
They had spent years building influencer marketing software for some of the biggest names in the world: Chanel, Sephora, LVMH. These brands had massive budgets, global audiences, and teams dedicated to figuring out how to work with influencers.
But they also spoke to stakeholders on the other end of the spectrum—small, location-based businesses. They wanted in on influencer marketing too. The problem? Everything that works for global luxury brands completely breaks down at the local level.
One issue is cost. The enterprise software Yeager and Davis worked with started at $1,000 per month, which is the entire marketing budget for many local operators. Complexity is another issue. These brands don’t need influencers with millions of followers—they need people whose audience lives within blocks of the store.
The disconnect affects influencers as well. Yeager sought partnerships in New York City and would send direct messages to places he loved like Oakberry and Joe & The Juice. He would ask to trade posts for a smoothie or sandwich, but an exchange that should’ve taken minutes often took weeks. The messages, the negotiation, the back-and-forth—it was a broken workflow.
“It’s all the tedious work, all this back and forth messaging that they’re doing,” Yeager says. “And then obviously going beyond that from our experience, it’s understanding how you vet an influencer correctly. There’s a huge misunderstanding. A lot of business owners assume that it’s specific influencers with big followings that are going to move the needle, but the reality is when you can correctly vet an influencer, you realize that it’s all about hyperlocal.”
Yeager and Davis concluded that the entire process could be automated, which led to the creation of Storytime. The philosophy is to deploy dozens of smaller, local, more relevant creators instead of one large influencer who may have less actual impact.
As of April, the app worked with 400 locations and 140 different businesses in New York City. Storytime charges a flat monthly fee without any long-term commitment.
It works with Joe & The Juice, OAKBERRY, Brasa Peruvian Kitchen, among others.
From the influencer’s side, it starts with a simple application—but not everyone gets in. They vet applicants carefully. A following of 100,000 means nothing if those followers live in Brazil and the post is about a deli in Manhattan, as an example. Storytime cares about local reach, not follower count. In fact, the “sweet spot” they’ve found is creators with 5,000 to 15,000 followers. These users have followers that are often more engaged, more authentic, and more likely to drive real results.
Once an influencer is accepted, the app shows a map of nearby restaurants, which display tiered offers, depending on the size of someone’s social media reach. For instance, a lower deal may be $15 off while a higher one is $25 off. Influencers activate a voucher based on their reach, show up, validate it at the register, and Storytime tracks their posts to make sure brands get what they paid for.
“This just made everything so much easier for me,” says Alexis Decker, a food influencer who joined the Storytime team. “It just makes a lot more sense as well because it’s really nice for the restaurant side of it too. If they see an influencer come in via Storytime that they might not have found before, they can continue that relationship and really build a community with our influencer community instead of just having these people that come in for these one-offs and then never talk about the brand again. That’s a lot more disingenuous than the relationships that we’re trying to build.”
From the restaurant’s side, onboarding takes minutes. They choose their tiers and answer a few brand-fit questions. From there, Storytime automates everything and tailors the algorithm so influencers see restaurants that best match their location and following. The brand doesn’t need to manage outreach, DMs, or even track posts.
Michel Falcon, owner of Brasa, came across Storytime while casually searching for influencer tools online. One of the biggest differentiators for Falcon was the emphasis on localization.
“When I met with Aris and the team, they took me through the dashboards and how it all worked, and one thing that I appreciated is their localization,” Falcon explains. “Specifically for somebody like us, Brasa being where we are in [NYC’s Financial District], that’s very local, right? An influencer who spends the majority of their time in the Upper East Side, you’re not going to come all the way down just for a meal. It’s more targeted than the spray and pray.”
Falcon also appreciated the “clean and intentional” user experience on the app.
“The barrier of entry is extremely low when using Storytime because of the affordability, and the onboarding is extremely simple,” Falcon says. “You’re not being onboarded into a very robust or outdated software. You would be onboarded into a very easy interface to use, which is in your pocket because it’s in your phone. Very easy to understand the data points. It’s a great entry point to influencer marketing, and then from there, you get to allow yourself to get your feet wet.”
Storytime has dreams of growing outside of NYC into other big markets but also college towns, smaller cities, and densely populated suburbs.
