Dominique Herman grabs a bite at Bootlegger with Dean Horwitz
โIce coffee, not the freezo, and can you ask them to put two sweeteners in there?โ
As soon as Dean Horwitzโs drink is set down on the table, I have order envy. โThey have two different ice coffees. This is the one. Itโs literally just coffee, milk, ice. And they have the other one, which I think these people are having,โ he says, as he motions to the folk sitting behind us, โwhich is a powder.โ
Weโre sitting at Bootlegger in Green Point, on a strip of road featuring more than one of Cape Townโs most popular eateries. I had heard Horwitz speak at Limmud, an annual conference that focuses on Jewish speakers and their endeavours. So I figured meeting at kosher restaurant The Press โ which did a fantastic job of catering the conference โ would be an apt choice for my first local take on one of my favourite columns, โLunch with the FTโ from the FT Weekend.
But after a string of postponements and finally settling on a date that then happened to coincide with the Jewish holiday of Succot, when The Press would be closed, I asked him to pick a regular lunch spot of his instead. Considering he lives in the building upstairs and this day, a Monday, is one of his two working-from-home days a week โ one of which he usually spends at Bootlegger โ we meet there.
About three-quarters of the tables are occupied by lone diners with laptops and headphones, a not uncommon sight at trendy coffee shop-type spots in Cape Town. As a digital strategist for various clients, Horwitzโs job is to use social media to โgamifyโ customers: turning them into the salesforce. And in selecting โinfluencersโ, he studiously avoids those for whom being an influencer is their job.
โThe problem today is that people donโt respond really to adverts anymore. People are not responding to things that are being sold to them because they know itโs an advert, they know itโs being sold to them,โ he says.
But surely people realise that โinfluencersโ are being paid to sell something to them as well? Itโs the exact same thing, I counter.
โIt is, but thatโs the important thing. Youโve got to find the right influencer to fit the brand.โ Thatโs because then it seems believable, he explains. Then, people forget that youโre trying to sell them something.
As far as verifying whether an influencer has genuine followers, Horwitz says there are tools to check. An easy test is to look at the personโs social media. If they have one million followers but are only getting 100 likes on a photo, โthatโs an issueโ. Engagement is key. โAre people genuinely interested in what theyโre doing and would those people buy what theyโre pushing?โ
Our waiter, Ray, returns to take our food order. Itโs Rayโs first day in this particular Bootlegger but heโs worked at all four in Joburg. Horwitz orders the chicken mayo hotpress sandwich, his usual. While I wouldnโt consider myself a regular at this chain, I order my favourite item on the Bootlegger menu: the pea-studded โgreenโ omelette. Eating it makes me feel Dr Seuss-y. The problem is that itโs only on the breakfast menu but Ray says heโll put in a request in the kitchen.
Four years ago, Horwitz started the Instagram account InstaEats.The original idea for the account was to feature restaurant food โbecause I didnโt cook. I still donโt cookโ. At the Limmud conference, during a social media panel session on which he was one of the speakers, media analyst Arthur Goldstuck questioned whether itโs become a faux pas to post pictures of what you eat. Horwitz responded that the account is about โthe way people capture the food in front of them; what captures their eye. People have an inherent need to share those experiences.โ
Elaborating over lunch, he says the initial point of InstaEats was to showcase what other people were eating at restaurants; to tell people about different places to eat. โBut I was working full-time and I wasnโt that good with my camera. I didnโt really know how to take great photos, so it was more about creating a space where other people could post about their food.
โThere were other food blogs but none were doing Instagram properly or were focusing on Instagram. This was before Facebook acquired Instagram, before they changed the algorithm*, so it was a lot easier. โ#instaeatscapetownโ became a hashtag and people were using it.โ
InstaEats wasnโt a revenue-producing endeavour in the beginning; it took two or three years to monetise it. About a year and a half after he started the account, he teamed up with a budding photographer who did the original photography and Horwitz created the social media. At that stage he had about 10 000 followers. He started approaching restaurants and doing trade exchanges: a free meal for exposure. Horwitz doesnโt recall one restaurant saying no. โFor them the cost of a meal is really not a big costโ.
With a new feature entitled โ#newweeknewspotโ, he and the photographer would go to a talked-about or โinโ restaurant they hadnโt been to before and they would invite celebrities and foodies to join them โ SABCโs Afternoon Express presenters Zoรซ Brown and Danilo Acquisto, and surfer Michael February, among them.
At that stage there wasnโt โInstagram Storiesโ, so sometimes they would do Twitter live feeds as well as take photos and post them on their respective social media accounts. โIt was a great way to gather content. This was when people were happy to do that kind of thing; nowadays a free meal is no longer a payment.โ
When Horwitz attempted to start charging for this coverage, it was โrelatively successfulโ but not sufficient to sustain him and the photographer and two guest eaters. โThe problem was that this whole thing had evolved in that no-one was keen to come and eat anymore. People started seeing you could get money for these things, so no-one wanted to spend a few hours for free even though it was a free meal.โ
He continued for a while doing it on his own. โThe concept remained the same but I was going by himself to the restaurant and having to either eat four or five dishes, or just have a little bite of the dish and send the food back. And because I was by myself, there wasnโt that much live stuff happening and it kind of became quite a chore. These were paid and not trade exchanges and in order to make enough money, I was having to do four or five restaurants a week.
โThere were times where I wouldnโt even taste the food. They would bring 10 dishes and sometimes it wasnโt even edible โ they did the presentation-type thing. It got to a point where I didnโt want to be eating that much, that often, it was extremely time-consuming and it wasnโt making a lot of money. And, with the algorithm, it wasnโt growing. It wasnโt working.โ
So now he has switched to a paid model where businesses and brands provide the content which he posts for a fee. Rarely will he post content for free, and then only on Instagram Stories. An event or restaurant review heโd been invited to and enjoyed is something he might create a Story about (heโs invited to 20 to 30 events a month). He posted our Bootlegger lunch on Stories.
While I devour the singular slice of sourdough that comes with my omelette, Horwitz proceeds to leave half of the rye slices from his sandwich on the wooden board itโs served on. โThey give you a lot of bread for this,โ he says, by way of explanation. Also, he adds, he suffers from ulcerative colitis โ an inflammatory bowel disease (the other, more well-known IBD is Crohnโs) โ which he developed at 14 (heโs now 32).
While regular treatment has him in remission, he is still careful with what he eats and tries to avoid bread. His doctor started an organisation called Inflammatory Bowel Disease Africa about 10 years ago. He approached Horwitz last year to do the social media and patient liaison, which now acts as a side gig.
Instagram has become a bit admin-intensive, he remarks, โbut there are opportunities that I get that I love.โ Another reason for changing the InstaEats business model is that heโs trying to get healthier and fitter. He now limits eating out to once a week โand then I try to keep it cleanโ.
โI donโt know what the future holds. I know that itโs probably not going to be on Instagram because thereโs no way now to build a community on Instagram. Itโs not something that people are using in that sort of way anymore.โ Despite the algorithm-related obstacles to growth, InstaEats has gained about 1200 followers over the last 10 months.
โItโs became a very personal space as well. InstaEats was never meant to be a personal thing. I very rarely put myself on there and I donโt want it to be a personal thing, but that would probably be the way to do it. But itโs not something I want to do.โ
People also donโt want to see highly edited, highly stylised photos because โthey know thatโs not realโ. A statement that, to me, seems rich in irony. As someone whose journalistic background rigorously distinguished between editorial and advertorial, a distinction that appears completely absent in the world of social media โcontentโ, I ask Horwitz whether the public, as far as he can tell, fully understands that this is an advertising model for the modern age โ that his posts are about and paid for by his clients. โJa, ja. I think I make it pretty clear. The way that I present my content, the way that my account is structured. I think I make it pretty clearโ.
He continues to approach new places and tries to be selective. A client he would like to have is Bootlegger but theyโre not partial to the idea, even as a trade. In fact, he says he often finds the spots he wants to go to arenโt interested in trade exchanges: Jerryโs, The Hussar Grill, NY Slice and Monkโs Chinese, for instance. One exchange he was keen on and managed to fix up is with J&M.They send him content for posts and in return he receives biltong vouchers.
He acknowledges that he wouldnโt be able to charge for posting content at all had he not had the initial community of people tagging their friends and their meals. โIf I started InstaEats today, I wouldnโt be able to get it to where it is because of the algorithm in its current format. If I wanted to build a food-based account now, it would have to have quite a unique spin on it. People wouldnโt follow a random person going to different restaurants. It would have to be, like, Iโm going to try every burger in Cape Town.โ
*For other Instagram neophytes, Horwitz explained that after Facebook purchased Instagram, it implemented an algorithm that determines that Facebook decides what you see on your feed. Before, everything displayed on oneโs feed was the content of everyone you were following, in chronological order. โFacebook turned that off and applied a complicated algorithm to show you what they think you should see based on what you like, based on a whole bunch of random factors. Now youโre lucky if you see 10 percent of peopleโs stuffโ. Now you have to pay to โboostโ your post, to ensure that more than 20 percent of your audience see it.
Bootlegger Coffee Company Main Road, Green Point, Cape Town
Iced coffeeย ย ย ย ย R39
Americanoย ย ย ย ย R28
Hotpress โ chicken mayoย ย ย ย R75
Ryeย ย ย ย ย R2
Omelette โ greenย ย ย ย ย ย R98
Total including tipย ย ย ย R280
To read the editorโs column for December/January click here
To read or download the December/January issue of the Chronicle in PDF click here
To read the most read article of the November issue, click here
Portal to the Jewish Community: to see a list of all the Jewish organisations in Cape Town with links to their websites, click here
Featured organisation of the month: The Jewish Community Servicesโ (JCS) activities are centered on relief for the poor and distressed in the Jewish community. They provide a full range of preventative, educative and supportive counselling, statutory services as well as material relief. Visit https://www.jcs.org.za for more.