What is employee-generated content (EGC) and why should your hospitality brand be using it in 2025?
Employee generated content (EGC) is one of the top predicted social media trends in 2025
Over the last decade, social media marketing for hospitality brands has evolved - from perfectly polished and heavily branded photography, to user-generated content (UGC) from the customer’s POV.
In 2025, your new source of content might be a little closer to home than you think. Social media platforms have seen a recent increase in employees getting in front of the camera, capturing a new and interesting perspective that audiences are loving.
Let’s explore some of the pros and cons for letting your team take centre stage on your hospitality business’ socials.
Pros
1. EGC is authentic and helps build trust in your brand
Employee-generated content is a great opportunity to build trust with your audience. By allowing members of your team to share behind-the-scenes snippets and the fun, human side to your business, your content not only becomes entertaining, but also very authentic and transparent about who you are as a brand.
81% of customers feel they need to trust a brand before buying from them. Whilst perfect food photography and promotions should have a place in your hospitality business’ content plan, customers connect best with people. So fill your feed with faces they can relate to for memorable content that stands out from the crowd.
2. It’s proving to be very popular on socials
Lots of brands have started to lean in more heavily to EGC and audiences are responding positively, with engagement rates high on posts involving people. Some great examples of food, drink, and hospitality brands utilising EGC include Starbucks, innocent, St Austell Brewery, doh’hut, OAT, and Hopper Coffee House. These are some of our favourite posts:
Starbucks - 17.7 million followers
We’re now seeing global brands with mammoth followings like Starbucks jumping on this trend. A huge, household name with over 40,000 stores around the world, using EGC is a great tactic for the giant coffee chain to remain relatable and ‘human’.
This fun, guess the drink challenge that has had over 1 million views is still advertising the coffee whilst also entertaining us. Challenges or games are a great video hook because you tend to want to stick around for the payoff at the end.
Hopper Coffee House - 22k followers
If you want a true masterclass on how to create entertaining EGC content, you’ve got to check out @hoppercoffeehouse on Instagram. This simple 7 second reel got 5.4 million views, proving you don’t need a huge budget or a lot of fancy camera equipment to rake in the views and grow a loyal audience on socials. Why did it work so well? It’s highly relatable, entertaining, and super shareable.
innocent - 152k followers
It’s not just restaurants and cafes that can utilise employee-generated content. One of the UK’s most recognisable smoothie drinks, innocent are renowned for showing off their playful side, sharing funny content involving members of staff from their head office.
You’ll rarely see innocent blatantly ‘selling’ to their audience. This example, which has 41.5k views, has nothing to do with the products - it’s just a highly relatable scenario for anyone who works in an office which paints the brand as not taking themselves too seriously. Their light-hearted strategy encourages new followers organically, who will end up seeing more of innocent’s products and news as a result.
3. A cost effective alternative to paying influencers
Working with food creators and influencers who have loyal, foodie followers that would love your bar, cafe or restaurant is still a great opportunity. However, getting your employees involved in the content creation is a cost effective alternative that would 100% compliment your influencer strategy. Allow your employees to become influencers or brand ambassadors for your business.
4. It’s a clever recruitment tool
86% of job seekers read reviews about a company before deciding to apply for a job there. What better way to shout about your company culture and brand values than through your social media? Seeing your existing team members actively advocating your brand could set you apart from the competition of other local hospitality businesses hiring.
5. Potential to boost morale within your team
Empowering team members to get more involved in the marketing of your business and offering an opportunity for career growth can be a great morale boost. By becoming regular faces on socials, your employees are more likely to be loyal to the brand, feel valued, and part of the team.
Cons
1. Time consuming for your employees
There’s no doubt, content creation can be quite time consuming. Whilst your employees are filming a new video for Instagram or TikTok, they’re being pulled away from customers. Ways around this could be to allocate an extra hour at the end of the day for content creation, or finding a time each week where you have a lull in business and utilising that time by batch creating content.
If you need help with the planning, filming and editing, or posting side of things, get in touch to hear about our social media management services.
2. You need employees that are comfortable on camera
Being in front of a camera is not for everyone and it’s important not to pressure employees to get on board with creating this sort of content. For that reason, getting involved with EGC isn’t a possibility for every business. However, you could consider adding the odd reel or TikTok video participation into your next job advert, with the offer of content creation training as a benefit.
If you’ve got team members that are on the fence, you could try and incentivise getting involved. Perhaps a gift voucher or an extra day off for the employee who’s video gets the most views. Despite all this, be sure that everyone being filmed feels 100% comfortable and gives their consent to being involved.
3. Content creation is a valuable skill and may require extra training
We all have different strengths. Content creation is a valuable skill and not everyone will be able to pick up a camera and edit a reel off the bat. You may want to consider booking some training for any budding photographers or content creators on the team. This does mean spending more money, which could be considered a con, but investing in your marketing will only help you out in the long run.
Want to empower your team on socials? Enquire about our online social media coaching sessions
If you’re looking for support with your social media content strategy, we offer one-to-one, online social media coaching. The perfect opportunity to empower one of your team members and level up your hospitality business’ socials.
