This Ice Cream Truck Makes ‘Influencers’ Pay Double

CVT Soft Serve is a popular food truck in Los Angeles. With its great soft serves and vintage looking truck, influencers are naturally attracted to the ice cream truck. One would think that attracting influencers means getting more customers, however Joe Nicchi, the owner of CVT Soft Serve tells The Guardian that is not the case at all:

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CVT Soft Serve, a popular truck in Los Angeles, has started to receive weekly requests from self-proclaimed Instagram “influencers” who promise to post a photo of Nicchi’s ice-cream – if they don’t have to pay. Nicchi has always said no, but this week he found an unusual way to profit off of the influencers: he publicly told them to go away.

“This is a money-making thing. I can’t give away my ice-cream for free,” he said, noting that he had paid for his first truck with his salary from shooting a commercial.

The soft serve at CVT (which stands for his three flavor offerings: chocolate, vanilla, or twist) and his vintage-looking truck are very Instagrammable. Influencers quickly noticed. In his first year, he got a small handful of influencer offers, typically people emailing suggesting promotional deals in exchange for free ice-cream.

“They love using the word ‘exposure’. It’s so ridiculous,” he said.

He said an assistant to a famous actor – a woman on a television show who he declined to name – recently asked if he would donate ice-cream to the cast and crew. In exchange, the actor offered to take a photo at his truck.

His response: “As much as I’d love to do that, I don’t think my kid’s school accepts celebrity photos as a form of tuition payment.”

After getting tired of all the emails and demands for a free cone in exchange for ‘exposure’, Nicchi eventually posted a sign saying “Influencers Pay Double”, which trended on the internet:

“Nicchi eventually became so tired of influencers that he put up his anti-influencer sign at the truck, making clear that people who requested a free cone would get the opposite – they’d have to pay $8 instead of $4. A customer took a photo and posted it to Reddit, which then went viral.”

“…writing on Instagram that he would “never give you a free ice-cream in exchange for a post”. The image, tagged #InfluencersAreGross, spread around the globe, and now Nicchi says his business is booming, attracting fans across southern California who share his disdain of influencers.”

image credit : The Guardian

Source: neatorama

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