IRL vs URL: How has social media affected/impacted our expectation of food in Lyon?

Written by: Bibianna Fasogbon, Jianuo Leng, Denise Mundandi, Natasha Richardson, Ines Te, Alice Wass, Mehreen Yousaf, Lin Yunzhu

For our research project, we are looking at how the online representation of food culture in Lyon compares to the real-time experience, we will be investigating this by collecting information from locals, tourists and on the basis of our own experiences. We want to understand the importance of food tourism in Lyon and how online mediation has changed our expectations for the food on offer in Lyon. By collecting data from both tourists and locals we will be able to outline the similarities or differences in what their respective ideas of Lyonnaise food look like and what platforms or cultural frames affected in forming these impressions. By visiting selected place’s, we will be able to compare our own experiences to the collected data to further enhance our research. Our experiences will also undeniably be mediated by previous cultural lenses and/or online mediation. Therefore, our research question was: IRL vs URL: How has social media affected/impacted our expectation of food in Lyon?

As tourists we usually consume products ‘because they supposedly generate pleasurable experiences which are different from those typically encountered in everyday life’(Urry and Larsen 2011), food tourism is centred around consumption that is supposed to be unique to the place and its identity- as we research Lyonnaise food culture we believe that we will hopefully be able to identify the different representations of it according to different demographics and how these shape their consumption. John Berger talks about ‘learnt ways of seeing’ as affected by ‘socially-cultured frames’. They are ‘constructed through mobile images and representational technologies’ (Urry and Larsen 2011: 15) by investigating the content circulated in social media and other online platforms we will be able to identify how these cultural lenses are mediated and ‘the power of the visual gaze within modern tourism’(Urry and Larsen 2011: 15).

We would also like to look into concepts of staged authenticity in relation to commodification to understand how some of these culinary experiences could be ‘constructed tourist attractions’, in our research we would like to understand what factors as authentic culinary experiences to tourists who according to Dean MacCannell are ‘contemporary pilgrims, seeking authenticity in other ‘times’ and other ‘places’ away from that person’s everyday life’ (MacCannell 1973).

For our first case study we wanted to find a recently updated and frequently used Instagram food account that didn’t just focus on one location. This would allow us to see the scope of options available at the time of our visit. We also set a requirement that the account must have more than 1000 followers so we can see that it is popular. We also wanted the account to focus on food and provide a range of recommendations, as this is what we are researching. The final criteria was the aesthetics. Instagram is a platform for people to post aesthetically pleasing photography. We wanted to see whether the page had a consistent brand style (shows professionalism), if each photo had a similar filter to maintain that familiarity and if the photos of the food actually made us want to try the dishes.We found ‘Brunch Lovers Lyon’. The first thing we noticed was the consistent colour scheme, there’s a lot of beige colours which gives us a relaxed feeling. It makes us think of a space of serenity. At a closer look, there are no photos of groups of people and very few photos that include a person’s face. This reflects the peaceful mood the pictures appearing to be encouraging. The focus is on the food, which is what we wanted, and due to the colour scheme the food always looks full of vibrant clean colours. It makes the food stand out and look tasty. 

‘Brunch Lovers Lyon’ started in November 2019. Each description includes a vegetarian and vegan tick box to let users know instantly whether the café offers those options. In the bio is a link to their website which offers more extensive reviews and more photos. The entire blog is in French, so it is definitely aimed at locals. However, the systemic layout of information and the tempting food photos mean that tourists won’t struggle to understand what they are saying.This Instagram account was going to be a key steppingstone in providing an overall look at food available in Lyon and also shapes our opinion of brunch in Lyon. The account is shaping how we view Lyon as an outsider, but also provides an insight into locations that might be more frequented by locals. Which is a question that would be answered by doing an ethnographic study at a café they recommend.

The account also allows us to explore the concept of authenticity, the tourist gaze and virtual tourism. These concepts act as important factors in answering our question about virtual vs reality, and how digital sources are altering our expectations of Lyons cuisine. The downside to using an Instagram account that reviews different restaurants and isn’t a restaurant’s own account, is that we have to pick one café/restaurant from their visits for us to visit. To do this, we decided that we’d find the most liked post and most commented on post. Unfortunately, the top for both of these happened to be a competition post, so we discarded this one and looked at the posts that came in second, with the specific criteria that the post had to be about food. The most liked post was taken in a café called 27madeleine. The post itself had 297 likes and 18 comments.  The most commented on post was taken in a café called Bartholomew. The post had 217 likes and 71 comments. From this we decided we would have gone to ‘Bartholomé’ to complete our exploration of this case study.

TripAdvisor 

Review in Tripadvisor: https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g187265-d3621738-Reviews-Flair-Lyon_Rhone_Auvergne_Rhone_Alpes.html

Flair’s blog:

http://www.restaurantflair.com/restaurant/

• Restaurant Flair Gourmandise & Convivence : Opened in 2012 by Japanese chef Hiroyuki who creatively marries the technical culinary skills from his home country’s cuisine with French tradition, which is highly recommended by both locals and tourists on TripAdvisor.

Technological developments have dramatically changed tourism nowadays which pushes us to enter the era of post-tourism. The most significant transformation of tourist gaze is due to the use of the internet (Urry, 2011). We are now customarily using the internet for traveling, whether it is only virtual, imaginative travel through the travel bloggers from social media, or planning for corporeal travel by searching on the infrastructures of the global online travel industry like TripAdvisor (Cresswell, 2006). TripAdvisor, as a successfully cross-country online travel company,  not only offers bookings for transportation as well as hotel reservations, also provides restaurants information especially the function that individuals can make comments and share their “dining experience” to other users, which I reckon may be helpful for us in-depth studies for Lyon’s food culture when facing the reality and the imagination. We can see 408 delicate photos provided by Restaurant Flair’s management team, such as their new cuisines, chefs and restaurant’s environment. Details also are given like the location, contact, social media links, average spending, opening time etc. In addition, ratings and reviews (852 up to 31/04/2020), which are the most unique one function on TripAdvisor, with the rating part is divided into four aspects: food, service, value and atmosphere.  The reviews are also “up- to-date” with the latest review is in 10/03/2020, which in a way always keep people updated with the restaurant’s condition and quality. People can use the “show reviews that mention” on TripAdvisor to look for some specific aspects that they are interested in. Shows food allergy information and has options for different groups of people like vegetarian, halal etc. Most parts of the page can be translated automatically so as to make it easier for tourists to get information.

As we can see, the significant process of ‘globalization’ has constantly transformed people’s mind towards exotic cultures which makes the majority of tourists tend to prefer a different cultural configuration (Urry, 2011). Restaurant Flair is a typical and successful example as it is a traditional French restaurant with Asian cuisine opened by Japanese chef Hiroyuki who creatively marries the technical culinary skills from his home country’s cuisine with French tradition, which is highly recommended by both locals and tourists on TripAdvisor. This west and east fusion-style culinary in this restaurant represents a certain level of globalized-tourism, which is, if tourist sites intend to become more appealing, they need to specialize themselves in offering diverse objects to be gazed upon (Handszuh, 2018). Moreover, food and cuisine culture are highly developed in France and Japan as well as famous around the world, therefore, combing both of them is definitely a pervasive and innovative way to attract numerous not only overseas tourists, but also locals. It is not surprising to find on TripAdvisor that Restaurant Flair has significant numbers of good reviews. The long paragraphs comments and photos provided by “reviewers” also enhance the authenticity and could apply to the authenticity for deeper analyzation.

Considering the aim of our research to investigate the food culture and gourmet tourism in Lyon, the exploratory nature is identified as opposed to quantitative purpose in this empirical study, thus leading to the adoption of qualitative research methods, including ethnography and interviews.

More specifically, in the process of collecting ethnographic data, our team seek to investigate and compare the perceptions of locals as well as tourists at the food places, so as to gain a better understanding towards the similarities and differences perceived towards Lyonnaise food when contextualized within different cultural frames and social contexts. 

 As for interviews, primary data will be sourced through digital research at the site, primarily interviewing tourists who posted reviews on TripAdvisor regarding their experience dining at the restaurant to gain follow-up information about their perception of Lyonnaise food represented by Flair.

@LyonFoodies- There are 3 main manager accounts and there is 17.9k followers 

Main accounts: 

@chocoladdict69

@mline17

@tortosette

Email: lyonfoodies@gmail.com 

Facebook:https://m.facebook.com/lyonfoodiesIG/ 

When considering case studies for our assignment we had to consider variables which would help elevate our findings instead of grounding them. With social media accounts you need to be aware of whether a page is still active or recently active as over time some restaurants may shut down. This will give us access to the more relevant eateries for up-to-date research information. We plan to follow pages that keep us regularly updated and informed with prior popular restaurants whilst also posting about the new and up-and-coming. Secondly, we wanted a page that was explorative and moved around. We want to see what cuisine Lyon has to offer, not just a restaurant in Lyon, so it is best to look at a food page/blog instead of looking at actual restaurant Instagram pages in Lyon. Understanding that French & British food culture may differ will focus our efforts on observing the comments that people were making towards the taste of the food, instead of focusing purely on the aesthetic of it. We are also factoring in followers-following count against their engagement levels on social media. For example, Instagram accounts with tens of thousands of followers but are consistently only getting very few likes beyond reasonable doubt, say for instance only in the tens, potentially have too many inactive users that are not interacting, making that source of information less credible. To summarise, when choosing our cases study, we factored in how active the page is, its engagement levels, explorative food pages not just aesthetically pleasing “Instagram-worthy” restaurants and how easy it is for a user to navigate the page.

‘Share your gourmet experiences with #lyonfood’ is howLyonfoodies greet their followers in French. Upon looking at Lyonfoodies Instagram I found that they are a collaborative page, that displays aesthetically pleasing food. With page managers consisting of Instagram users, @chocoladdict69, @mline17 and @tortosette, linked in the page bio is a Facebook page and email address to perhaps gain restaurant suggestions from the public of Lyon. popular trends in Instagram food pages all follow a similar outline, post a good quality food picture online, provide a witty caption & tag the restaurant/chef, there is not much else to the formula. Even though Lyonfoodies share the same formula as most food bloggers, they have enhanced their page by making the navigation simpler and standing apart from other Instagram cuisine enthusiasts. For example, Lyonfoodies stands out as an Instagram page because it’s so vibrant it showcases a wide range of food options starting from breakfast meals to snacks to lunch to dinner and so much more and the food that is showcased is all-inclusive as there are options that are suitable for vegetarians, vegans, meat lovers and so on. Lyonfoodies is not only run by three managers it has participation from the followers it’s a very active Instagram with various pictures that are showcased within numerous food restaurants and shops in Lyon. Proving to us that this page will be helpful when choosing places to explore.

Across the board, LyonFoodies pictures are taken using a professional lens is the first thing that popped out to us – with very little editing. It just gave us an honest feel about Lyon cuisine. Suggesting to me that the creators’ focus is showcasing the dish, honestly, you can see that they use natural lighting and very minor edits, perhaps none. At first glance, the Instagram page has a lot to offer as the first thing you see on the page is the formatting and the way the Instagram story highlights are distinctive and caters to almost everyone’s dietary needs.

• 17.9k followers
• 641 posts
• Following 856

The account holders have also gained for this as @chocoladdict69 has 5,305 followers and the instagrams consists purely of food and nature. 

@mline has 16.8k followers and has 2,304 posts and @tortosette has 1,800 followers and 3,326 followers.

Besides providing an effortless aesthetic and easier navigation system. I find that LyonFoodies has inadvertently made itself very food inclusive. The story toolbar features categories of food; its main focus is to find the food you like, quickly, whilst doing that it somewhat offers suggestions based on your dietary requirement, some of which most people/pages don’t think about. For example, a member of our group has specific dietary requirements, by splitting the categories up like that we could explore restaurants that had more options for them instead of going to restaurants that would limit them. Lyon is known for its brunch scene, and it was refreshing to find a page that acknowledged you could eat at different times in a day. It gives you options for every occasion be it breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner, tea or snack it has it all for you. We picked this particular Instagram page because of its potential to be inclusive and it’s consistency with uploading different mouth-watering snacks and drinks. It’s a true representation of Lyons’ food. As the account is active it’s easier to identify these trends and the patterns of how people in Lyon react to the food there through the likes and comments.

Most liked posts:https://www.instagram.com/p/B8Qg5M0I51U/?igshid=rbc6qoofygxu and the best Of 2019: https://www.instagram.com/p/B6nVj5pHN9m/?igshid=su73nm6outjh

We picked @bigmammagroup as it was the restaurant with the most liked pictures in 2020 from the Instagram page (Lyonfoodies) with a total of 1,384 likes and 47 comments. The comments consist of individuals tagging their friends with the love heart eyes emoji and the drooling emoji. This in itself shows that the food looks appetising and people are captivated by the food and the caption below highlights that even though it’s a Lyon restaurant the food products are directly sourced in Italy.

• WE TESTED ✅] Fresh products from Italy, incredible vintage decor, 800m2 of space with 300 covers, gourmet dishes and a welcome that takes you on a journey: with Carmelo, @bigmammagroup settles down in Lyon and ON EST CONTENTS! It’s very tasty, generous and it opens tonight 🙌🏻 Who will run it? (Here we have already been there but there is no doubt that we will return very quickly) 

France is notorious for their baked goods, and multicultural foods are often overlooked. 

The main expectation is to expect a lot of variety as the instagram page showcases there is something for everyone the food culture is very diverse and there isn’t a niche market. Lyon is well known for having diverse food options.

Most of the research that went into choosing our case studies was solely reliant on social media platforms and online travel websites like TripAdvisor but to understand the real-time experience of eating in Lyon we needed to broaden our research beyond these spaces, where ‘the tourist gaze and media gaze highly overlap and reinforce each other’ (Urry and Larsen, 2011). To achieve this, we decided to look into one case study that was introduced to us by the residents of Lyon- French Tacos. It is a fast food delicacy that was invented in Vaux-en-Velin, a Lyonnaise suburb, in the mid-2000s. French Tacos are a combination of a choice of meat, sauce and fries wrapped inside a wheat tortilla bound by a specialty cheese sauce and does not in any way resemble the original Mexican taco. The market for the product has exploded since its invention in the mid-2000’s and is ‘expanding at a rate faster than McDonald’s’ (Kahlioui, 2017) in France. This popularity was an important factor as we wanted to choose a case study that had a substantial following in the host community and understand why this may not have showed up on the tourist radar, why it was popular among locals and what the online representation of this case study looks like and who it caters to. We wanted a case study that had a considerable online presence that we could use as a site of research to understand the popularity, the food items on offer, the language being used, and other marketing and promotional activities.

As we started our pre-departure research, we decided to talk to two residents of Lyon we knew from Coventry- Hugo Wagner and Juliette Thomas. They introduced us to French tacos which came as an interesting surprise to the team interviewing as we had no previous knowledge of this fast food phenomenon. When asked about the food that they found most affordable in Lyon and is a constant in their eating habits, they mentioned the taco.The franchises that sold the product had a huge online presence making it easier for us to research without being on the field. The lack of its presence in our initial research into Lyonnaise food, made it something we could investigate outside of our mediated spaces. 

When conducting research online the most widespread French Taco brands in view of their social media following were: Tacos Avenue, Tacos King and O’tacos.The most noticeable characteristic about their online presence is the level of engagement with popular culture being presented. Most of the Instagram pages for these franchises host a lot of meme content that is touching upon current affairs- football, politics and music, being the most prominent topics of engagement in addition to pictures of the menu items. Almost all of the pictures of menu items showed the cross-section of the taco as being taken from a customer’s perspective after having indulged in a bite. From our initial research the franchise O’tacos has the strongest online presence with some of the YouTube content relating to the franchise having a view count over a million. In our research, we also came across a documentary series titled Tacos Origins (2020) that looks to trace the confusing origin of the sandwich directed by Bastien Gens which manages to pin down the location of invention to suburban Lyon. 

 Through field research we planned to look into the demographic that visited the French Taco branches, the price range offered, the menu items, language and any promotional activity on site. By conducting interviews we wanted to find out if tourists would consider visiting one of the three most popular franchises or if they have already, if tourists had come across the concept of a French Taco before- through social media, blogs etc. and if locals considered this to be a part of Lyon’s food culture. Through psychogeographical research we wanted to look at the location and concentration of French Taco establishments in central Lyon and Old Town, Lyon and also what reactions we have to the placement or presence of these establishments when experiencing the city. By conducting psychogeographical research, we wanted to understand how prominent the snack actually is in the city and if it coincides with touristic locations. In addition to this research, we wanted to visit at least one of the three most popular French Taco franchise branches-Tacos Avenue, Takos King or O’tacos. We chose to look at O’tacos as it had the most followers online on both Facebook and Instagram. In addition to the proximity from our hostel, the online presence of the individual branch O’Tacos Lyon Terreaux was stronger with a separate Facebook and Instagram page in addition to the collective O’Tacos franchise accounts, so we picked this specific branch for our visit.

After our planned research we could analyse our findings through the tourist gaze theory (Urry and Larsen, 2011) to understand where the Lyonnaise food culture’s online representation has placed the French taco in the tourists expectations and look into the concept of authenticity which is considered pivotal in the success of food tourism industries (Corvo and Matacena, 2018). We will be able to link this back to our core question of reality vs. expectation in a broader sense as this food phenomenon being amiss from our mediated touristic expectations of food in Lyon can be analysed through the ideas of changing tourist cultures (Urry and Larsen, 2011). The French Taco movement also gave us great insight into how a food product evolved as it got pushed into the fast-food market and how this might have affected the product’s inclusion in the food culture exposed to the guest community. ‘Food is a polysemic artefact that is able to characterize place and identity’ and the increasing focus placed on food in tourism helps us to understand the ‘complex nature of postmodern production and consumption’ (Everett 2008). As a product that is traced back to be developed in Lyon it is amiss from the online representation of Lyonnaise food and understanding the effect of ‘non-material forms of production and consumption’(Featherstone, 1991) in food tourism is central to our research question. 

In conclusion, nowadays food tourism depends a lot on Internet resources like internet travel company TripAdvisor, which transforms, enhances and de-differentiates every aspect of our tourists’ virtual or corporeal travel experience. BrunchLoversLyon is a classic example of the impact local-ran social media accounts can have in developing and altering the tourist gaze and the impact this has on expectations of cuisine in Lyon. When we tried to venture outside of these constructed images of food tourism in virtual spaces by investigating the French Taco movement, it became clear as to how host communities use food to reinforce a sense of place and cultural identity by filtering what constitutes Lyon’s food culture and what does not. 

List of references:

Berger, J. (1972) Ways of Seeing. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Corvo, P. and Matacena, R., 2018. Slow food in slow tourism. In: M. Clancy, ed., Slow tourism, food and cities: pace and the search for the ‘good life’. New York: Routledge, p.97.

Dann, G. (2002) The Tourist as A Metaphor of The Social World. Wallingford. UK: CABI Pub.

Everett, S. (2008) ‘Beyond the visual gaze? The pursuit of an embodied experience through food tourism’ Tourist Studies [online] 8(3), 337-358. available from <https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1468797608100594> [15^th April 2020]

Featherstone, M. (1991) Consumer Culture And Postmodernism. London: Sage

Handszuh, H. (2018) Global Code of Ethics for Tourism [translation: Henryk Handszuh]. Folia Turistica, 49, 333-345.

Kahlioui, J., 2017. ENQUÊTE : Les Tacos, Nouveaux Rois Du Fast-Food Français. [online] Clique.tv. available at: <https://www.clique.tv/les-tacos-histoire-dun-succes-junk-food-a-la-francaise/>  [Accessed 16 April 2020]. 

Tacos Origins (2020) Directed by B. Gens. Actes Vulgaires.

Urry, J., and Larsen, J. (2011) The Tourist Gaze 3.0. Los Angeles: SAGE.