Inside an inKind Creator Dinner w/ Relish at San Francisco's Hazie's

Hazie's brings a rock 'n' roll-inspired American menu and serious cocktails to San Francisco's Hayes Valley, from the team behind The Brixton and Chef Joey Altman. inKind wanted Bay Area creators to experience it firsthand, not to sell Hazie's specifically, but to show how inKind itself makes discovering a night like this effortless. Working with Relish, inKind turned a dinner at Hazie's into a firsthand demo of its own app.

The Opportunity
inKind's biggest challenge isn't convincing people that good restaurants exist. It's convincing people to actually open the app. The best way to do that is to put it in the hands of people who are already telling their followers where to eat.

The question: how do you make an app demo feel like a night out, instead of an ad?

The Strategy
Relish and inKind built a creator dinner at Hazie's designed to let the app sell itself through a real experience, not a screen recording alone.

Key tactics included:

• Real venue, real stakes: Hazie's Hayes Valley location gave creators a genuinely desirable night out to film, not a staged demo.
• App-in-action content: Creators were briefed to capture a quick screen recording or voiceover of inKind in use, woven naturally into the night rather than bolted on.
• Dining credit, not a script: A $100 inKind dining credit let creators experience the app's actual value, an easy, no-friction dinner, instead of just talking about it.
• Bonus-driven urgency: A $5 cash bonus for posting within 5 days and including an affiliate link kept content timely and trackable.
• Community framing: The event was pitched as a Bay Area creator celebration, not a paid ad shoot.
• The tone: insider, celebratory, and unmistakably Bay Area proud.

The Results

• 12 pieces of creator content
• 22,461 total views
• 792 engagements
• 3.53% engagement rate

One Oakland creator's Instagram post pulled 5,677 views on its own, roughly a quarter of the entire campaign's reach, from a video built around the night out rather than the app itself, exactly the kind of content that makes a tool feel discovered instead of advertised.

Why It Matters
The best way to sell an app isn't a screenshot. It's a night out that happens to be easier because of it.

Hazie's gave inKind a setting good enough that creators wanted to be there regardless of the brief, and Relish gave inKind a room full of Bay Area voices to carry that experience back to their own audiences.

Because nobody downloads an app from a feature list.

They download it because someone they trust just had a great night because of it.

Ready to turn your next inKind event into real local buzz? 👉 Let's talk.