---
title: "FoodFluence, the hospitality UGC platform, pays creators through Whop's embedded payout portal"
slug: foodfluence
excerpt: How the food creator marketplace scaled campaigns in 700 cities without building payments tech from scratch.
customExcerpt: How the food creator marketplace scaled campaigns in 700 cities without building payments tech from scratch.
featureImage: "https://storage.ghost.io/c/12/7b/127b828b-bdc2-4972-9cf2-de857df9c324/content/images/2026/06/Foodfluence---16_9.png"
featured: true
status: published
publishedAt: "2026-06-05T04:17:27.000Z"
updatedAt: "2026-06-05T04:17:27.000Z"
createdAt: "2026-05-29T06:00:32.340Z"
tags:
  - { name: Case studies, slug: seller-stories }
authors:
  - { name: Liv Carr, slug: oliviacarr }
  - { name: Keisha Singleton, slug: keisha }
---

# FoodFluence, the hospitality UGC platform, pays creators through Whop's embedded payout portal

## Key takeaways

- FoodFluence connects restaurants with hyperlocal food creators at the zip code level, automating campaigns across 50,000+ creators in 700+ cities.
- By embedding Whop's payout infrastructure, FoodFluence avoids building a custom payments stack and reliably handles thousands of cross-border creator payouts.
- Platforms can integrate Whop's SDK and embedded React components to offer creators a branded portal for balances, withdrawals, and payout tracking.

We eat with our eyes, which is why food marketing has always depended on visual media. Dripping burgers, pizza cheese pulls, sizzling audio that lowkey borders on ASMR.

The only difference today is that food content has largely moved from the big screen (billboards and televisions) to the small (our phones). 

Now, 82% of people have tried a new restaurant simply because they saw it on their social feed. And more than half of Gen Z users say food content makes them want to order.

FoodFluence noticed that trend, and built a platform to connect local restaurants with food creators in their area, managing the process end-to-end.

Taking advantage of raw Whop infrastructure, FoodFluence can host their own platform, scaling across 700 cities and more than 50,000 creators without building a tech stack themselves.

## Building a local creator network for restaurants and food brands

Back in college, Branson Packard, CEO of FoodFluence, was already knee-deep in the content game. 

*“In college I started a TikTok agency with my childhood best friend, Will. It largely centered around managing growing TikTok talent,”* he said.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/12/7b/127b828b-bdc2-4972-9cf2-de857df9c324/content/images/2026/06/F395134A-FBEC-4FF2-A97D-4833EB97EF1C--1--1.jpeg)
*<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Branson Packard and Will Geller as children, having become best friends playing in little league together.</span>*

*“That involved managing influencers as well as full-scale campaigns," *Branson tells us.* "We worked with Netflix, Bumble, and Samsung on like their earliest TikTok marketing efforts to learn how to market to Gen Z on TikTok.”*

Fast forward to senior year, and Branson and Will started a new business venture, StoryIt. This time, the idea was a platform that rewarded customers for social engagement, tying social mentions to points and rewards. 

After one year in the market, StoryIt became FoodFluence, with Branson taking on a CEO role and Will becoming COO. 

> *“70% of our customers were in the food and hospitality space, and they all kept asking for a way to easily automate getting creators in and getting content made for their businesses. That's when we launched FoodFluence.”*

## A locally-driven, personalized edge

![Video thumbnail](https://storage.ghost.io/c/12/7b/127b828b-bdc2-4972-9cf2-de857df9c324/content/media/2026/06/Creator-vids-1-2_thumb.jpg)
[Watch video](https://storage.ghost.io/c/12/7b/127b828b-bdc2-4972-9cf2-de857df9c324/content/media/2026/06/Creator-vids-1-2.mp4)

FoodFluence operates a little differently to other UGC platforms, focusing on in-person content creation at the zip code level: matching restaurants with creators who live, eat, and post in the same neighbourhoods as their customers.

The platform works with both restaurant and hospitality businesses, as well as CPG food and beverage brands looking to drive awareness and foot traffic.

Instead of manually sourcing creators through DMs and spreadsheets, brands can use FoodFluence to manage everything from budgets to briefing, scheduling to reviewing, and of course, paying out creators. 

The platform also integrates directly with Instagram and TikTok, giving brands visibility into creator performance and campaign results.

Today, FoodFluence supports more than 50,000 vetted creators across 700+ cities in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the United Kingdom, alongside more than 1,000 businesses using the platform to run creator campaigns at scale.

> *“We realized there were already plenty of platforms only doing fragments of food creator marketing, and spamming creators. With our creator network, creators only really hear from us when we have a deal on the table.”*

## Helping restaurants and CPG brands activate creators at scale

More than 1,000 brands and businesses across restaurants, fast food, hospitality and CPG (consumer packaged goods) partner with FoodFluence for social content campaigns.

Those clients include Portillo’s, JINYA Ramen Bar, Jollibee, Crunchmaster, Frozen One, Gratsi Wine, Chinola Spirits and Rise & Puff.

*“On our platform, all an operator has to do is input how much credit they want to give out, what they want to do, what their priorities are, and what their content preferences are,” *Bran explains. *“Then everything automates from there. It can actually generate a whole strategy.”*

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/12/7b/127b828b-bdc2-4972-9cf2-de857df9c324/content/images/2026/06/foodfluence-brands.png)

The platform also tracks creator performance, engagement trends, estimated operational time savings, and even signals of real-world purchase intent from campaign content.

> *“We monitor every single comment section, pull that all in, and have a formula that we've adjusted over time that can actually translate to real visits."*

Frozen One partnered with FoodFluence to activate more than 50 creators in under 24 hours across retail locations including Wegmans, Central Market, and Target. The campaign generated a wave of organic in-store reviews and social proof content at speed.

Another campaign with Gratsi Wine combined retail activations with creator-generated lifestyle content, including at-home recipes, wine pairings, and restaurant visits.

> *“Our first two clients were both fed up with marketing agencies that would charge thousands and thousands a month and send in only two creators.”*

## When your creator network spans 700 cities, payouts get complicated

Managing creator campaigns is one thing. Managing thousands of payouts across multiple countries is another entirely.

Before Whop, FoodFluence’s payment flow was fragmented across multiple providers and manual processes.

*“Prior to Whop, any other solution we had tried was predominantly just a broken flow where we'd be billing on one platform, then transferring the funds to our bank, and then using another payout provider,”* Branson tells us.

That became increasingly difficult as campaign volume grew.

![Video thumbnail](https://storage.ghost.io/c/12/7b/127b828b-bdc2-4972-9cf2-de857df9c324/content/media/2026/06/Creator-vids-2_thumb.jpg)
[Watch video](https://storage.ghost.io/c/12/7b/127b828b-bdc2-4972-9cf2-de857df9c324/content/media/2026/06/Creator-vids-2.mp4)

FoodFluence works with a wide range of creators, from everyday local food creators earning an extra $30 for a restaurant visit, to larger local influencers receiving payouts in the thousands.

> *“We have a lot of everyday creators, a* *lot of people use our platform as an income stream to put food on the table.”*

With thousands of payouts happening every month, reliability and speed are critical to build and maintain trust with both brands and creators. 

*“The biggest strategic value of Whop is the end-to-end coverage,” *Bran says.

## Why FoodFluence choose Whop for payments and payouts

FoodFluence uses Whop to manage payins and payouts across the platform.

That means restaurants fund campaigns, creators complete visits and content deliverables, and payouts are handled automatically: without FoodFluence needing to manually coordinate anything behind the scenes.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/12/7b/127b828b-bdc2-4972-9cf2-de857df9c324/content/images/2026/06/foodfluence-content.jpg)

*“I had seen Whop on social media,” *Bran tells us,* “But it had also been referred to us by SideShift. They gave us their vouch of approval.”*

Obviously, streamlined and secure operations are key to campaigns happening across thousands of creators and hundreds of cities. But Branson says the relationship FoodFluence has with Whop is also a major differentiator. 

*“I was just talking to another company about Whop, actually. I think our relationship is amazing,” *he* *says. 

> *“One thing that Whop excels at is responsiveness. I had a question this morning and within two minutes I had an answer. A clear, direct answer, not some AI assisted answer. It was a real human from Whop answering that question within literally two minutes.”*

That reliability has helped FoodFluence continue scaling creator campaigns without needing to build and maintain a custom payments stack internally.

Instead of spending engineering resources on payout infrastructure and compliance flows, the team stays focused on growing its creator network and helping restaurants drive traffic.

## Building payouts into your platform with Whop

Rather than build custom infrastructure internally, FoodFluence use Whop’s embedded payout infrastructure to power payouts directly inside the platform experience.

Here’s a look at how FoodFluence integrated payouts into their workflow using Whop.

### Step 1: Configure your backend

Start by installing the Whop SDK and authenticating it with your API key.

Next, create a server endpoint that generates short-lived access tokens for connected accounts. These tokens are used to securely grant access to the payout portal.

When a user opens the portal, your endpoint should verify their identity, receive their company ID, and return a fresh access token for that account.

<div class="ucb-box">
  <div class="ucb-header">
    <span class="ucb-title">route.ts</span>
    <button class="ucb-copy" onclick="
      const code = this.closest('.ucb-box').querySelector('code').innerText;
      navigator.clipboard.writeText(code);
      const originalText = this.innerText;
      this.innerText = 'Copied!';
      setTimeout(() => this.innerText = originalText, 2000);
    ">Copy</button>
  </div>
  <div class="ucb-content">
    <pre class="ucb-pre"><code class="language-typescript">import type { NextRequest } from &quot;next/server&quot;;

import Whop from &quot;@whop/sdk&quot;;

const whop = new Whop({
	apiKey: process.env.WHOP_API_KEY,
});

export async function GET(request: NextRequest) {
	const companyId = request.nextUrl.searchParams.get(&quot;companyId&quot;);

	if (!companyId) {
		return new Response(null, { status: 400 });
	}

	const tokenResponse = await whop.accessTokens.create({
		company_id: companyId,
	});

	return Response.json({ token: tokenResponse.token });
}</code></pre>
  </div>
</div>

### Step 2: Build the payouts portal

On the client side, install the Whop embedded components packages for React.

On the frontend, install Whop’s embedded components package for React.

Then wrap your payout components with Elements and PayoutsSession. The session uses the access token from your server to authenticate the connected account.

To set this up, pass through the function that fetches the access token, the connected account’s company ID, and the redirect URL users should return to after identity verification.

Once the session is configured, you can add the portal components:

- a balance component showing the account’s current withdrawable balance
- a withdrawal button that opens a modal for users to enter and confirm an amount
- a withdrawals list showing previous withdrawals and their current status

<div class="ucb-box">
  <div class="ucb-header">
    <span class="ucb-title">PayoutPortal.tsx</span>
    <button class="ucb-copy" onclick="
      const code = this.closest('.ucb-box').querySelector('code').innerText;
      navigator.clipboard.writeText(code);
      const originalText = this.innerText;
      this.innerText = 'Copied!';
      setTimeout(() => this.innerText = originalText, 2000);
    ">Copy</button>
  </div>
  <div class="ucb-content">
    <pre class="ucb-pre"><code class="language-typescript">import {
	BalanceElement,
	Elements,
	PayoutsSession,
	WithdrawButtonElement,
	WithdrawalsElement,
} from &quot;@whop/embedded-components-react-js&quot;;
import { loadWhopElements } from &quot;@whop/embedded-components-vanilla-js&quot;;

const elements = loadWhopElements();

export function PayoutPortal({ companyId }: { companyId: string }) {
	return (
		&lt;Elements elements={elements}&gt;
			&lt;PayoutsSession
				token={() =&gt;
					fetch(`/api/token?companyId=${companyId}`)
						.then((res) =&gt; res.json())
						.then((data) =&gt; data.token)
				}
				companyId={companyId}
				redirectUrl=&quot;https://yourapp.com/verification-complete&quot;
			&gt;
				&lt;BalanceElement fallback={&lt;div&gt;Loading...&lt;/div&gt;} /&gt;
				&lt;WithdrawButtonElement fallback={&lt;div&gt;Loading...&lt;/div&gt;} /&gt;
				&lt;WithdrawalsElement fallback={&lt;div&gt;Loading...&lt;/div&gt;} /&gt;
			&lt;/PayoutsSession&gt;
		&lt;/Elements&gt;
	);
}</code></pre>
  </div>
</div>

Together, these components give creators a clear place to view earnings, request withdrawals, and track payout progress.

## Whop provides the stack platforms need to scale

As platforms like FoodFluence scale, payouts quickly become more complex.

Payments across borders, campaign budgets flowing through the platform, onboarding and compliance requirements, and thousands of transactions that need to work reliably in the background.

Whop provides the infrastructure layer that keeps it all running.

Brands fund campaigns, creators get paid, and payouts go out on time. All without the team needing to build an entire payment flow from scratch.

**Want to build payments and payouts directly into your own platform? Explore Whop’s **[<u>**developer documentation**</u>](https://docs.whop.com/developer/platforms/quickstart)**.**

**[Build your platform with Whop](https://whop.com/network/)**