Like we’ve said before, food has always been a social thing that brings people together.

Yet it seems the glory days of eating in family units and in restaurants are behind us – it’s becoming more and more common to eat alone (even when we’re out),

Despite the awkwardness of sitting alone amongst couples, eight in ten people believe that eating alone is more socially acceptable than it was five years ago.

It turns out our smartphones are sufficient company, with sites like Bookatable seeing rises in solo diner bookings of the last few years.

Are we still able to talk about food as a social business? We most certainly think so.

The foodie influencer

The Brandwatch React team has covered food trends on social media for the last few years and were keen to see how things had developed in 2018 so far. You can read our 2017 assessment here.

Luckily, much this year’s work was done for us – the wonderful Nick Taylor compiled a huge collection of influencer lists including three sets of accounts that influence Twitter’s “foodie” community.

We decided to adapt our methodology from previous years and use the three foodie influencer lists to to find out which food types these accounts, which tweet to hungry followers, were pushing.

The results, especially when looking across different regions, were truly interesting.