Our First Live UGC Marketing Trial at 7 Machos in Santa Catalina

What happens when a busy restaurant in Mallorca lets its guests help create the marketing content?

That was the question behind our first proper live Everyguest trial at 7 Machos, a Mexican restaurant in Santa Catalina, Palma.

Everyguest is a venue UGC marketing platform built to help restaurants, bars, hotels and hospitality venues collect real guest photos and videos, then turn those moments into useful social media and marketing content.

For our first real test, 7 Machos was the perfect venue.

It is colourful, loud, fun and full of personality. It is the kind of place where the atmosphere is just as important as the food. People do not just go there for tacos. They go for the energy, the music, the drinks, the staff, the crowd and the feeling of being part of something.

That is exactly the kind of experience Everyguest is designed to capture.

Why 7 Machos was the perfect first venue

7 Machos sits in Santa Catalina, one of Palma's most lively food and nightlife neighbourhoods.

The restaurant is run by i and his wife, who have built a place with a genuinely fun personality. It is not a quiet, polished restaurant where everything feels staged. It has movement, colour, music, laughter and life.

The timing made the trial even better.

The restaurant was celebrating its 11th birthday on Cinco de Mayo, so the whole night already had a reason to feel special. There were two mariachi bands performing during the evening, a free beer offered with every taco sold, paid photographers, their social media marketer, and us there with Everyguest.

It was a proper hospitality marketing test in a real venue, on a real busy night.

What we were testing

The idea was simple.

Could guests at a busy restaurant scan a flyer, upload their own photos and videos, and help the venue collect authentic content from the night?

We wanted to understand a few things:

• Would guests actually scan and upload?
• Would the content be useful for the restaurant?
• Would the process feel natural in a busy venue?
• Could Everyguest capture moments that a photographer or social media manager might miss?
• Would the owner have time to review content during the night?
• Could this become a repeatable UGC marketing system for restaurants and hospitality venues?

This was not a staged content shoot. It was a live test inside a working restaurant during one of its busiest nights.

How the night worked

We placed 42 Everyguest flyers around the restaurant.

The flyers invited guests to scan, upload content from the night, and take part in the venue experience through Everyguest.

Across the evening, we estimate there were around 150 to 200 people in the restaurant. From that, we saw 97 scans.

By the end of the night, Everyguest had collected 61 approved photos and videos.

For a first live trial, that was a strong signal.

The content included food, drinks, friends, mariachi moments, tables full of tacos, people laughing, and the kind of real atmosphere that makes a venue feel alive online.

What guest generated content captured differently

One of the biggest things we learned was that guest generated content captures a different side of a venue.

Professional photographers are valuable. Social media managers are valuable. But guests see the night differently because they are inside the moment.

A photographer can capture a beautiful shot of the food.

A social media manager can capture planned content for the brand.

But friends capture friends differently.

They capture the laughter across the table, the quick cheers, the blurry but funny video, the reaction when the mariachi band starts, the taco arriving at the table, the group selfie, the energy that would be hard to recreate in a planned shoot.

That is where restaurant UGC becomes powerful.

It does not replace professional content. It adds something that professional content often misses: the real customer experience.

Why this matters for restaurant marketing

Restaurants already create their best marketing moments every night.

The problem is that most of those moments disappear.

Guests take photos and videos, but the venue rarely gets access to them. Some people might tag the restaurant on Instagram, but many do not. Even when they do, the content is scattered, temporary and hard to organise.

Everyguest is designed to fix that.

Instead of hoping guests tag the venue, Everyguest gives restaurants and hospitality venues a simple way to collect guest content directly, organise it, and turn it into something useful.

For a restaurant like 7 Machos, that matters because the vibe is one of the main reasons people go.

A static food photo can show what is on the menu.

Guest content can show what it feels like to be there.

The owner was too busy to approve content

One of the clearest lessons came from Remi, the owner.

He was extremely busy throughout the night, which makes complete sense. It was a packed restaurant, a birthday celebration, Cinco de Mayo, live music and a full team serving guests.

Afterwards, he told us he had not been able to look through or approve content during the event.

That confirmed something important for us.

Venue owners do not have time to manage content during their busiest nights. But those busy nights are exactly when the best content is created.

That is why Everyguest's AI auto-approval and auto-rejection is so useful.

The goal is not to give owners another job. The goal is to take work away from them.

A restaurant owner should not have to stand in the middle of a packed service reviewing photos and videos. Everyguest needs to make the content collection process feel simple, safe and low effort for the venue.

Everyguest captured the whole night

Another interesting learning was the difference between being there for a few hours and collecting content across the whole night.

The restaurant's photographers were there for part of the evening, roughly from 7pm to 10pm. That is useful, but the night did not stop at 10pm.

In fact, some of the most fun energy came later.

Because Everyguest was running throughout the night, the venue ended up with a wider view of the event from start to finish.

That included early food and drinks, the mariachi moments, the middle of the night buzz, and the later, looser, more energetic moments that are often the hardest to capture professionally.

For hospitality venues, this is one of the biggest opportunities.

A busy night can become a content library.

Redeeming tequila shots through our own app

One of the most fun moments of the night was when we used our own app as guests.

Laura and I redeemed two free tequila shots through Everyguest.

It was a small moment, but it made the whole trial feel real. We were not just testing a platform on a laptop. We were inside a busy Mexican restaurant in Santa Catalina, using Everyguest in the same environment guests would use it.

That moment helped us see the product from both sides: as the people building it, and as guests taking part in the experience.

And honestly, redeeming tequila shots through your own app is a pretty good founder milestone.

What we learned from the first trial

The first live Everyguest trial at 7 Machos taught us a lot.

The biggest lessons were:

1. Guests will scan and upload if the venue has the right energy.
2. A fun venue creates better UGC opportunities.
3. Owners are too busy during peak service to manage content manually.
4. AI approval and rejection can remove a major operational headache.
5. Guest content captures moments that professional content often misses.
6. Busy nights can create marketing content for quieter days.
7. The best restaurant marketing shows atmosphere, not just food.

Most importantly, we saw that the core idea works.

A venue can collect real guest photos and videos during a live event, and that content can help show the atmosphere of the place in a way that feels authentic.

Why this matters for hospitality venues in Mallorca

Mallorca has thousands of restaurants, bars, hotels, beach clubs, villas, wedding venues and event spaces.

Many of them already create incredible guest experiences.

But a lot of that value is lost because the content is not captured properly.

Everyguest is being built for exactly those venues.

• For restaurants, it can help capture the buzz of a busy dinner service.
• For bars, it can show the energy of a weekend night.
• For hotels, it can collect real guest perspectives.
• For wedding venues, it can capture emotional moments from the people attending.
• For beach clubs and event spaces, it can turn atmosphere into social proof.

Hospitality marketing works best when people can feel what it is like to be there.

That is what guest generated content can do.

What comes next

7 Machos gave us the first real proof that Everyguest can work inside a live hospitality environment.

It was not perfect, and we still have things to improve. We want to make the guest flow even easier, improve the venue dashboard, and continue refining how content is approved, organised and used.

But the most important thing happened.

The product worked in the real world.

Guests scanned. Guests uploaded. The venue received useful content. The owner was happy. And we saw, very clearly, how Everyguest can help restaurants and venues turn real moments into marketing.

For us, that made the night a success.

Want to try Everyguest at your venue?

Everyguest is currently testing with select hospitality venues in Mallorca.

If you run a restaurant, bar, hotel, beach club, wedding venue or event space, and you want to turn real guest moments into usable marketing content, we would love to hear from you.

Your guests are already creating content.

Everyguest helps you capture it.