Food: To Eat or To Instagram? That is the question.

Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what’s for lunch.

orson welles

In 2019, if there isn’t at the very least, one person clicking a picture of themselves by the cute coloured wall and posting it on their social media, are you even at the right restaurant?

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what it has come down to. In the already highly fragmented and very competitive food business, there has a emerged a new parameter : social media compatibility.

In the contemporary era of evolving technologies and digitization, restaurants have started using digital media to survive the cut throat competition in the sector.

There are of course a few standard guidelines that restaurants must keep in mind while exploring this channel such as:

• Maintaining a fully functional website- This must contain the complete details especially timings, cuisine, location and contact number.
• Online listing and availability on review sites – Food, being an experience good, is best marketed through word of mouth.
• Customer database- This collection should be as wide as possible so that the customer experience can be made customized ( like a surprise complimentary cake on their birthday if they visit ) – a great point of differentiation in a fragmented industry.

But in the end, in an Instagram world, it comes down to two things: presentation and engagement.
Whether it be a small coffee shop or a huge chain, the decor and food placement must be worthy of fitting perfectly on that coveted square on a person’s Instagram profile. And while they’re at it, their own social media must elicit at least a meme or two- Am I right, #Saltbae?

Here are 5 examples of interesting ways in which restaurants used digital media channels to engage their customers:

1) Nandos

Nandos recognized that food is an escape for the weary soul. Keeping this in mind, they came up with a light-hearted web series called ‘Booth Truths’, which “explores topics and themes such as loneliness, entrepreneurship, identity, and everything in between, with some of the UKs best up-and-coming talent.”

Lesson: This content helps in engaging the customers on a deeper level and they form a connection with the brand,which goes beyond the fun cheeky image of it that lies on the surface. This is also a move which makes the diverse UK based customer base of the brand feel more included.

2) Chipotle

Chipotle decided to use the fast growing app, TikTok in order to engage customers.
For Halloween 2019, Chipotle came up with the #Boorito campaign which entails giving a free burrito whenever a customer makes a themed TikTok video inside their restaurant and posts it. This strategy has generated more than 240 million views till now.

But that’s barely scratching the surface.

Their first campaign, the #ChipotleLidFlip which urged consumers customers to post videos of themselves flipping the Chipotle packaging led to about 110,000 user-generated video submissions and 104 million video starts in its first six days alone.
Their TikTok dance challenge campaign with the hashtag #GuacDance received 250000 video submissions and 430 million video starts during its 6 day run !

Lesson: Chipotle maneuvered its digital strategy cleverly by using TikTok: an app which followed the recently deceased Vine and surpassed almost every platform save Instagram, Facebook and Youtube. Also, implementing a strategy which makes the customer actual DO something, any performance at all, gives them a sense of achievement which further compels the involvement.

3) McDonald’s

Who says that if you’re already a big brand, you can’t re-invent yourself?
Following close on the lines of Chipotle’s strategy of encouraging customers to perform, McDonald’s teamed up with PokemonGo, an augmented reality game that went viral in 2017. The game got users out of their houses and on to the streets to capture Pokemon and McDonald’s ensured that these elusive creatures were ‘placed’ near McDonald’s outlets so that hungry captors could grab a bite after their Pokeballs were full !
In Japan alone, this generated in 500 million customers being driven to the restaurant.

In Japan, there are Pokemon to find under the iconic golden arches of McDonald’s outlets.

Lesson: Once again, it is established that a combination of physical and digital marketing ( in this case with the help of Nintendo ) can create wonders.

4) Nusr-Et Steak House

Perhaps one of the BEST examples of leveraging laughter, is the Turkish steakhouse chain Nusr-Et Steak House, whose chef Nusret Gökçe , is the star of the infamous ‘Saltbae’ meme.
It originated from a video of him flamboyantly sprinkling salt over a piece of steak he had just cut up. It took social media by storm in 2017 and continues to be used as a source of hundreds of memes that inhabit the Twitterverse and other channels to this day. #Saltbae was deemed a viral trend of 2017.
This Internet popularity brought in so much revenue for the small chain, that Chef Nusrat now plans to open an outlet in London

Meme-ception ft. Chef Nusrat Gokce

Lesson: Sometimes, when Fate is kind and smiles, nay, laughs at one, it is wise to sprinkle that salt over their shoulder and ride on the wave of creativity which no amount of money can buy.

5) Sketch

Last but not the least, comes UK based restaurant, Sketch, which takes the cake and then some more when it comes to teaching the world about ‘Instagrammable decor’. Each of its four branches come with a unique quirky design that leaves customers wanting photos by the dozen.
And that’s just what it wants: to show up on everyone’s Instagram feed. So much so, that even its bathrooms are specially designed to entice people to take a mirror selfie – with an individual egg shaped pod inside each toilet, which sits below a disco-style ceiling.

Supermodel Bella Hadid shares her mirror-selfie from the Sketch bathroom

Instagram Heaven with delish food- what more does a millenial want?

Lesson: Well, if it isn’t obvious already, here it goes: In today’s world, one simply has to be cute/ edgy/ quirky enough to appear on someone’s Instagram feed before they step into your hearth to feed themselves.

Honorary mentions for decor:

• The Kawaii Monster Cafe, Japan: The Japanese anime (pop ) culture for all things ‘cute’ is called ‘kawaii’ in the local language and this cafe chain embodies it in their decor bordering on that deliciously precarious line between naughty and nice.

The Kawaii Monster Cafe, Tokyo

• The Big Chill Cafe, India: A real head-turner, this cafe has walls full of film posters spanning Hollywood through its Golden ages. From Bette Davis to Audrey Hepburn, everyone’s work can be found adorned on their walls, and their menu.

The Big Chill Cafe, New Delhi