Instagram content ideas for restaurants

Planning content for restaurants can be hard. The problem is knowing what type of content you should post and what content will get more engagement. Marketing your business should be a top priority to attract new customers. In this article we will give you Instagram content ideas of what content you should use for your restaurant and how to bring footfall.

Menu

The menu is what you’ll end up posting about the most as it’s the main weapon of any restaurant. Below you’ll find ideas about what to post on your Instagram page.

1. Menu in its entirety – Posting your entire menu when you start out can be a good idea. It shows your customers what you’re all about without them having to go to your website.
2. The most popular dishes
3. Vegetarian/Vegan dishes – Its important to have menu’s for all types of diets so maybe even do a gluten free menu.
4. Low Calorie menu
5. New Items
6. Poll – What would you like to see
7. Recipes

Specials and promotions

The next type of content you can use is commercial. Commercial content brings together all the restaurant’s promotions and advertising. But if you start to advertise too much, there’s a chance that your audience will find it excessive and annoying.

1. Restaurant specials
2. Specials available only to followers – If you cater to just your followers you have more chance of getting traffic.
3. Loyalty program
4. Promotions aimed at increasing traffic on dead days

Contests

Social media contests are still one of the best ways to interact with your audience as they can help increase followers and page engagement. You don’t have to do anything fancy, you can keep it simple and the ‘prize’ doesn’t have to be anything too big.

1. Quizzes
2. Auctions
3. Come up with a caption for a photo
4. Best food photo
5. Come up with a name for a new dish
6. Sport bets
7. Dinner for two
8. Complete the phrase
9. Cross marketing contests with partners and friends of the restaurant

Instagram Polls

Instagram stories is a great way to interact with your audience and create new followers. The daily audience of stories is already 400 million people and its constantly growing. Using polls, you can interact with your audience quickly and easily, but also you get a ready made marketing tool for researching public opinion.

1. Voting for one of the two courses
2. True or False
3. How much should this dish cost
4. How do you eat/drink this or that dish? For example, hot or cold.
5. Ask the audience
6. Absurd and interesting polls
7. Study your visitors by doing research

Events

Events are a fun way to make exciting and vivid content. You can create an event in your restaurant or use an event outside of your restaurant to advertise yourself. By increasing the attendance of events outside your restaurant, you increase your traffic.

1. Performances by artists
2. Wine tastings
3. Themed parties
4. Calendar Holidays
5. Guests’ Birthdays
6. Special offers for celebrations
7. Any sporting, music or food events

Social Responsibility

Its important for your business to keep up to date with what’s going on in the world. By expressing your citizenship on environmental protection and helping the poor, you are guaranteed to receive social approval and help people around you.

1. Help for shelters
2. Help for orphanages
3. Help for animal shelters
4. Participation in recycling and waste recycling programs
5. Raise money for charities

Visitors

Photos or stories of your visitors are something that will show your audience that you care. It shows that you have a relationship with your customers, that most restaurants don’t. Remember to always ask permission for posting something of your customers.

1. Promote user generated content – Repost or share anything that your audience has posted about your restaurant. This can also include bloggers or food Instagram pages.
2. Public visitor testimonials
3. Take pictures of celebrities who come into the restaurant
4. Focus on your patrons
5. Show the restaurant during busy hours (when you have a lot of customers)

Restaurant team

Your employees are one of the main assets of your business and its important to show your customers this.

1. Introduce each member of the team
2. Show their culinary skills
3. Tell the audience about your employability’s
4. Publish information about the restaurant
5. Use your social media as a platform for developing your personal brand

 

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Behind the scenes

Go backstage and show the customers the kitchen, the prep and everything else. It’s important to erase boundaries and get closer to the viewer as this will create a good relationship. These fit into perfect Instagram content ideas for restaurants to share on Reels.

1. Share a photo of you and your supplier
2. Show the preparation of a dish
3. Share funny videos/photos of the staff
4. Show yourself making the dish and plating it up

Information about the restaurant

Nearly all restaurants advertise a lot on their social media, which can repel their followers. Don’t make all your content commercial, instead tell the news of your restaurant and how it works.

1. Facts from the history of your restaurant creation
2. Any awards your restaurant has received
3. Anything new happening
4. Offer a mailing list for your followers
5. Share links to your website
6. Promote jobs applications
7. Tell the audience about your other social media accounts

Other ideas

1. Memes or funny videos
2. Use trending hashtags
3. Publish content with animals
4. Use quotes
5. Make live videos of the restaurant (cooking, visitors eating, any events)
6. Create nice backdrops for pictures
7. Post about giveaways
8. Comment on customers posts and reply to their messages
9. Use relevant hashtags on your posts to get more traffic

Instagram marketing is a great way to boost traffic to your page. By joining the Instagram craze, you create a large channel to communicate with your followers and let them see what your restaurant is all about. Maintaining a diverse and engaging Instagram page for a restaurant can be challenging, as many tend to solely showcase their dishes or constantly push promotions. However, this approach can quickly become tedious and fail to generate meaningful engagement with followers. That’s why we’ve compiled a list of Instagram content ideas for restaurants, to help your page stand out and keep your audience interested beyond just sales pitches.