Why the Food Porn Craze is Good for Business

The pop-up diner The Picture House opened in Soho, London, as the world’s very first pay-by-picture restaurant. Diners were given tips on food photography by seasoned professionals and will then be invited to get their meal for free if they upload photos of their food with a customised promotional hashtag to Instagram.

Although the pop-up restaurant and its creative use of Instagram photos as currency is all part of a marketing scheme to promote Birds Eye’s latest range of frozen dinners, it is very telling in terms of the emphasis social networks and online users place on food—from Pinterest recipe boards to daily Instagram and Twitter photos of decadent or hyper-healthy meals, there’s no denying that social media users are very much fixated on food.

Targeting the ‘foodies’
This opens food retailers and restaurateurs up to a vast world of opportunities when it comes to merging social media and food. With research showing that more than 50 per cent of people regularly take photos of their meals, it’s high time to start harnessing all of that marketing potential.

An uncomplicated marketing boost
An effective means of capitalising on consumers’ love of ‘food porn’ is to devise fun and interactive promotions that will generate awareness of your food products or dining experience, targeting the widest possible online audience via the social media profiles of your existing customers.

For example, a bakery could feature Point and Stare’s live moderated Instagram feed on an on-site screen where customers could upload photos of the special treat they’ve purchased; or promotional prizes could be given to customers who upload the best photos of themselves enjoying their baked goods. By using customised hashtags, customers in your bakery will be able to see all of these posts in real time, as will all the followers of the people sharing their posts—it might even spur someone to buy a cake that looks extra delicious on-screen! Similar effective and easy promotional solutions can be created each and every day for food retailers right across the board, both with Point and Stare’s Instagram feed and its moderated Twitter Wall.

As with all marketing strategies, the key to success is identifying prime opportunities to capitalise on social trends, and seizing them. Foodie mania is running wild on the Internet, so now is the moment to take your food enterprise and make it dynamic, avant-garde and interactive.

Contact us at Point and Stare today to see how we can help you make this goal a reality.