In the Instagram age, if it's not worth sharing, it's not worth eating
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Yes: an Instagram-savvy eatery in New York now serves its chicken parmesan on a pizza stand. Credit:New York Times
Of course, dishes can’t taste bad if a restaurant is to be successful. And, of course, a local restaurant with a loyal clientele can retain a terrific following with humbler-looking offerings. But until someone can invent an app that shares flavours, it will remain extremely challenging to go viral with a delicious but ugly meal.
Instagram is increasingly part of the recipe for restaurant success no matter how big or small you are. In 2014 the US fast-food chain Chilli’s did a full marketing refresh. One of its big decisions was to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars each year on a flavourless glaze to put on its burger buns so they would glisten better in photos.
Restaurants’ fever for Instagram success also means styling has gone beyond the food. One San Francisco champagne bar, The Riddler, is especially Instagram-savvy. It offers a panoply of quirky menu options that pop up on Instagram time and again. The ‘‘chambong’’ is a good example, described on the menu as ‘‘a bong of bubbles. Yes, this is a thing.’’ (It functions the same way as a beer bong – it’s a champagne flute with a tube at the bottom to drink from.)
It’s not just the menu options that are Instagrammable at The Riddler: a simpler and even more Instagrammable feature is the table reservations. When tables are reserved, the signs have celebrity names on them: ‘‘Reserved for Oprah’’, ‘‘Reserved for Lady Gaga’’, etc. To judge by the volume of Instagram posts, this simple addition to the dining space is a thunderbolt of marketing genius.
Article source: https://www.watoday.com.au/national/why-i-m-spending-100-million-on-the-pursuit-of-truth-20181202-p50jnv.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed
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