Since the creation of Instagram, everyone’s been doing food photography. There are now over 327 million posts on Instagram tagged #food. If they’re all doing it, why shouldn’t you? If you’re cooking and selling the food yourself, you ought to get some of the credit by posting it on your own account!

Every restaurant owner knows that the number one thing you need is customers, and customers love to look at their food in advance. In fact, according to The Independent, each year millennials spend on average a full 5 days browsing food on Instagram, and 30% say they’d avoid a restaurant with a weak Instagram presence. And in today's climate, online orders are going to be all about what photos are shown online!

Let’s start with an amuse-bouche: talk to your followers

You want to really reach out and engage your followers. Make descriptions of the image that are interesting or funny - you don’t have to be a real comedian about it, but show viewers you have a personality!

Why not try asking questions to your audience - if you’ve got 2 dishes and can’t tell which looks the best, how about posting both and asking the followers? Make it clear you’re interested in interacting with those following your work. Head chefs and other staff can also use Instagram to let people know about the meal of the day, or you can offer deals for loyal followers, etc. Remember to coordinate on a weekly or monthly basis how you’re interacting with customers online to keep the content going.

The more you engage with them, the more traffic your posts get, and the more traffic you get, the more people will be tempted by what you have on offer.

Moving on to a glass of the house red: use your hashtags wisely

Hashtags are important on Instagram because they open your posts up to a wider, international audience. You can get your photos to ride waves of popularity, or enter larger bases of content where anyone could pick them up.

You want a selection of words, maybe even a phrase, or just key points that will be most likely to be searched by your target audience. And of course, you can put as many of these down as you want.

You need to make sure your hashtags really specify who you are and what you’re doing. If you’re too vague, you could just get lost. #pizza, for example, puts you right into a backdrop of 3.8 million other posts already gaining traction. As a rule, try around 5 general themes, 5 specific tags, and 5 location-based tags. Something like #nwdallaswings will hit its target more effectively than for example.

For dessert: remember to use Instagram stories!

Stories not only make sure you’re always at the top of someone’s newsfeed: they work as fantastic advertising what your restaurant’s up to without having to pay a dime.

The concept is simple: you can post as many pictures, videos, or text as you want, and they’ll be stored at the top of the Instagram newsfeed for any to see for the next 24 hours.

This means they’re great for promotions, special offers or events to get an immediate reach of customers right to you. You can post a huge range of content using these stories as well: gifs, geotags, links, hashtags, sound, etc, etc, and you can archive them on your profile for people to see later if one of the stories really takes off. It’s a pretty dynamic medium.