Is your restaurant on Instagram yet? If you’re used to posting photos and stories, we’re here to teach you how to take it one step further with Instagram restaurant reels.
Restaurant Instagram marketing is an excellent way to help your restaurant stand out, acquiring brand recognition, engagement, and loyalty. Let’s see how you can use Instagram reels to gather more followers for your restaurant.
10 Restaurant Reel Ideas for You to Try Right Now
1. Packaging orders timelapse
People love watching time-lapses on Instagram. They don’t take much time, they’re satisfying to watch, and they can give you an exciting sneak peek into what happens behind the scenes at your favorite restaurant.
If you’re also in the business of food delivery, packaging the orders probably runs like a well-oiled machine. Shoot a timelapse of the process to show your customers the steps you take to make sure the food arrives at them in the best conditions and presentation.
2. Kitchen tour
Speaking of behind-the-scenes, immerse your customers even more into what goes on at your restaurant by taking them “backstage,” so to speak, to the place no customer usually gets to see: the kitchen.
While you could film a tour after hours, it would be much more entertaining for your followers to see your kitchen staff in their element, working to prepare the meals. That said, ask for your employees’ approval to film them as you show your customers around the kitchen.
3. New menu item sneak peek
One of the many reasons restaurants need social media is because it allows them to connect with customers and create anticipation over new menu items or services. Instagram is an excellent platform where you can show off your food.
Use short reels to tease new restaurant menu items, only showing part of it or asking the customers to guess the ingredients. Create a countdown to the release, so people get excited to try it.
To give your Instagram followers a reason to be glad they followed you, share an exclusive discount code for the new item at the end of the reel. That way, only people who follow you and watch it until the end can benefit from it.
4. Cooking stop motion video
Stop motion videos aren’t for everyone. They require a lot of patience to create and put together. However, they’re ultimately showstoppers on social media, so the effort might be worth it.
Start with something small like your most popular salad recipe and shoot a stop motion video of you putting all the ingredients together.
Not only will it be incredibly satisfying to watch, but you’re also sharing a recipe with your followers, which is a gesture they’ll appreciate.
5. Presenting special offers
If you have a limited-time promotion or a special week when all desserts are 15% off, you will want to advertise that on Instagram. Besides creating a standard post or adding to your stories, create a longer video detailing the steps of claiming the offer.
If the offer is available exclusively online for delivery and pickup orders, provide followers with a link to where they can place an order. This is an excellent way to advertise your restaurant delivery service and bring more traffic to your website.
6. Answering FAQs
Owning a restaurant, you will inevitably get questions about your food, services, schedule, and more. Some will appear more often than others, so making a short Q&A video for your Instagram followers would be worth it.
You can choose questions that have strictly been asked on Instagram or make a collection of the most popular questions on all platforms.
If you’re going for the latter, post the video everywhere, not just on Instagram but also on Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media platform you may use.
7. Best menu combinations
If you’re looking for Instagram reel series ideas, consider this: once a week, you can post a video suggesting food and drink pairings or a delicious menu combination that customers should try.
Go beyond traditional pairings like white wine and fish and suggest themed menu combos. For instance, one week, you could present lemon day and encourage customers to order the chicken lemon curry paired with a nice glass of lemonade and a slice of key lime pie.
8. Sharing stories from behind the scenes
As a restaurant owner, you are a treasure trove of information about starting your own restaurant. If you’re willing to share those with your audience, they’ll make great Instagram reels.
You could create a series where you tackle one of the challenges of owning a restaurant and share your personal experience with it every month.
If you’d like to put more positivity into the world, create a series where you share one thing you’re grateful for every week or one thing that has made you happy that you own a restaurant.
If you want your followers to learn more about you and your restaurant, don’t hesitate to share more personal stories about what determined you to start a business and how it all came to be.
9. Restocking and organizing your pantry
Another type of satisfying video that you can post to your Instagram reels is a cleaning and organizing one. Not only will you get to show off your organizational skills, but you’ll also show people who have probably never seen a restaurant pantry how the process of restocking goes.
So, whenever you get a new shipment of supplies and ingredients, film the process of cleaning out the pantry, throwing away products that you can no longer use, and organizing the new ones.
While you work, you can also provide viewers with advice on better organizing their own pantries or insight into typical restaurant organization techniques like the FIFO (first-in, first-out) method.
10. Employee spotlights
Finally, shift the spotlight from yourself as a restaurant owner to the people in your team, from the chef to the waiters and bussers. Ask your staff if they’d be willing to appear in brief videos on your Instagram channel.
This is an excellent way to celebrate their work and accomplishments while helping customers feel closer to your restaurant by getting to know the people behind the business.
From short interviews about their role in the team to tips & tricks videos where they give advice pertinent to their job, there’s a lot you can do with employee spotlight videos.
Conclusion
These Instagram reel ideas for restaurants will help your eatery stand out in the crowd of restaurants with an Instagram account that don’t know how to take full advantage of it.
Get creative with your videos, and you’ll leave your mark on the restaurant industry one reel at a time.