Restaurants embrace customers posting food photos

At Empellón Cocina, a restaurant in New York City, diners see a not-so-gentle reminder at the top of the menu. "Empellón strongly discourages the use of cellphones, unless you're posting food porn on Instagram. #Empellon," it says in bold letters.

The aim is to get diners comfortable posting photos, says co-owner of the nouveau Mexican restaurant David Rodolitz, who came up with the tagline five months ago. "It's almost like they are becoming a brand ambassador on behalf of the restaurant," says Mr. Rodolitz. It also helps to bring followers to the restaurant's own Instagram feed, which informs users about specials or offers behind-the-scenes glimpses of the kitchen, he adds.

Establishments accustomed to viewing snap-happy smartphone users with annoyance are now realizing the potential of social networks to boost business. Some are trying to encourage restaurant-goers to post pictures of the food by promoting their social-media presence and courting Instagram users with off-menu freebies. Some restaurants, even those that frown on cellphone use in the dining room, are publicizing their social-media hashtags—words or phrases used to identify topics—at the table and encouraging diners to snap a photo before they dig in.

For many diners, a great restaurant meal now includes the obligatory food photo to show their social-media following where they've been. Instagram, owned by Facebook Inc., has legions of users who post photos of food, says David Gerzof Richard, professor of social media and marketing at Emerson College in Boston. While diners tend to rant about bad meals online, the beautiful pictures often seen on Instagram tend to overshadow any criticisms users may post, says Mr. Gerzof Richard, who also runs a social-media marketing firm.

Many restaurants and their publicists monitor their mentions on Instagram, Twitter and the like by searching daily for the restaurant name or hashtag.

And some restaurants offer special perks to influencers with a certain number of people who follow their postings—often 500 or 1,000 followers. Popular Pays, a startup in Chicago, has deals with a dozen local restaurants that reward Instagram users who have more than 500 followers with free food. (The company charges restaurants a fee to join.) Users can get freebies such as pastries, milkshakes or a gourmet burger, says Allan Holmes, who co-founded the company in May and will launch an app in July. "We bring [restaurants] the influencers," he says. "It's not a lot to ask them to give away coffee or a biscuit."

For instance, Trenchermen, a Chicago restaurant, offers the Klappertaart, a Dutch-influenced Indonesian pastry, at weekend brunches to restaurant-goers who can show they have more than 1,000 followers.

A big following can make a difference. Jason Peterson, an avid Instagram user who focuses on design, says the food photos he posts can get hundreds of "likes," or signals of approval, because he has 79,000 followers. Mr. Peterson, 44, who is chief creative officer at Havas Worldwide, an advertising agency, recently posted a photo of his horchata-flavored milkshake from Antique Taco, which he says added about 10 followers to the Chicago restaurant's followers. Mr. Peterson's 12-year-old son, Ford, is now building his own following—motivated in part by the special deals. "My son hustled to get 500 followers as well," says Mr. Peterson, who uses Popular Pays to find out about deals for social influencers.

It can be difficult to translate social-media likes into dollars for the restaurant, says Antique Taco co-owner Ashley Ortiz. She estimates that the farm-to-table restaurant gave away 200 horchata-flavored milkshakes in the past two months, including to Mr. Peterson. One photo of a milkshake received 800 "likes" in just a few hours, she says. The restaurant, though, is no longer offering the deal for those with just 500 followers, because patrons started to come in just for the free milkshake, Ms. Ortiz says. Next, Antique Taco will offer chips with pineapple salsa—but this deal is for Instagrammers with more than 1,000 followers.

Restaurants often need to do damage control after an unflattering Instagram shot. When Saam Hagshenas, 33, posted of a photo of a delicious rabbit served over polenta at an Italian restaurant in Chicago, the restaurant's publicist asked him to take the photo down. He used a phone flash, which washed out colors. "Even my friend's mom said it looked like puke," said Mr. Hagshenas, a singer for indie-pop band Hey Champ who has 345 followers. He obliged to the request. "In retrospect, it was very unflattering," he says.

Professional photographer Brian Samuels has started teaching courses at several local Whole Foods in the Boston area on shooting well-composed food photos with a mobile phone. He suggests sitting near a window or light source andto avoid using a flash. "Create action with a fork and knife," he says.

Recently, when he was at dinner, a chef sent out a free dessert sprinkled with edible flowers because of Mr. Samuels's social-media following. "He knew I wanted to capture something really pretty," says Mr. Samuels, who shared the photo from Russell House Tavern with his 1,692 Instagram followers and more than 9,000 Twitter followers.

An Italian restaurant on New York's Upper East Side called 83 1/2 has started offering a free affogato pop—a hazelnut-and-espresso ice pop that isn't on the menu—to Instagrammers who order a meal. In return, the restaurant asks the customer to post a photo from inside the restaurant on his feed. "If someone has their phone out, we mention it between courses," says general manager Andrew Seng.

Some diners, attracted by Instagram photos, are disappointed. After seeing her friend's post from a trendy Los Angeles brunch spot, Maggie Kosoyan, 21, decided to give it a try. She snapped a photo of an appetizing puff pastry with poached eggs and bacon as it arrived, but realized she didn't like the taste. "You kind of post pictures because you want your friends to see where you're at," says Ms. Kosoyan who recounted her experience on the review site Yelp. "You don't want to tell someone you are at a terrible brunch."