How to Get More Followers on Instagram for a Restaurant

Your restaurant's Instagram profile is more than a photo gallery, it's your digital storefront, a menu, and a direct line to hungry customers in your area. Growing your follower count means expanding your customer base, building loyalty, and turning online attention into real-world reservations. This guide breaks down the exact strategies you need to attract more followers and create an Instagram presence that actively helps your restaurant thrive.

Optimize Your Instagram Profile for First Impressions

Before you even think about content, your profile needs to be set up for success. When a potential follower lands on your page, they should instantly understand who you are, what you serve, and how to find you. Think of it as your restaurant's digital welcome mat.

Nail Your Bio

You have 150 characters to make an impact. Use them wisely.

• What you are: "Modern Italian eatery," "Authentic Vietnamese street food," or "Family-owned brunch spot."
• Where you are: Be specific. "Serving downtown Austin" or "Brickell Miami's best tapas."
• What makes you special: Mention your "award-winning burgers," "dog-friendly patio," or "daily happy hour from 4-6 PM."
• A Call to Action (CTA): Tell people what to do next. "👇 Book your table below!"

Your bio is also a great place for a unique, branded hashtag (e.g., #EatAtJoes) that you can encourage customers to use.

Choose an Unmistakable Profile Picture

This isn't the place for subtlety. Your profile photo needs to be your logo - clean, clear, and easily recognizable even as a tiny circle. A photo of your signature dish or your beautiful restaurant facade can get lost and look muddled.

Use the "Link in Bio" Strategically

Instagram only gives you one clickable link, so make it count. Don't just link to your website homepage. Link directly to what's most important: your reservations page, online menu, or delivery service. Tools like Linktree or Carrd let you create a simple landing page with multiple buttons if you need to direct people to more than one place.

Curate Your Story Highlights

Story Highlights are the curated folders that live just below your bio. They are prime real estate for answering your customers' most common questions and showcasing your brand. Set up highlights for:

• Menu: A visual tour of your best-sellers.
• Hours: An easy-to-read graphic with your opening and closing times.
• Specials: Weekly deals, happy hour details, or seasonal dishes.
• Reviews: Screenshots of glowing customer reviews from Yelp, Google, or Instagram DMs.
• Vibes: Short video clips showing off your restaurant's atmosphere.

Create a Mouth-Watering Content Strategy

Growing on Instagram is all about posting content that stops people from scrolling. For restaurants, your primary goal is to make people hungry and excited to visit. A varied content mix keeps your feed interesting and gives followers different reasons to engage.

1. Professional-Quality Food Photos and Videos

Blurry, poorly-lit food photos won't cut it. Your food must look as delicious online as it does in person. You don't need a Hollywood budget, but a few basic principles go a long way.

• Use Natural Light: Whenever possible, shoot near a window. The harsh overhead lighting in most kitchens creates unappetizing shadows.
• Focus on Detail: Get close-up shots of a perfect cheese pull, syrup dripping down a stack of pancakes, or steam rising from a hot dish. Texture sells.
• Show Action: Don't just post static photos. Show a chef plating a dish, a bartender shaking a cocktail, or hands breaking apart a piece of fresh bread. Action makes the food feel more alive.

2. Go Behind the Scenes

People connect with people, not just plates of food. Showing the personality behind your brand builds a much deeper connection with your regulars and new customers. Share content like:

• Meet the Team: Short interviews with your chefs, servers, or bartenders. Ask them about their favorite dish on the menu.
• Ingredient Sourcing: A quick video of your chef picking out fresh produce at the local farmer's market.
• The Process: A time-lapse of your baker making sourdough or your pasta chef rolling out fresh noodles.

3. Feature Your Customers (User-Generated Content)

User-Generated Content (UGC) is a powerful tool. When a customer posts about your restaurant, they're giving you a trusted, authentic testimonial - and creating content for you for free.

Actively encourage and share UGC. First, create a unique hashtag and put it in your bio and on your menus. Monitor the hashtag regularly, as well as photos you're tagged in. When you find a great customer photo or video, ask for permission to repost it and always give them credit by tagging them in the photo and mentioning their @username in the caption. This builds community, makes your customers feel special, and fills your content calendar with amazing, real-world photos of people enjoying your food.

4. Embrace Instagram Reels

Instagram's algorithm is heavily prioritizing short-form video. Reels are your number one tool for reaching people who don't already follow you. They don't have to be complicated productions.

Easy Reel Ideas for Restaurants:

• Dish Assembly: A quick, sped-up video showing how your most popular burger or salad is made. Set it to a trending song.
• Quick Restaurant Tour: A fast-paced video walking through the front door, showing the bar, the dining room, and the patio to highlight the atmosphere.
• "Before and After": Raw ingredients turning into a gorgeous finished dish.
• Employee "Day in the Life": A fun, bite-sized look at what your team does.

Engage Actively to Build a Loyal Community

A follower count means nothing if those followers don't care about your content. Engagement transforms passive followers into a supportive community of regulars.

Respond to Everyone

Treat your Instagram comments and DMs like you would a customer walking into your restaurant. If someone leaves a nice comment, thank them! If they ask a question, answer it promptly. Responding to comments not only fosters community but also signals to the Instagram algorithm that your content is valuable, which can increase its reach.

Engage with Local Accounts

Become an active member of your local digital community. Follow and interact with other businesses in your neighborhood - the coffee shop down the street, the local brewery, your suppliers, or the boutique next door. Leaving genuine comments on their posts puts your restaurant's name in front of their local followers, creating visibility and goodwill.

Use Hashtags and Geotags to Get Discovered

If your content strategy is your menu, hashtags and geotags are the a-frame sign on your digital sidewalk, inviting people in.

The Power of Geotagging

This is the easiest, most important step for any local business. Add your restaurant's location to every single post. When users click the location tag, they can see all the content associated with your establishment. Geotagging also makes your posts appear when nearby users are searching for posts in your area.

A Smart Hashtag Strategy

Don't just use generic hashtags like #food or #yummy. Create a mix of hashtags that target different audiences.

• Broad Food Hashtags (1-2): These have huge volume but lots of competition (e.g., #TacosOfInstagram, #PastaLover).
• Niche, Location-Specific Hashtags (5-10): This is your sweet spot for reaching local customers (e.g., #VegasEats, #DowntownPhoenixFood, #ChicagoFoodie).
• Your Branded Hashtag (1): The unique hashtag for your restaurant (e.g., #TheSaltySpoonBrunch).

Mix them up on different posts. To keep your captions looking clean and readable, you can hide your hashtags by adding five dots, each on a new line, below your main caption before pasting your hashtag group. This keeps your captions clean and readable.

Run Contests and Promotions

A well-run contest or giveaway is one of the fastest ways to generate a burst of new followers and engagement. The key is to keep the barrier to entry low.

A classic and effective formula is:

1. Follow us (@YourRestaurantName).
2. Like this post.
3. Tag a friend in the comments (each tag is a new entry).

The prize should be something valuable, like a gift card for a free meal. This formula encourages sharing and brings new, relevant followers into your orbit - the friends of your existing local customers.

Collaborate with Foodies and Influencers

Reach out to local food bloggers and creators who align with your brand's style. You don’t need an influencer with hundreds of thousands of followers, micro-influencers (usually with 5,000-20,000 followers) often have a highly engaged, local audience that trusts their recommendations. Invite them in for a complimentary meal in exchange for an honest post or Story. It's a cost-effective way to get your restaurant in front of a brand new, highly relevant audience.

Promote Your Instagram in Your Restaurant

Your physical location is your best marketing tool. Encourage your dine-in customers to become online followers.

• Add your Instagram @handle to your printed menus.
• Place a small sign at the host stand or payment counter that says, "Follow Our Adventures on Instagram!"
• Put your Instagram handle right on your window, too.

Bridge the gap between your physical space and your digital one to convert happy customers into loyal online fans.

Final Thoughts

Growing your restaurant's Instagram account comes down to mastering three areas: presenting a polished profile, creating consistently drool-worthy content, and actively engaging with your local community. By implementing these strategies, you turn your Instagram from a simple picture gallery into a powerful engine for building brand loyalty and bringing more customers through your door.

Doing all of this - planning a content calendar, scheduling beautiful Reels, and staying on top of every comment and DM - can feel like a second full-time job. That’s actually why we built Postbase. We wanted a clean, simple tool to help us manage all our social platforms without the chaos. It lets you plan your entire content schedule visually, schedule posts across every platform at once, and manage all your engagement in one inbox, giving you the time back to focus on what you do best: running your restaurant.