This Restaurant Lets You Pay the Bill With Instagrams
While some restaurants and chefs have banned Instagram privileges at their five star tables, more might start making the flawlessly filtered food selfie an essential part of the meal — the part where the check comes. Instead of being annoyed by patrons documenting the dinner du jour, one company is seeing social media for what it can verrry easily be: free advertising. Talk about a glass half full. And speaking of, could we get a refill when you get a chance? <3
In one of our favorite social media marketing stunts yet, frozen food company Bird’s Eye is running a pop-up restaurant called The Picture House in the UK that lets you take care of the bill with an Instagram post of your meal. Pull up a seat at The Picture House and order from menu items that feature Bird’s Eye foods, use their hashtag of choice and your check arrives with a big fat zero on it. We are IN.
A scroll through the ‘Grams tagged with #BirdsEyeInspirations show pretty delicious-looking dishes, like kiev on a bed of asparagus and lightly minted petits pois, smoked aubergine, goat cheese and soft herb fritters served over Mediterranean vegetable rice, even a dessert made with macerated strawberries. We only think they should improve the lighting over there… or at least call in food photo booth #Dinnercam.
There’s a part of us that can’t help but say, well, duh. What actually makes your mouth water: an Instagram of a delicious meal or a wordy three and a half star review? Rarely the latter, but we’ve been known to scream WHERE DID YOU EAT THAT TREAT? in the comment section of a few friends’ scrumptious social postings.
The concept isn’t crazy and may not be new — you’re able to unlock deals at restaurants, bars and stores with Foursquare or Yelp check-ins, get discounts when you encourage friends to sign up for subscription services you use, move up in “line” for access to a product by Tweeting or Facebooking about it — but this is a smart, seamless application of it. It works for the company, it feeds our craving for food porn and, hey, who doesn’t love a free meal? Hashtags. It’s what’s for dinner.
(Photos: The Drum)