5 Instagram Tips to Make Money for Your Food Business
Anton SV Patisserie breaks down best practices on how to run a successful restaurant Instagram account
With crisp, well-lit photos and a consistent posting schedule, beautiful baked goods should practically sell themselves on Instagram. Well, yes, and no.
Building a following on Instagram takes time and effort and is not often a one-person job. Airmart is home to Anton SV Patisserie, a small bakery with more than 18,000 Instagram followers. The patisserie has a team of three people working behind the scenes to produce engaging content for social media.
But the Anton SV Patisserie team didn’t just figure out the Instagram algorithm and start selling cakes to their thousands of followers. Instagram simply allowed the word-of-mouth marketing that boosted the business to spread even further. The bakery’s strong social media strategy ensures that people keep talking (posting) about their signature crepe cakes online and generating sales for their business.
Looking at Anton SV Patisserie’s Instagram and the ecosystem of influencers, content creators, and everyday foodies that supports the account’s growth and engagement can tell us a lot about the components of a successful restaurant Instagram account.
Here are some ways you can get people talking about your products, grow your Instagram presence, and ultimately draw more customers to your bakery, both online and in-person.
1. Partner with micro-influencers and food bloggers
The patisserie’s crepe cakes are shared by several micro-influencers, which are local food bloggers with less than 10k followers, and a few top foodie influencers with follower counts closer to 20k.
You can pay influencers for sponsored posts, partner with them for product giveaways, or try to get on their radar by interacting with their content regularly. Who knows, maybe they will stop by your bakery for their next blog.
2. Get in the Yelp spotlight
Yelp is a restaurant’s best friend, and its power goes beyond the review website and app.
Anton SV Patisserie has been featured on both the Yelp Bay Area and the main Yelp Instagram accounts, which have 44k and 112k followers, respectively.
On Small Business Saturday, the bakery was featured in a list of Yelp’s top 100 places to shop small across the nation, and Yelp chose to feature a photo of their cakes along with sweets from just two other bakeries in an Instagram post.
Being recognized by Yelp offers tons of visibility both on the app itself and its associated social media channels.
Gain a strong Yelp presence by encouraging reviews. Put up Yelp signs in your store and incentivize reviews by offering a discount or free item to everyone who leaves a Yelp review. If you have online ordering, make sure there is a link to your Yelp page in every email receipt.
3. Get on Airmart
Selling on Airmart can help you expand your customer reach. We regularly feature vendors on our company’s Instagram account and offer paid promotions for vendors. Once you set up an Airmart shop, simply place your store link in your Instagram bio or Linktree and let the orders roll in.
4. Be Instagrammable
This may seem like a given, but having a signature branded symbol or signage that makes people want to Instagram your shop or products is key.
For Mr. Holmes Bakehouse in San Francisco, it’s the cheeky “I Got Baked In San Francisco” neon sign that everyone wants to use as a photo backdrop.
Anton SV Patisserie doesn’t have a physical bakery location, but they still have Instagrammable packaging with their sleek black bags with gold lettering and logo cake toppers that mark their cakes in every photo.
5. Bonus tip: Bake for weddings
Connect with local wedding planners, venues, and publications to get your bakery on preferred vendor lists. Find a local wedding photographer and offer to bake for a styled wedding shoot.
Wedding planners, photographers, and magazines tag every wedding vendor involved in Instagram posts, so one wedding can equal several posts mentioning your bakery on many different accounts.
Building an Instagram following as a bakery is about so much more than having the most Insta-worthy desserts. Using the social media platform as a networking tool and getting others to create content about your products are two key strategies for turning followers and casual ‘scrollers-by’ into customers.
Airmart is an online platform to help local merchants and small businesses connect with their communities. Airmart got its start helping minority-owned restaurants and produce wholesalers sell direct-to-consumer during the pandemic and save their businesses. It has since expanded to developing custom features for merchants to showcase their products, collect orders, and facilitate delivery.
If you would like to see a 3-minute demo before launching your free shop, you can book a demo here.
