How Instagram Turned Into a Giant Market for Food

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It's called lens. Learn more at bloomberg dot com slash lens. Hello and welcome to another episode of the All Thoughts Podcast. I'm Tracy Allowitt and I'm Joe Wisenthal. Uh. The other day, I was walking home and I saw this huge line outside of a new store slash restaurant that was about a block away from me, and it was just this massive line around the block. And I was said, Oh, what's what's this line for? Uh? You know, are people

as it sneakers? Is it some celebrity Inside? It turned out that everyone was buying this ice cream that was wrapped in a gigantic, fluffy waffle and they had all these sprinkles and other crazy toppings on it. And I was just certain that the only reason people were standing in line to buy it, because it just looked like ice cream and a waffle, was because it was gonna look really good on their Instagrams and they were going

to rack up a bunch of Instagram likes. And that was a reason that people were lining up in a fairly chilly day for what looked like a line that I lasted about an hour Uh, yeah, well you don't need to tell me. Um. When I lived in New York, I lived right next to the Dominic and Sell Bakery, the place where they sell crow nuts, and I got to witness the craziness every morning firsthand. So I would see the people lining up at six am in the

freezing cold. I would see the people that those people hired to wait in line for them and then deliver crown nuts. That was interesting. Um. But the reason we're talking about this slightly random subject is because we are actually devoting this entire episode too. I guess we could say, like the economics of Instagram. Is that a good way to put it, yeah, Or Instagram is sort of this

food marketplace. You know. The other fascinating, fascinating thing about the chronut phenomenon, to me, it was not just that people that are essentially a food went viral and all these people lined up to buy them, but that it would it then it happened globally almost instantly, so all around the world, whether it's other parts of the country, London, Korea, everyone had their chron nut knockoff within a matter of

days or weeks. And I really think that the sort of Instagram phenomenon is indispensable to understanding what's going on in these this new world of viral foods. Yeah, indeed, and I mean I have so many questions. My major question is like, what makes your picture of avocado toast better than the millions of pictures of avocado toasts that have come before you? And why do human being seemed to have this like relentless interest in pictures of food

on Instagram? And Joe, Before we start, I'm just going to give one big caveat, which is that this subject might make me slightly grouchy. As you know. Wait, I thought you were really I thought, well, we'll see. We'll see what part of it sets you off and makes you grouchy. But we'll leave everyone in suspense for that, all right. So we actually have two people who are joining us today to talk about the subject. We have

Julie Verhage. She's a reporter at Bloomberg and she's managed to turn herself into a little bit of the hipster slash Instagram correspondent. And we also have Amanda Topper. She is a food blogger and a prolific instagrammer, so she'll be able, hopefully to tell us all about how this works. Welcome to you both, Hei there, thank you, Good morning, Julie.

Why don't we start with you, Um, you've been covering this and you know, we talk about taking pictures of food as this kind of funny, amusing thing that's been happening for a while now, but you actually wrote an article the other day about how this trend is impacting physical commodities prices right, everything from color flower prices to cream cheese to vanilla even it's all skyrocketing up, some of them even hitting record highs. And it's a bunch

of these what you kind of dubbed hipster foods. So everybody wants to have fancy looking avocado toast and stuff like that. And because everybody is so eager to photograph themselves eating various ingredients, that's having a real world impact on commodity prices basically. Yeah. I mean when I bought avocados this past week and it was three dollars and fifty cents per avocado, which just seems outrageous, and that was on sale. Normally be like four four fifty apiece. Amanda,

give us a little introduction who you are. You're a food publicist. You also are a influential food instagrammer and blogger. How did you get into this industry and how do you actually make a living? Sure? Yeah, so my life is kind of all encompassing around food. So my day job, if you will, is predicting trends in the food service industry.

So I am associate director of food Service Research at Mintel and then we also have um a lot of work with agencies and brands, So at my day to day job, I'm kind of helping brands navigate some of this territory with social media, but kind of on the side, I also write a Chicago based food blog where I'm reviewing restaurants, and then i also have a food Instagram where I'm covering local dishes, local events, restaurant openings, and kind of them fully immersed in this whole Instagram world.

So can you give us I realized this is probably going to be a big question, but can you give us like a sort of high level overview of how the rise of social media and Instagram in particular has changed the food industry. That's definitely a big question. Um. I think that especially over the last few years, we're really seeing Instagram take over as the social media platform to be on. So it's not relatively it's not super new.

It's been around since. But I think now we're seeing more restaurants really recognize the impact that Instagram and photos of their restaurants food can have on their on their business.

So I think we see the operational side of it where restaurants realized the potential here, and then we also see from the consumer perspective that really consumers, and especially younger consumers, including millennials, are seeing the impact of how fun it can be to share pictures of their food, and in general, we know that millennials especially just love sharing those experiences and being able to go on their app and search for different restaurants and look at geo

tags and see exactly what they're gonna get when they order food at a restaurant is really powerful. So we have a resident millennial here in the studio who like sharing photos of food and does exactly what you describe.

An addition to reporting on it, Julie explained to us the appeal of sharing food pictures as you see it, and you even mentioned this morning that your new apartment has a really great light for taking photos of toast, which I imagine is now a selling point in apartments, like, oh, this has great light for your Instagram photos, So what is the why the urge to do that? And I do it too, but I'd like you to, uh, you know, elaborate.

I mean I even picked out a perfect coffee table for setting the food out and being able to style it that way too, So I really went overboard this time. Um. I mean in general, like they do really well on Instagram. You have like the right hashtags and everything. You have the right coloring, the right lighting. Um. I mean I've always taken really good photos of just scenic shots in New York too, but food photography just does so well

on Instagram. It's crazy. You post French toast, you post the avocado toast with the poached egg, and then you're like cutting into the egg and seeing it all eat. That's going to do really well. I mean I think Amanda touched on a lot of it. Having the geo

takes and everything to always help. Like whenever I go out to eat, I already know what I'm going to order at the restaurant before I get there because I looked on Instagram, yelp, fort Square, anything to see what the best food is, and then I just order it that way too. Yeah, I've definitely ordered food based on what I see other people having taken photos of at a restaurant, Amanda. So you know, we talked about you know,

we talked avocado toast. That's pretty old hat by now this your job is to find the next big thing. So as a you know, not in your sort of professional capacity of looking at food trends, how do you figure out what's going to blow up next? How do you find the next cauliflower, the next kill or whatever ingredient restaurants need to start serving. Well, I think it's really important to look at not only what is happening in restaurants. So a big part of what we do

is we look at menus and we analyze menus. But at the same time we also see a lot of trends stemming from recipes and even recipe bloggers. So I think in the beginning, we saw a lot of of these food trends really start in the fine dining restaurants of the world and kind of trickle their way down into your fast casuals and your fast food and even

um retail as well. But now it's not necessarily following that same trajectory, So we kind of look at a three sixty perspective really of what's going on in food service, but also retail and also kind of just seeing what kind of pops on social media. It's definitely a big

part of that. How quantitative are the techniques? So I could imagine if you're doing recipe or menus, you could theoretically just download massive word clouds or word databases and theoretically see which ingredients are rising and falling over time. Do people do any stuff like that? Yeah, So basically my day to day is we actually have a database that collects menus from restaurants across the US, So it's

very quantitative. So we're looking at menu mentions of every little thing on the menu, from the ingredient to the preparation method to the flavor, so we can really get a good read on what is trending over time. How do you guys find different food bloggers or instagrammers that you want to work with? Two? How do you decide

because there's so many of them out there. Well, that's kind of more falling in line with what I do outside of work, So I kind of play both roles, I'm kind of on both sides of this, so UM. I think that personally, I've worked with a lot of major brands that are really doing a good job of targeting who they're their audiences, who that core audiences at their trying to reach. Um. So, I think one great example of a brand that's doing this really well recently

is Taco Bell. So when they are launching new food products, like they are really focused heavily on not only what that food is going to look like on Instagram, but also how they want to get that message across or the introduction across. So I think a couple of months ago, they released the Naked Chicken Chiloopa taco and instead of doing or using traditional media, they went the Instagram route.

So they specifically targeted millennial food instagrammers and a few key cities across the country and had these launch events to really create authentic buzz around this product without having

to pay for a single ad spend. Okay, I have a question on that because you say authentic buzz around the food, um, but like it's it's so coordinated, Like everything about this is so um coordinated and like planned in many ways, you know, Julie just spoke about how she's picked out a coffee table that will look good. I've seen some of the setups of her food, Like

clearly a lot of effort has gone into this. And I bring up the subject as well because we just had a kind of controversial thing happened with social media, which was, of course the Fire Festival, this music festival that was going to be held in the Bahamas, and that relied on getting a bunch of social media influencers to advertise that thing before it happened. It turned out to be a disaster, and now some of these influencers might be in hot water because they violated some rules

on sponsored content. So how exactly does this work and how authentic can it be given that ultimately you know you're reaching out to specific people, you're targeting specific people, and you might even be paying them or at least giving them free food. I think we found what sets Tracy a sorry. Yeah, I think it definitely works in a variety of way. So there's definitely that very direct communication where a brand reaches out to an influencer and

offers a certain amount of money for a post. But there's also other events like the tackle Bell event where they'll invite influencers and encourage them to post, but they won't require them to post, so really kind of relying on the instagramm er. If they like it and want to post about it, then they'll go ahead and do that. And obviously that's the end goal. Um, but it can vary, and I think there's there can be a lot of issues,

as you said, with being transparent about sponsored posts. I think lately as well, there's been a lot of focus on like FTC guidelines regarding this type of thing. So I think people are kind of treading lightly in this area and knowing that there could be consequences for not fully disclosing posting a sponsored post. Let's take a quick break now for a word from our sponsor. But Knowledge to work and grow your business with ce i T

from transportation to healthcare to manufacturing. C i T offers commercial lending, leasing, and treasury management services for small and middle market businesses. Learn more at c i T dot com put Knowledge to Work and we're back talking about the role of Instagram and social media in the modern food industry with us as Bloomberg reporter dou leever Hage as well as Amanda Topper, Associate director of food service Research at Mentel News and a food blogger and instagramm

er in her own right. Amanda, in the beginning of the episode, we're talking about the Crown Nut, which I think of is sort of one of the first examples of this era of food sort of literally going viral in a way that has become more commonplace. What are some of the most extraordinary things you've seen where some restaurant introduces a new uh, a new dish or a new product and you just see it, you know, copied

instantly everywhere around the world. I think one that kind of jumps to mind is the Black Craft milkshakes or Black Tap milkshakes in New York, So I think those kind of roads of popularity. And then in Chicago we

saw a bunch of restaurants trying to recreate the same thing. Um. But what's really interesting is there's a similar dish called the Instagram Sunday at a restaurant here in Chicago, And I think that just shows you that restaurants aren't aren't really shying away from the fact that there's specifically creating these menu items for the sole purpose of having diners come in and take a picture of them. So that's not a very subtle name, is it? The Instagram Sunday?

How fast did that happen? So after the milkshakes were introduced in New York, how quickly were similar milkshakes popping up in Chicago? I think within a matter of weeks. Um. I think people are very well traveled, especially that millennial generation and even restaurateurs, so I think they go out, they see these trends, and obviously, with the power of Instagram, you don't have to be in New York to see what's going on in the food scene in New York.

So I think it's it's a matter of weeks sometimes where these trends kind of evolve and emerge in different major cities. Another example of that, though, is that Starbucks just did that unicorn for appuccino, which I just looked and it has a hundred and fifty eight thousand hashtags on Instagram right now. But there's a coffee shop in Brooklyn that's been making a unicorn latte for let's see, a few months. It says December of last year it started,

and they're actually suing Starbucks for copying their idea. Have you seen something like that happened before, where a smaller chain is doing something in some big conglomerate like Starbucks copies it. I did just see that article as well. Um No, No other examples really come to mind, and it'll certainly be interesting to see the outcome of that. I think the issue there was that both beverages do not contain coffee, even though one must call the latte um.

But no, I haven't seen a time of other examples of that now. Okay, So here's my major question with all of us, and with um food Instagramming in particular. So you create something like an Instagram Sunday, which is clearly made to be photographed, why the endless fascination with the same thing over and over and over again. Because there are only so many variations you can have of a picture of an ice cream Sunday or a crow nut or you know, some avocado smear it on toast,

why do we keep consuming that? Well? I think a lot of the types of food photos that perform very well on Instagram, or foods that are really relatable. If you post some really fancy plate from a five star restaurant that might not resonate with everyone in your audience. But something like an avocado toast or a milkshake or ice cream Sunday is something that people can relate to. And even with the Sunday for example, they do a great job of innovating constantly from month to month by

just shifting that Sunday just a little bit. Um Sometimes it's a matter of incorporating a seasonal element or flavor, or incorporating a holiday themed candy or cupcake on top of it. So they're kind of making it a little bit different, but still kind of riding the wave of the popularity of that particular dish. But I really think it has to do with food being relatable, and especially things like um, the agile corn, like that is something

that people can relate to. It's something that they could do at home, and it's it's kind of this interactive experience that people want to look at and people want

to share themselves. That reminds me my friend Derek Thompson, he's a writer at The Atlantic, and he recently wrote a book called hit Makers, which is all about what becomes popular, and he was talking about it in the context mostly of sort of music and entertainment, but one of his key ideas is that the most successful things have a high element of familiarity with them, so they don't push the bound to read too much. They innovate, they do something new, but there's a strong element of

I've seen this before. So it's interesting, is you know, it's I've seen I have friends who have post images from extraordinary five star restaurants, but they clearly don't get the same level of likes as a really over the

top Sunday or milkshake. And there's probably an element where the milkshake feels at the same time new and interesting but also familiar and something that I could relate to exactly as you say, Yeah, and I think, um, it's not to say that we aren't we are not adventurous eaters. I think that when it comes to trying new flavors,

those flavors are really well executed in familiar formats. So, like you said, we're interested in trying something new, but not if it's completely out of out of the realm of something we've had before. So it's got to have that sense of familiarity with it. So this leads into my other pressing question on the matter which is what's

the ultimate end game in instagramming all your food? Um, you know, everyone talks about turning themselves into a personal brand, but so few of these personal brands are actually able

to turn it into a money making thing. And I was actually reading some first person accounts from people who have kind of managed to do that, and they were saying that it's super difficult to monetize their social media presence, partly because people want them to be relatable and as soon as they start making money from being a social media celebrity, uh, that seems to go away a little bit.

So there seems to be a catch twenty two. So maybe Julie, maybe you have some insight into this because you've been instagramming for a long time now, Like what's

the ultimate goal? I mean, I think I would be more worried about traditional advertising versus advertising on social media because there's still as long as you're someone that's posting from these brands, but you still engage with your followers, such as replying to their comments on your post or going to their profile and liking different things on their page, you're always going to have that follower base, and then the brands are still going to want to continue to

work with you rather than paying some traditional advertiser, like way more than what they end up paying you. But there is a struggle of like the advertising business keeps changing those people that were blogging five years ago, and blogging five years ago is way different than what it is now. There's fewer ads on the actual blogging page that you can make money from, so it is pushing more towards working with brands versus just letting the brands

advertise on your profile. Amanda, where do you see all this going? What is the endgame here in terms of like are people going to burn out? Are they going to get tired? Are they eventually do people worry that they're just people are going to stop just turn their phones down when they're at the restaurant and just enjoy the food. Is sort of a backlash to all this.

I don't know if we'll see that anytime soon. Um. I think we're kind of always looking at what's coming up next, And I think so I started a blogger in and so now I sort of see as Julie said that that's kind of shifting away from what it was. It's definitely more short, short form content. Now, and I think we're looking at Instagram and deciding, Okay, what's going to be next, And I think a lot of that is related to video and shorter videos. So I don't know.

I think it's too early to say like what's going to be next, but I will definitely say that we're kind of looking at what's going to be the next platform. And I agree that it is really hard to monetize your Instagram page because there is so much competition. But I think the the accounts that do perform well are

ones that kind of found um an interesting hook. They're very open about their personal lives and really try to form unique connections with their followers, and I think there can be a little bit of that catch twenty two when these instagrammers are working with a lot of brands and posting continuous sponsored content and makes it a little bit hard to trust them and you under if they're really supporting this brand or if they're just doing it

for the compensation. But at the end of the day, if those people don't want to follow that person, they're not going to and we're not really seeing people drop off a ton, So I think that there's kind of that balance between maintaining a unique identity, but also working with brands to kind of help elevate yourself and push

your personal brand forward. I'd say another example of that though, there's one girl I follow she's actually used with my former neighbor, but she has two followers on Instagram, Rachel Mansfield. And something that she does that I think really has helped drive her business is that she hosts different sort of meetups. So one that I went to it was like a bar class, plus you got like these amazing goodie bags with a bunch of food from the brands

that she works with. There was a little Q and a afterwards, And you know, if I'm going through my profile saying that I follow too many people and I want to get rid of some, She's not going to be one. Because I've engaged with her. She takes the time to actually know who her followers are, understand what they want to see on her profile, and really she's done a great job of just turning this into a business. Okay, I have another big question, sorry, which is I mean

the food trend on Instagram. Amanda, would you say that broadly it's been good for the industry or are there some people who have lost out because maybe this is kind of a loaded question, by the way, but like maybe there's some like tiny kitchen somewhere and they do amazing food, but it's not that photogenic. Like, has this changed the food industry so much that the way something looks is now more important than the way that it tastes.

I don't think so. Um. I think though, that restaurants are realizing the importance of what their restaurant looks like and what the food looks like, and they're taking that into account. Um. I know that Julie was saying, you know, she has this coffee table on this natural light, and I think that restaurants are doing the same thing. They know that when an influencers coming in, they want to have that table by the window reserve for them and

they want to have that natural light. Um. But at the same time, I think the restaurants that are are doing a good job with social media are ones that are recognizing that they're able to leverage those images that they're diners are posting. It's basically in a way, free marketing for them, and so they can utilize those images and promote them and it's kind of a win win situation for the diner and for the restaurant. So I

don't know. I don't know if it's gonna necessarily go the route of food having to look better than a taste. But I think both sides of it, the diner side and the restaurant side, are seeing the impact and the potential for the business. All right, final question here, So I am really into food. I like posting into pictures of food, particularly Chinese food, which is my favorite cuisine on Instagram. So give me your top two hips two

tips Amanda for becoming a Chinese food Instagram influencer. Well, I would definitely make sure you have a good a good place set up to take your images, So if it's either at home for cooking Chinese food or for in a restaurant, make sure you get that natural light and a great background. I think that's kind of the majority of the battle is really the lighting situation and

the background. Um. And I also think posting maybe dishes from some of those off the beaten path Chinese restaurants that maybe your friends haven't heard about, and then they might tend to see you as an authority in kind of these off the beaten path Chinese spots. Well, I will try to do that any excuse to try new restaurants I'm into. So I really like that second tip. The first one I might be too lazy to set up good photos, but I could definitely do the second one.

I really appreciate you both coming on. Manda Topper, she's a associate director of food service at Mente and she's uh a social media food mayven in her own right. And Julie Verheig of Bloomberg News, who is a millennial and post Instagram of food and other things. I really appreciate you both joining us. Thank you so, Tracy. I kind of have a feeling that you're anxiety about all

this isn't isn't exactly a leaved well. I feel like I have a love hate relationship with all this because I do the same thing, right, Like, I have two Instagram accounts now and I do take photos of food.

But I just like the whole thing strikes me as slightly ridiculous, particularly when I've been in the position that Julie was describing, where you know, I'm arranging my plate on a table trying to get the best light, and I've also been sitting in restaurants where I've seen people do nothing but take photos of their food for about

an hour, and the topic seems slightly ridiculous. But sometimes I wonder, if you know, when people talk about product the productivity paradox in the economy, like sometimes I wonder if it's social media, if we're all just like spending more of our time taking photos of our food, and that's kind of where it's all going. I don't know.

I've definitely had moments in restaurants while I'll order something and then I'll bite into it, and then as soon as I buy it, I'm like, oh, shoot, I should have taken that photograph first, and now the plating of the dish is completely ruined and I should have taken

a photograph. And then other times I'll be like wait, wait, Or if it's a family style and everyone's eating out the same dish, I'll be wait, wait, I gotta take a photo this, and everyone's just sitting there waiting for me while I stand over the dish really loomingly trying to get the perfect light and also not have the

phone cast a shadow onto the food, which is referring problem. Um. I just don't think I have the discipline to really take the great photos that you have to take, because I just wanted to sort of take them for posterity more than influence. But maybe that's that's my problem. I don't want it bad enough. The other thing is like it is actually shaping tastes about food and restaurants. So, you know, you say you like Chinese food. I'm sorry to tell you, Joe, but a lot of Chinese food

isn't that photogenic. You should really start liking ice cream and doughnuts and cookies and cakes because people love those photos. It's also just a fascinating example of the way that the medium shapes what's conveyed over the medium. I mean, that's essential we're talking about. But it's a recurring phenomenon. You know, it's you have, you know, you take every take anything else. Take Twitter where it once you start to you know, at first it becomes this place where

you sort of dash off short messages. Then everyone's doing it, and then suddenly everyone just sort of thinks in short messages and likes to make week argue mints that just fit well in a characters, but aren't that sound? And so essentially the medium starts to redefine the underlying thinger trying to get across. I think you see example after example of that. So, oh absolutely, yeah, it's a it's

a fascinating it's a fascinating phenomenon. And the fact that it literally is driving prices of avocado and vanilla and Cauliflowers certainly takes to the market store and you can see it in the broader consumer spending figures. Right. So I was actually reading a city group note before we came on the show, and they say that restaurants spending is up let's see more than thirty over the past five years, and food spending is up about ten percent.

So this is the classic You know, people are spending more for experiences than for goods, but I often wonder if they're spending on experiences because a lot of those experiences allow them to take nice photos. Yeah, I think I don't think there's any question that that's a big part of it. All Right, Um, we should probably stop before or I get really worked up. I'm also getting hungry. Yeah, that's true. Let's go get some crown nuts. Maybe I don't know unicorn fract I don't think we have them

in the Bloomberg in the Bloomberg Pantry. Unfortunately. Anyway, this has been another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me on Twitter at the Stalwart and my Instagram is at the Stalwart. I'm the same name, and I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me on Twitter at Tracy Alloway and you can follow me on Instagram at Tracy dot Alloway. And you can follow our guest Amanda Topper on Twitter at Amanda Topper and

Julie Verhig on Twitter at Julie Verhigue. Thanks for listening. Put knowledge to work and grow your business with see i T. From transportation to healthcare to manufacturing. C i T offers commercial lending, leasing, and treasury management services for small and middle market businesses. Learn more at c i T dot com. Put Knowledge to Work