Everyone amongst us has his or her favourite place to eat, grab a drink, or just hang out in general. We fall in love with restaurants for a variety of reasons. The quality and diversity of food, the affordability, the ambience of the place, the culture it displays, are some of the most highlighted traits of the restaurant’s personality.
However, I would like to pose an entirely different question- Can you experience all the above aspects without actually visiting the restaurant? You might be wondering that this is quite a weird question in itself and that it is practically impossible. The social media revolution has made everything possible.
Some of the best brands from the Indian food and beverage industry are rocking Instagram in ways that you might never have imagined. From sumptuous food shots to amazing humour, to cocktail recipes, Instagram for restaurants has virtually become a virtual kitchen or a laboratory of sorts for most Indian food and beverage brands.
In this article, we look at some of the best Instagram pages of restaurants in India who are ‘Instagrammable’ to say the least!
The brainchild of Sri Lankan Chef Darshan Munidasa, and Sri Lankan cricketers, Mahela Jayawardena and Kumara Sangakkara, Ministry of Crab, recently opened doors to its first restaurant in Mumbai.
The Instagram page of the restaurant is relatively new but boasts amazing content both in terms of the design language, as well in terms of the storytelling process. The use of yellow (the brand’s color) in the Instagram design stands out as rich and creative.
The restaurant is located in Mumbai’s splendid Zaveri House in the Khar area. Being an upscale and sophisticated part of Mumbai, along with being nestled in a heritage structure, the brand wanted to showcase the same on its Instagram page.
Yes, it is a restaurant, which means that food photography should be at its absolute best so that you start drooling right on your phone’s screen. Fear not, Ministry of Crab’s Instagram page has you covered.
Since the restaurant is positioned to be targeted at uber rich Indians, it is essential for brands to create a similar experience on the digital platform. If you know that your favourite celebrity has visited the place, chances are you might want to do the same. The Instagram page of Ministry of Crab, Mumbai, is filled with cricketers, models and actors, all enjoying their meal.
India’s favourite buffet barbecue brand opened its doors in 2006 and has not looked back ever since. With nearly 100 branches all over the country, Barbecue Nation has become the nation’s choice when it comes to celebrating birthdays, family lunches/dinners, office get-togethers and more.
The brand’s Instagram has recently taken a different route, with topical, quirky, animated content dominating the Instagram feed. We feel that Zomato was clearly the trendsetter in this regard, but Barbecue Nation is doing quite well too.
This does not mean that food or food pictures have taken a backseat. Food dominates the page, but the novelty with which it has been used highlights ingenuity and creativity. Barbecue Nation has beautifully thought about and created two important considerations in one creative- namely, food, and new restaurant opening.
Their current Instagram campaign runs with the hashtag #KyuNahiBarbecue, which literally means, that there is a barbecue for every occasion. They have not even shied away from using celebrity memes in their Instagram posts. Our personal favourite are these two-
Well, technically the Beer Café is not a restaurant, but in its defence, it offers the tastiest Dry Chilly Chicken in probably the whole country. With an array of delectable food options, and over 100 Beer brands, all under one roof, Beer Café has emerged as one of India’s signature brands.
If you have not already, we seriously recommend you to visit their website. It is as quirky, and aggressive as the brand, but it is still no comparison to their vibrant, fun, and enjoyable Instagram page. With healthy doses of food, ambience, smart puns, and re-shares, Beer Café is seriously rocking the Instagram scene.
With a heady cocktail of regular quizzes and giveaways, Beer Café surely knows how to keep its audiences attracted to its Instagram page. The contests and quizzes are industry-specific, meaning they involve questions and facts on the beer and alcohol industry.
At the end of the day, you would want to unwind with your friends and bond over some cold ones. Beer Café always projects itself as a friendly, approachable and fun place to hang out with your friends. They also use only user-generated images, avoiding models or stock imagery. This helps the relatability quotient and keeps them relevant.
As I had already mentioned, Beer Café offers some of the best finger foods that you would find amongst bars or pubs. We are serious! The brand has gone to great lengths to ensure quality, and regularly updates its menu, experimenting with some of the best cuisines and dishes in the world.
If you are going to have a list of the most happening eateries or hangout places in India, chances are that Hard Rock Café is going to feature in it. Hard Rock Café India have a separate Instagram Page, and a casual browse of the same will make you scream just one word- ‘Wow’!
As compared to its global page, Hard Rock Café India has realized that Indians need food and lots of it. The global page has more focus on music events and artists, whereas the Indian page beautifully exhibits sumptuous meals and dishes. We would never have imagined Hard Rock Café going this route in India.
Apart from lip-smacking food, the page offers some of the best attractive looking cocktails and Mocktails that are available at Hard Rock Cafés all over the country. Our personal favourite- the cocktail comparisons that the brand put up on their page during the run-up to Valentine’s Day. Here is a small preview-
In a relatively short period, Hard Rock Café has carved quite a niche for itself in the Indian food and beverage scene, with the brand winning a number of Food Awards. Like all good and emerging brands, the team at Hard Rock Café aggressively promotes its achievements on social media. This also helps convince consumers that Hard Rock is doing a good job in India.
While global giants like KFC, Subway, Dominos, McDonald’s invest millions of dollars in their social handles and curate and create content, we find that locally produced Indian content by brands is not relatively far off in terms of quality and creativity. At the end of the day, we would love to see a public stand-off between Indian brands calling each other out like the Burger Kings and McDs of the world.
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Part-time blogger, full-time dreamer! Ejaz Ahmed likes to think about how technology will ultimately transform human lives for the better. He is deeply fascinated with using technology to democratize the spread of useful information on the internet.
