How Social Media Is Reshaping Restaurants and Cafés

When One Video Turned a Steakhouse Into a Global Brand

In January 2017, an Istanbul chef posted a video of himself slicing steak and letting salt run down his forearm in a single theatrical motion. The clip, titled "Ottoman Steak," was viewed more than 16 million times on Instagram and turned Nusret Gökçe into "Salt Bae" overnight. His Nusr-Et chain expanded into Turkey, Greece, the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, and in 2019 he bought Istanbul's Park Hyatt hotel for roughly €50 million.

The same visibility later worked against him. Critics panned the New York steakhouse in 2018 as "over-salted and overpriced," the Manhattan burger outpost closed in 2023 after three years, and revenue at the London location fell from £13.6 million to £9.3 million by September 2024. Viral fame can put a restaurant on the map overnight — and expose it to backlash just as fast.

Designed to Be Photographed, or Just Photogenic?

It's tempting to assume restaurants and cafés are increasingly designed around Instagram, but a 2024 study of 25 Danish hotels — analyzing 1,031 posts, 602 from the properties themselves and 429 from guests — found the relationship is more indirect. Most "Instagrammable corners" were built for guest comfort first, not for reach; one marketing staffer described their signature spot as something created "organically... definitely not for the benefit of social media."

What has changed is guest behavior. Photographing a plate before eating it went from a niche habit to a near-default one as smartphones and selfie culture spread, and some restaurateurs now restrict tableside photography in response. The venue itself may not have changed as much as how diners document it.

Only one of the 25 hotels in the study intentionally designed a space with Instagram in mind, and even that was a temporary setup for events. Social media tends to shape venue design indirectly — operators don't build "for the photo" from the outset; they notice which corner guests photograph on their own and lean into it afterward.

TikTok Sped Up the Menu, Not Just the Feed

TikTok's influence shows up more in what people cook and order than in how dining rooms look. The #TikTokFood and #FoodTok tags carry millions of posts, and the trend accelerated in 2020 as people cooking at home during the pandemic turned to the platform for ideas. Baked feta pasta shows exactly how fast this can move: Finnish food blogger Jenni Häyrinen posted the recipe back in 2019, but it exploded on TikTok in February 2021 and drove a temporary feta cheese shortage in Finnish grocery stores. The effect reached the US too — a Rhode Island cheese seller that normally moved about two thousand pounds of feta a week ran out entirely at the trend's peak. In 2025, matcha lattes triggered a similar pattern, creating what suppliers called "unprecedented" demand followed by a shortage.

That speed cuts both ways: the same wave of attention has shifted how food brands market products and fueled body-image debates, with a dish's popularity spiking and fading within weeks rather than following a normal seasonal cycle.

Does Foodstagramming Actually Drive Restaurant Visits?

A 2024 study of 718 people — 377 tourists and 341 local residents — found that seeing food photos on social media does shape visit intention, but not mainly through likes or follower counts. What mattered most was the aesthetic quality of the photo and the caption accompanying it: researchers noted that consumers "value the textual content and aesthetic appeal of photos over the popularity of a post."

The study also found that the desire to replicate what's shown in a post is a stronger driver than whether the dish matches the viewer's own goals. For restaurant owners, that points toward investing in a handful of well-composed, well-captioned images rather than chasing viral reach.

The same research separated tourists from local residents and found a difference: vicarious enjoyment — the feeling of living an experience through someone else's post — increased the desire to replicate it among tourists, but not among locals. In other words, the pull of "I saw it online, I want to go" runs stronger in visitors than in people who already know the city.

A Generational Split in How Social Media Shapes Choices

Research comparing Generation Y and Generation Z, published in 2020, found Instagram plays a markedly stronger role in Generation Z's travel and venue planning, with "Insta-spots" — locations valued specifically for how photogenic they are — factoring directly into where younger travelers choose to go. Millennials also use the platform to inform decisions, but the study describes the pull as weaker.

For gastronomy venues, that split matters in practice: one generation may still prioritize the kitchen and service first, while a younger one may weigh a room's photogenic qualities earlier in the decision. Marketing the same venue may require telling two different stories.