You Can Actually Order Your Next Meal on Instagram

Last week, Instagram announced its newest business venture: food. For the photo-sharing app that serves as a favorite platform for foodies all over, Instagram is seeking to take that mouthwatering ricotta pancake picture to the next level. Now, Instagram users can actually access their favorite dishes and restaurants through their feed of food photos.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BitgMSbhl9q/?taken-by=baranobk

Currently, an estimated 200+ million Instagrammers interact with business profiles on a daily basis. The Facebook-owned company seeks to elevate those relationships by implementing a tool to book, order, and take out food, allowing users to interact more directly with businesses and partnering with existing third-party sites to streamline that access.

Similar to the Shopping on Instagram buttons introduced earlier this year, Instagram is introducing action buttons to guide users to booking and ordering through popular third-party apps. Announced partnerships with existing platforms include restaurant staples like OpenTable, Yelp, Resy, and ChowNow—all of which will now be directly accessible on Instagram.

In their announcement on May 8th, Instagram creators discussed the significance of this new feature as part of their developing business platform initiatives. “We’re making it easier to turn that discovery into action. Through our action buttons, people can now Reserve, Get Tickets, Start Order or Book through popular, third-party partners without having to leave Instagram.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/BixcdZBhd-_/?taken-by=cafegratitude

Business on Instagram was launched in 2016 when the photo-sharing platform switched from being just personal profiles to business-oriented ones as well. The company has since offered a variety of growth and expansion tools for businesses of varying types. Businesses on Instagram can now do everything from inserting links to their Instagram stories to adding direct contact buttons to their homepage.

For the newest food-friendly tool, the announcement explains how partnered sites will work in tandem with posted photos. For instance, Cafe Gratitude—Los Angeles’ pride and joy and extremely buzzed-about health hub—connects from Instagram right into ChowNow. For ChowNow’s existing users, a picture post can lead you right into an online order or reservation. As the feature rolls out among restaurants around the world, other platforms will offer similar advantages for their users directed right from Instagram photos.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BherMyBAeQY/?taken-by=dahliabakery

And these new reservation tools won’t stop at food either. Companies like Eventbrite and Fandango are among the most recent Insta-partners that will be accessible in the app. An arguably advertising gold mine, Instagram’s latest roll-out will increase user interaction with businesses and gives us a peek into the company’s future plans to monetize and interact with their consumers.