How Takeaways are Selling Food on Social Media

Being a takeaway in 2020 has pluses and negatives that simply didn’t exist 10 years ago. On the plus side, takeaways can now reach much larger audiences online thanks to the invention of the internet, social media, and online food delivery marketplaces. On the negative side, this ability to have an online presence now means that takeaways have more competition in and around their local area than ever before. 

For that reason, creating an effective marketing strategy is vital for any takeaway business that wants to stand out from the crowd. There are a number of approaches that can be taken, but one of the most effective is to market and sell food on social media. 

How takeaways sell food on social media

There are several ways that a takeaway can sell food through social media alone. First off, a takeaway needs to establish itself on a social media platform (Facebook and Instagram are best to start with, as they focus on visuals). 

  • Being active on social media

Having an active social media account in itself can be enough to gain a big following (both online and in real life), providing your strategy is right. If you sell delicious food – which presumably you do – you most likely have hundreds of opportunities throughout your business’ operating hours to take photos of this food. 

Yes, when demand is high, you may struggle to find the time to take photographs before your food is boxed up. But it should realistically only take you a minute or two to find a location with good lighting and snap a picture with a high-quality camera

The more diverse the images you share to your social media account, the better. Make sure to use the relevant food-based hashtags and location tags, too – people who are scrolling through their hashtag feeds while hungry might just click on your image and end up looking through your offerings. If your food looks and sounds appealing to the average person, you can make lots of sales just through posting to your account. 

  • Creating a food ordering app

As an extension from your social media channels, it’s a good idea to create a food ordering app and link your customers to this app if they want to make a fast, convenient order. These apps, which are specifically designed for takeaways and are incredibly simple to make, also allow customers to benefit from incentives and loyalty schemes with your business. This will encourage your customer to spend more and order more per purchase. 

  • Advertising on social media

Paying for social media advertising is something that you may be hesitant to do, but ads can help you to target your audience much more effectively. When you pay for adverts, they can target a specific demographic in your local area based on their online activity, including previous food-related sources. 

In that way, for example, if you have a great vegan food offering, your ads could target people who have searched for vegan food in the past month, or follow vegan food accounts. This gives you a much higher chance of

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By David

David van der Ende is a full-time blogger and part-time graphic design enthusiast. He loves to write about a broad range of topics, but his professional background in both legal and finance drives him to write on these two subjects most frequently.