What 745 restaurant Instagram feeds actually post
We looked at 745 restaurant Instagram feeds in 10 US cities in October 2026. Not to grade anyone. We wanted plain answers to the questions restaurant owners ask about Instagram: how often do other places post, what do they post, and what gets liked.
Everything below was counted from public profile data: post dates, post types and like counts. Where we judged something by looking at it, like whether a post shows food, we say that it is our review.
Who is in the sample
The restaurants came from Google Maps listings in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Austin, Nashville, Atlanta, Denver, Minneapolis and Washington DC. Each one links its Instagram from its own website. Big chains were dropped before we pulled anything. For each feed we read the 12 most recent posts, 8,878 posts in all.
This is not a random sample of every restaurant in America. New York is the biggest group, 383 feeds or 51% of the total, so the overall numbers lean toward New York restaurants.
How often restaurants post
The typical restaurant in our sample posted 6 times in the last 30 days. Its newest post was 4 days old on the day we looked.
- 65% had posted in the last 7 days.
- 61% posted 4 or more times in 30 days, roughly once a week or better.
- 45% posted 8 or more times.
- 18% posted nothing in 30 days, and 11% had gone 90 days or longer without a post.
So most restaurants that link their Instagram keep it moving at about a post a week or better. A real slice has gone quiet.
By city, among cities with at least 15 feeds, Washington DC posted the most: a typical 10 posts in 30 days across 23 feeds. Atlanta posted the least, a typical 5 across 18 feeds. Some city groups are small, the smallest we report has 17 feeds, so read city gaps loosely.
What they post
In the last 90 days, across 6,161 posts from 664 feeds:
- Video, mostly Reels: 37%
- Single photos: 35%
- Carousels, several photos in one post: 28%
82% of those feeds posted at least one video in that window, and 29% posted mostly video.
In our review of the 4 newest posts on 745 feeds, 54% had a dish or a drink as the subject. The rest were people, rooms, events, menus, announcements and everything else a restaurant does.
What gets liked
Comparing likes between restaurants is unfair. A place with a big following gets more likes on everything. So we compared each post with the same restaurant's own typical post, the median, and asked one question: how often does a post of this kind beat its own restaurant's typical post?
- Videos: 51% of the time, across 1,541 posts.
- Carousels: 51%, across 1,169 posts.
- Single photos: 39%, across 2,257 posts.
The gap between single photos and both other formats is bigger than chance would explain in a sample this size. Videos against carousels is too close to call.
Then the result that surprised us. Posts where food was the subject beat their restaurant's typical post 40% of the time. Posts without food beat it 50% of the time. Looking only at the 271 feeds where we had both kinds of post with likes, food posts did better in 110 feeds and worse in 155.
This data cannot tell us why. The posts without food include faces, staff, regulars, events and news, and people tend to react to people. It does not mean food photos stop mattering. Menus, delivery apps and your Google listing run on food photos, and we did not measure any of those here. It does suggest that on Instagram a plate on its own is not the whole post.
What we would do with this
If you run a restaurant and you are deciding what to post this week:
- Keep a pace you can hold. About a post a week or more is what most of the restaurants we looked at manage. Pick a pace you will still be keeping next month.
- Do not post the dish alone every time. Turn one dish into a carousel: the plate, a close crop, the room, the person who made it.
- Put people near the food. The cook plating it, a server carrying it, a hand reaching in. Your own staff, with their OK.
- Try short video. Single photos beat their own typical post less often than videos did. A few seconds of a pour, a sizzle or a cut is enough.
- Use the photos you already took. Your phone is probably full of dishes shot during prep and service. Pick the clear ones and post them.
How we did this
Public Instagram profile data, pulled in October 2026. We started from 834 profiles and left out 89 that were missing, private, empty or, in our review, not a restaurant. Post counts include collaboration posts that show on a restaurant's grid. Because we read the 12 most recent posts, a feed can show at most 12 posts in any window.
For likes we left out pinned posts, posts owned by another account, posts with hidden likes and posts under 3 days old, which are still collecting likes. A feed needed at least 6 posts with visible likes to count. The chance check is a simple test comparing the share of posts that beat their own typical post. Posts from the same restaurant are not fully independent, so treat it as a rough check.
Whether a post shows food is our review, not a measurement: we had Claude look at the 4 newest posts on each feed and mark whether a dish or drink is the subject. Restaurants are not named here on purpose.
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