How Taste of Gujarat Went From 1,200 to 25K Instagram Followers and Doubled Footfall
A well-loved Gujarati thali chain with four locations across the state had great food and loyal regulars — but zero social media presence. Younger diners were discovering restaurants on Instagram, and Taste of Gujarat was invisible. We changed that in six months.
Great Food, Invisible Online. Losing Younger Diners to Competitors With Better Instagram Pages.
Dinesh Patel opened the first Taste of Gujarat in Ahmedabad in 2011. By 2024, he had four locations across Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat, and Gandhinagar with a loyal base of families who had been eating there for years. The food was genuinely excellent. The thali portions were generous. The prices were fair. And yet the restaurants were not growing.
The issue was discovery. Newer Gujarati restaurants with average food but strong Instagram accounts were filling tables because they appeared in Reels that Gujarat food bloggers shared. Younger diners, the 20s-30s crowd that Dinesh wanted to bring in, were not asking family for restaurant recommendations. They were scrolling Instagram and choosing the place that looked best on camera.
Taste of Gujarat's Instagram had 1,200 followers. The last post was three months old. The Facebook page had not been touched in a year. There was no food photography worth sharing, no Reels, no influencer relationships, and no paid promotion of any kind. We had to build a social media presence from nothing while maintaining the authenticity that made the restaurants worth following in the first place.
The account existed but had no strategy. Posts were sporadic, inconsistent in quality, and generated almost no engagement. Competitors in the same cities had 20K-80K followers.
The restaurants had no food photographer on retainer, no video production, and no content calendar. Every post was an afterthought. There was no visual identity across the four locations.
Gujarat has an active food blogging community on Instagram. None of them had been to Taste of Gujarat, or if they had, there was no relationship in place. Competitors were getting regular organic features from food accounts.
Each location operated its own social presence independently and inconsistently. Brand voice, visual style, and posting frequency varied completely between cities, preventing any sense of a coherent brand.
Build One Strong Brand Voice Across Four Cities, Then Amplify It.
The first thing we told Dinesh was that the food was the content. Most restaurants overcomplicate social media with gimmicks. Taste of Gujarat's thali had genuine visual appeal — the colours, the portions, the ritual of the meal. The job was to show that properly and consistently, then distribute it to the right people.
Brand Audit and Visual Identity System
Created a brand playbook for social: colour palette, font usage, caption tone, hashtag strategy, and content pillars. Four content types — thali reveals, process videos (dal being made, rotis on tawa), behind-the-scenes with the kitchen team, and customer stories. Every location follows the same visual rules so the account looks like one brand regardless of which city's food is featured.
Monthly Food Photography and Video Production
Arranged monthly shoots at each location with a local food photographer. Shot for both static posts and Reels. Built a 30-day content bank per location per month so we were never scrambling for content. The kitchen process videos — showing rotis being made on a live tawa, the dal tadka sizzle, the thali being arranged — became the highest-performing content category.
Reels Strategy and Organic Growth
Launched three Reels per week: one food process, one thali reveal, one customer or team feature. Hooks were written specifically for the first 2 seconds to stop the scroll. Used trending audio where it fit the content naturally. Did not chase trends that didn't match the brand. Within 8 weeks, three Reels crossed 50K views organically with zero paid promotion.
Influencer Partnerships Across Gujarat
Identified five Gujarat food accounts with genuine engagement: two Ahmedabad accounts (42K and 28K followers), one Surat (19K), one Vadodara (15K), and one Gujarat-wide food account (80K). Arranged hosted visits with full meal experiences for each. All five posted organic Reels within the following month. The 80K account's post drove 1,400 profile visits in a single day.
Paid Social and UGC Campaign
Ran Facebook and Instagram ads targeting foodies aged 22-45 within 8 km of each location. First-time offer: a free dessert on first visit when showing the Instagram post. Launched a branded hashtag campaign encouraging customers to post their thali for a chance to be featured. The hashtag generated 600+ posts in three months, providing free content and social proof simultaneously.
A Complete Social Media Operation Running Across Four Cities
Everything delivered on a monthly retainer. Dinesh's team does not need to think about social media. We handle creation, scheduling, community management, and reporting.
Monthly Content Calendar
3 Reels plus 5 static posts plus 7 Stories per week. Content planned and approved 2 weeks in advance. All four locations covered with city-specific content tailored to each audience.
Food Photography Sessions
Monthly shoot at each location with a professional food photographer. Separate shot lists for static posts and Reels footage. 50-80 usable assets delivered per location per month.
Instagram and Facebook Ad Management
Rs. 20,000 per location per month managed. Hyperlocal targeting within 8 km of each outlet. First-visit offer campaigns plus event promotions for festivals (Navratri, Uttarayan, Diwali).
Influencer Partnerships
5 Gujarat food influencer relationships established and maintained. Hosted visits arranged, content briefed and reviewed before posting. New influencer added each quarter as the brand grows.
Branded Hashtag and UGC Campaign
Launched branded hashtag with in-restaurant signage at all four locations. Customer posts featuring the hashtag are reshared to Stories with permission. 600+ organic posts generated in 3 months.
Monthly Performance Reporting
Monthly report covering follower growth, reach, engagement rate, ad performance, and footfall correlation (tracked via owner survey at each location). Presented in a plain-language one-page summary.
Six Months. Four Cities. One Brand That Gujarat Now Knows.
Measured at the 6-month mark. Data from Meta Business Suite, owner footfall surveys, and Zomato rating history.
For thirteen years people came because their parents told them to come. Now people are coming because they saw a Reel. Last Saturday a group of young people told me they drove from Surat to Ahmedabad specifically because of our Instagram. That would have been impossible two years ago. The food was always good. DC technolabs made sure people could find out about it before they walked in. My Zomato rating went from 3.9 to 4.6 because the people coming now already trust us before they sit down.
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