Instagrammers profiting from food photos

It’s no secret that many foodies post pictures of their meals to various social media accounts including Instagram. You may not realize, however, that more and more of these people are profiting from the habit, reports The Wall Street Journal.

That’s right, you can turn those snapshots into money – or at least a free meal. Olivia Young, who works for a group that operates restaurants such as Vaucluse and Osteria Morini, reports that the company has started to invite Instagram users for meals and also plans to pay some to post photos. “We eat with our eyes,” she said. “For a couple of hundred bucks for one person, I’m going to have potentially 500,000 people seeing brunch at Morini.”

In this new world of gramming for money and food, there are no hard and fast rules. The “Instagram entrepreneurs exist in a gray area of independence and promotion, editorial taste-making and public relations. Each account draws its own lines, which are rarely spelled out for followers: Some won’t accept payment or free food; others will accept meals but not money; others will only post for a fee.” So the next time you see a tantalizing food photo, remember that it just might be earning the person who posted it a free lunch.