Chili's Spends Millions To Make Food Look Good On Social Media, For A Millennial Customer Experience

Do your buns look good on Instagram? Chili’s Restaurants are making sure that theirs do: The sort-of-Tex-Mex casual dining chain owned by Brinker's International, just launched a multi-million dollar food appearance overhaul. Although this move sounds superficial, I think it demonstrates that Chili’s’ understands the customer experience in our social media- and millennial-driven era.

Let me explain.  Chili’s recently committed to making its food more “shareable.” No, they’re not further increasing the size of their portions. Rather, they’re spending millions to make their food look more photogenic.

Nearly a million dollars for an egg wash to give its buns a photogenic glaze, that "glistens," to use an adjective from Wyman Roberts, CEO of Chili's parent company, Brinker's. A new way of stacking ribs to look better in photos. Sexy stainless steel baskets to fetchingly hold its fries. (Source: AP’s Candice Choi.)

All of this demonstrates Chili’s’ understanding of what I call the “if I don’t have a photo of it on my phone it never happened” aspect of the customer experience that today’s customers–millennial and otherwise– are looking for: the desire to experience the world visually and share it before, during, and after the purchasing decision.

This phenomenon exists in nearly every industry. In retail, where girlfriends share selfies from the dressing room so offsite friends can help with fit and style. In live entertainment, where fans attend concerts and switch perspectives throughout, between the unmediated live experience and viewing or streaming it on their video camera’s tiny screen.  Even in healthcare, where tweets and status updates from inside the ER are not unheard of. And, of course, in foodservice, where dining customers frequently share course-by-course photos of their meals (“foodographs”) in real time.

This is a multigenerational phenomenon: Even the venerable Silent Generation has long moved on from shooting slides and loading them into carousels, often thanks to the influence of their younger, more tapped-in family members. Customers today of all ages shop, dine and travel socially, thanks in no small part to smartphones. Other technological factors include customers’ now effortless ability to share their experiences and reviews on sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor , as well as the ease of organizing friends, families and unaffiliated interest groups online in ways that result in real-life meet-ups, dinners, dates, drinks and events.

But although it is a multi-generational phenomenon, in particular the all-important Millennial generation (born 1980-2000 and soon to constitute a very large percentage of customers in the U.S. and worldwide) don’t consume food, beverages, services, products or media in silence. They eat noisily (so to speak) and very visually. They review, blog and Tumblr, update Wikipedia entries and post Youtube, Vine and Instagram videos. Often these posts concern their consumption activities, interests and aspirations. All told, as Boston Consulting Group reports, “the vast majority of millennials report taking action on behalf of brands and sharing brand preferences in their social groups.”

One reason worth considering is the idea that a customer shares in order to elevate his status. A photo of a superb (or superb-looking) meal can be a source of pride as much as a memento (such as a souvenir menu) would be. Elevating status isn’t necessarily about spending money somewhere fancy; it can be a well-planned excursion to an isolated yurt that’s proudly shared socially, for example. Status these days looks different than it did in the old, more marketer-driven age of clearly graduated status increments such as the climb from Chevy to Cadillac.

One way purchases and experiences can increase a customer’s status is by turning your customer into a “discoverer” in the eyes of his friends, loved ones and casual acquaintances. As a study by The Futures Company recently showed, customers are taking more and more pride in discovering things for themselves—including products and services for sale—and in being recognized by their peer group for being “first.” The medium of exchange, in other words, is social currency. And any effort and creativity you can invest in finding ways to help customers collect this social currency for use in building and maintaining their own relationships with others will simultaneously help your business.

Micah Solomon is a customer service consultant, customer experience speaker and bestselling business author, most recently of High-Tech, High-Touch Customer Service

 Also on Forbes: