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New York City restaurant Cómodo creates its own Instagram hashtag, encourages photos of food

People love to take pictures of their food. For some, it might even boarder on an obsession.

Lucky for them, at least one restaurant owner in New York City is encouraging its diners to take delight in photographing their meals. Cómodo restaurant is hoping to use the picture-taking habits of its diners to its advantage by using the social media website Instagram to influence ordering habits.

For those of you unfamiliar with Instagram, it is a website that lets users upload any random assortment of pictures to their personal profile, where they become available for the community to see.

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By posting Instagram pics of their meals with the designated hashtag, #ComodoMenu, diners at the Latin American restaurant in Soho are essentially building a visual menu, enabling customers to search for pics of the meals their considering ordering.

Cómodo restaurant created a short video to explain their Instagram plan:

"The restaurant has decided to embrace all the Instagram users who snap pictures of their food after it's delivered to the table," reporter Amanda Kooser writes for CNET. "Seeing the photos may help sway your dining decision one way or another."

The hashtag also holds restaurant cooks accountable to creating consistently photogenic dishes. With the pressure of immediate online exposure, no sloppy plating will be tolerated.

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Cómodo's owners are no strangers to the food-online connection. Husband and wife team Felipe Donnelly and Tamy Rofe are former ad executives who frequently blogged about the dinner parties they hosted for strangers. Following a cease-and-desist letter from the city health department, the couple decided to formally enter the world of food with Cómodo.

"People love taking pictures of food when they go out, and we wanted to use what was organically happening on social media sites and turn it into a helpful and fun tool at the restaurant," Donnelly tells Mashable.

"We've been encouraging guests to post pictures on Instagram to spread the word, and the feedback has been great. Everyone keeps telling us how smart and creative it is."

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"Research shows we trust our network more than advertisements or celebrity spokespeople, so it makes sense for a business to encourage photography and social endorsements. Expect to see more integration like this," social media researcher William "Lin" Humphrey, Jr., tells USA Today.

Will this Instagram-menu strategy take off elsewhere? Or is the appeal of a phone-free dinning experience -- devoid of constants buzzes, alters, and demands on our time -- more of a draw to customers? While Cómodo entourages phone picture taking, Eva Restaurant in L.A. recently announced its plans to offer discounts to customers who leave their cellphones at the door.

Would you rather ditch your phone during dinner or use it to engage with an interactive menu?