Swedish company channels Instagram to educate fans of Asian food about their favorite dishes

Swedish food supplier CT Food picked Instagram as the medium for an interesting service that allows people who are curious about Asian food to learn how to make dishes simply by uploading a photo, as Wired reports. [Sad disclaimer: it is available only in Swedish]

Brilliantly simple, the company — which provides a range of Asian ingredients and food in Sweden — provides details and information about any dish that is posted to Instagram and tagged with its @AskCTFood account or the #askctfood hashtag. CT Food provides details of all that is used to create each culinary delight and, thanks to the fact that it uses hashtags for each ingredient, you can browse around to find other dishes that use similar ingredients.

Luong Lu, one of the creatives behind the idea, told Humans Invent that the concept is designed to function like an always-on customer service channel:

It is a very personal, almost 24/7 customer service right in your pocket. Everytime you have a question about an Asian dish at a restaurant you just snap a picture and then put in our username @askctfood. We will then see the picture and, based on what the question is, reply as quickly as possible.

Businesses have been hesitant to embrace Instagram, despite the fact that it has more than 100 million active users and is owned by Facebook, a company that has helped make the benefits of social networking clearer for many businesses.

Facebook is yet to monetize Instagram, but a move to work with businesses — perhaps to promote content or other kinds of advertising — seems likely, particularly since the much-publicized tweaking of its terms of service. Certainly a way to make purchases through the app has much potential, and would work particularly well in this example.

In the meantime, the photo-sharing service remains a place where businesses can connect and engage with customers and build a brand, they just need to be a little creative and original, as CT Food was.

Headline image via Shutterstock