Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

You can now order food through Instagram

- Sarah Hauer Milwaukee Journal Sentinel USA TODAY NETWORK - WISCONSIN Sarah Hauer can be reached at shauer@journalsen­tinel.com or on Instagram @HauerSarah and Twitter @SarahHauer.

Forget just looking at food porn on Instagram. With a new feature, if you see something that looks good enough to eat, just order it right on your smartphone.

The photo-sharing app announced Tuesday it was adding take action buttons, like ordering food, to its business accounts.

Without leaving Instagram, people can start a food order, make a reservatio­n, buy tickets and take other actions with the new buttons that show up in the business’ contact section. The action buttons connect to third-party vendors.

One of the food ordering partners is Madison-based EatStreet. More than 440 restaurant­s are using EatStreet for their Order Now feature on Instagram. EatStreet said it expects that number to grow quickly. EatStreet connects diners in more than 250 cities to more than 15,000 restaurant­s.

Milwaukee restaurant­s using the new feature include Maki Yaki, Saki Tumi, Shahrazad, Shawarma House, Thainamite and The Halal Guys.

Facebook, which owns Instagram, started using the EatStreet ordering platform last year. EatStreet orders can also be placed on the review site Yelp.

“As more people continue to interact with businesses on Instagram and take action when inspiratio­n strikes, we’re making it easier to turn that discovery into action,” the blog post announcing the new feature said.

Instagram added a shopping feature for business accounts last year so companies can tag products in their posts. More than 200 million daily active Instagramm­ers visit a business profile each day, according to Instagram.

Pictures of delicious food are enormously popular on the platform. More than 273 million posts have been marked with #food.

Other vendors for the take action buttons include Acuity, Atom Tickets, Booksy, ChowNow, Eventbrite, Fandango, GrubHub, MyTime, OpenTable, Reserve, Restorando, Resy, SevenRooms, StyleSeat, Tock and Yelp Reservatio­ns.

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