User-generated content for restaurants: repost customer photos properly

To use user-generated content properly, ask the customer before you repost their photo, credit them by their handle, and keep a record of their yes. In the UK the person who took a photo generally owns the copyright, and Instagram's terms say you need the rights to anything you post. So being tagged in a lovely photo of your Sunday roast isn't the same as permission to share it.

#Who owns a customer's photo of your food?

The customer does, in almost every case. The UK government's guidance says you get copyright automatically when you create original work, including photography, with no need to register or pay a fee. Copyright stops other people copying the work or putting it on the internet without permission, and for photos it usually lasts 70 years after the photographer's death.

The Intellectual Property Office's copyright notice on digital images spells it out. The person who creates an image is generally its first owner, and that includes photos taken on mobile phones. Your food being the subject doesn't give you any ownership of the photo. The notice also says:

• A photo with no © symbol or name on it is still protected.
• Deliberately removing metadata that identifies the copyright owner is unlawful.

There's one useful exception. The IPO says that if an image was made as part of someone's employment, the employer will generally own the copyright. So photos your staff take for your socials as part of their job are generally yours, while photos from a freelancer or a guest aren't, unless they agree otherwise.

#What do Instagram's terms say about reposting?

Instagram's Terms of Use say it doesn't claim ownership of what people post. Users give Instagram itself a licence to host and show their content. Nothing in the terms hands other accounts, yours included, a right to repost it, and they also say: "You represent you own or have obtained all necessary rights to the content you post or share."

Instagram's help page on avoiding copyright problems is blunter still. It lists things that don't stop a post infringing someone's copyright, and two of them are exactly what venues tend to rely on: giving credit to the owner, and finding the content on the internet. It also says it's "generally a good idea to get written permission from the author of the work before posting content".

So a credit line on its own doesn't cover you. Lots of accounts repost with "credit to the owner" at the bottom, and Instagram's own guidance says that's not enough, so ask first.

#How to ask a customer for permission

A short direct message does the job. Be specific about where you'll use the photo, offer credit, and make it easy for them to say no. Something like this:

Hi [name], thanks for coming in on Friday, and that's a cracking photo of the pie. Would you be happy for us to share it on our Instagram and Facebook? We'd credit you as @[handle] in the caption and tag you on the picture. No worries at all if you'd rather we didn't. If it's a yes, just reply here and that's all we need.

If you want to use the photo anywhere else, ask about that too, in the same message or a new one. Agreeing to a repost on Instagram isn't obviously agreeing to your website, a printed menu or a paid ad, and I'd treat each of those as a separate question.

When they say yes, screenshot the reply and save it in the same folder as the photo, with the date. It takes ten seconds and saves a lot of head-scratching if the question ever comes up a year later. Ask for the original file too if you can. A screenshot of their story is lower quality and often has their app's clutter on it.

#How to credit a customer properly

Put their handle in the first line of the caption ("Photo: @handle" works) and tag them on the image itself. That way the credit shows whether someone reads the caption or taps the photo.

Then leave the photo alone as much as you can. Don't crop out a watermark or add a heavy filter, and ask before you put any text over their picture. The UK government's guidance notes that creators can have moral rights, including the right to be identified as the author and to object to changes made to their work. The IPO adds that if you're not sure whether the creator has asserted the right to be acknowledged, it's sensible to give a sufficient acknowledgement anyway, which is a good reason to credit by default.

#Collabs, tags and mentions: which should you use?

Tags and Collabs do different jobs, and Instagram's help page on collaborative posts explains the difference clearly.

A tag or mention credits someone, but the post isn't shared with their followers. A Collab makes them a co-author: you invite their account, and if they accept, their username is added to the post, it's shared with their followers and it appears on their profile. You can add up to five collaborators, the person who created the post can remove a collaborator at any time, and the collaborator can remove themselves.

For a guest's photo, a tag is usually right. Collabs make more sense for content you've made together, such as a post with your brewery or your butcher, or a local creator's visit.

#When user-generated content becomes your ad

Once you repost a customer's photo, the advertising rules treat it as yours. The ASA says user-generated content is subject to the CAP Code when a business "adopts and incorporates" it into its own marketing, for example by asking for content and posting it on its own channels. Resharing (the ASA's example is retweeting), commenting on or even liking a user's post can count too. And if the content is about alcohol, the alcohol rules apply.

For a pub or bar, that means checking a photo before you repost it as carefully as you'd check your own. Section 18 of the CAP Code says people shown drinking must neither be nor seem to be under 25 (rule 18.16), and alcohol marketing mustn't encourage excessive drinking or present drinking as a challenge. A guest's photo of a table of empty shot glasses might be a fun memory for them, but on your feed it's an ad.

Incentives need care too. The Competition and Markets Authority's guidance for brands says any incentive, including discounts and free products, counts as payment, and that promotional content resulting from your marketing should be clearly labelled as an ad. So "post a photo and tag us for a free dessert" looks like exactly the kind of incentive the guidance describes, which means those posts should carry an ad label and you'd be expected to check that they do. The CMA also says that concealed incentivised reviews became a banned practice under the law that came into force in April 2025 (the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024). Personally, I'd skip rewards for posts and just ask nicely after people have posted on their own.

One more check before reposting: who else is in the picture? A customer may be happy for their own face to be on your feed, but the people on the next table didn't agree to anything. I'd avoid reposting photos where other guests (and especially children) can be clearly identified.

Everything in this post about copyright, advertising rules and the CMA's guidance is general information, not legal advice.

#How to get more guests posting in the first place

People post what looks good and what's easy to tag. A few things help:

• Make the handle easy to find. Put it on menus, table cards and the bottom of the receipt.
• Give a couple of tables good light. The window seats will get photographed more than the dark corner, so that's where the photogenic dishes should land.
• Plate one or two dishes with the camera in mind. The guide to food photography on your phone has the plating tips.
• Check your tagged posts and mentions a few times a week, and comment to say thanks on the ones you'd happily stand behind (remember the ASA point above about comments and likes). People notice when a venue replies.
• Treat reviews as user-generated content too, and reply to them; there's a guide on how to respond to restaurant reviews.

When you do repost, write a proper caption around it, with the dish, the day and how to book, in your own Instagram caption style. A guest's photo with nothing but "Thanks @handle!" under it wastes a good post. And keep posting your own photos alongside guests' ones; reposts work best as part of a wider social media plan, filling the gaps between your own shoots.