Before you let an AI marketing tool edit photos of your real shop, read what happened to one bagel bakery
Adam Jones, owner of Myer's Bagels, a Montreal-style bagel bakery of about 22 people in Burlington, Vermont, in a Business Insider as-told-to essay
He used an AI platform for small businesses (not named; it also helps with HR) with a calendar for building a month of Instagram posts. He asked it for ideas such as a graduation post, imported the bakery's own photos, and let it tweak them. It put the shop's real grocery-store bags in front of a wood fire that wasn't theirs and turned a real customer review into a fake handwritten note, and it put a photo of their baker rolling dough onto a wooden cutting board with a fire and a bagel kettle in the background.
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AI small-business platform with a social media calendar (not named), Instagram
The problem
Social media kept dying off: student employees ran it well for a few months, then "the rest of their lives come into place" and it slowly faded. He says social media is not a strong part of his own experience.
What happened
"It didn't take long for our audience to realize what we were posting wasn't 100% Myer's." He estimates 25-30 comments on each of two posts, and some people left one-star Google reviews about the posts, not the food. "We got quite a bit of feedback on a few posts. I went in, pulled them, and apologized." He says they will keep using AI in many parts of the business, but "For social media, I think there's still a place for it, but I need to tread much more carefully." A cautionary case, self-reported.
Quoted in the source: Adam Jones, owner, Myer's Bagels. Source: Business Insider (as told to Henry Chandonnet): I used AI to help market my bagel shop. Then the one-star reviews came in. (2026-05-16) · Added 2026-11-01.
How to set it up yourself
- What happened at Myer's Bagels: an AI platform planned a month of Instagram posts and edited the bakery's real photos, adding a fire, a kettle and a fake handwritten review note. Customers noticed, left one-star reviews, and the owner pulled the posts and apologized. The steps below are our suggestion for using AI on posts without that risk.
- Use AI for the words and the calendar (post ideas, captions, timing), not to change what your product, staff or space look like.
- Post only your own unedited (or lightly cropped and color-corrected) photos of your real food, shop and people.
- Quote real reviews only as plain text with the customer's permission, never as a made-up handwritten note or image.
- If customers call something out, do what Jones did: pull the post quickly, apologize plainly and say what you'll do differently.
Copy-paste prompt
I run {BUSINESS TYPE} in {TOWN}. Plan {NUMBER} Instagram posts for {MONTH} around {EVENTS, e.g. graduation, holidays}. For each post give: the idea, a caption in a friendly local voice under {WORD LIMIT} words, and which of MY real photos to use from this list: {DESCRIBE YOUR PHOTOS}. Do not suggest editing, generating or altering any photo of our food, shop or people, and do not invent reviews or quotes.We set up one AI automation in your tools, live within 48 hours of getting access, for $197. No call needed. Founding price for our first 10 customers (regular $297).
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