Food and Restaurant Photography
Your dishes photographed where they are served, in the light of the room. For the menu, the website, delivery platforms and social media — the one category a generated image cannot stand in for.
Restaurant Content
Your dining room, your team and your dishes as they are served — for the website, social media and the Google profile.
Every other category on this page now competes with generated imagery. Food does not, and the reason is worth stating plainly: a guest choosing a restaurant is looking for evidence that this dish, in this room, actually looks like this. A generated plate is a promise the kitchen never made, and the gap between the promise and the plate arrives at the table where it does the most damage.
That is why the dishes are photographed in your restaurant rather than carried to a studio. The room, the tableware and the light of the place become part of the image, which is exactly what makes it recognisable when the guest walks in. A dish shot on a seamless white background could belong to any establishment in the city — that is a supplier's photograph, not yours.
Sessions are normally scheduled between services, so nothing closes and the kitchen can plate without a rush behind it. Your chef plates, because the dishes photographed have to be the dishes served. My part is the light and the sequence; the food is not styled into something the customer will not receive.
Coverage extends beyond the plates when it is useful: the room, the team, the façade. A seasonal arrangement covering the new dishes each quarter is the version that keeps a menu current without a full reshoot every time the card changes.
We are a small place. Does professional food photography pay for itself?
It is judged on one number: whether people choose you from a photograph before reading anything. If most of your covers come from the street, the return is thin. If they come from Google, Instagram or a delivery platform, the photograph is doing the work of your window display.
We change the card every season. Will the photographs be obsolete in three months?
The room, the team and the signature dishes are not. Only the seasonal plates turn over, which is why they are shot as a seasonal update under contract — priority booking, same hourly rate.
How do we know the dishes will look like ours and not styled beyond recognition?
Because your chef plates them and nothing inedible goes near the set. Food styling that improves the photograph and betrays the plate is a short-term trade — the guest makes the comparison at the table and remembers the discrepancy, not the image.
Do we need to close, and who has to be there?
No closure. Sessions run between services and need the kitchen, not the front of house. Your part is a list of dishes in the order they should be plated; everything else is set up before the first plate leaves the pass.
Our supplier and the delivery platform already gave us images. Is that enough?
Those show a category, not your kitchen. Delivery platforms in particular reuse generic imagery across restaurants, which means your listing looks like the one above it. The included rights cover delivery platforms precisely so your own photographs can replace them.
Are studio lighting and a backdrop included in the price?
No — the price covers shooting with the light available in your space. If there is little daylight — a windowless meeting room, the evening, a dark venue — I bring studio lighting and a backdrop: +100 € within Brussels. We decide together at the briefing, from photos of the space.
Menu and Delivery Photography
Dishes on a clean background, delivered in the dimensions each platform actually requires. Uber Eats and Deliveroo do not accept the same file — the set is prepared for both, and for the printed card.
This is a different job from photographing your dining room, and confusing the two is what produces a listing that underperforms a competitor with worse food. In the room, the photograph sells an evening. On a delivery platform it competes inside a scrolling grid of thumbnails on a phone, where the dish has roughly one second to be identified. What reads there is a clean background, a single item, and the food large in the frame — the same discipline as a product catalogue, applied to a plate that only looks its best for a few minutes.
The specifications are not a formality, and they differ between platforms. Uber Eats requires a single item per image, an aspect ratio between 5:4 and 6:4, and rejects photographs depicting people — hands excepted — along with any text or watermark. Deliveroo’s menu documentation specifies 1920 by 1080 pixels at 16:9. One file cannot satisfy both, which is why framing leaves room at the edges on the shoot day and each platform gets its own export rather than a crop improvised later. Rejections arrive after the listing deadline, when there is no time to cook the dishes again.
Your kitchen plates, as it does for the room session — the photograph has to match what arrives in the bag, and the guest makes that comparison at their kitchen table rather than in your restaurant. This is also the reason generated imagery has no place in a delivery listing: the platform requires the image to represent the item actually sold, and the discrepancy surfaces at the moment of delivery, attached to a refund request.
The printed card is the same shoot with a different output: the files are prepared at print resolution alongside the platform exports, so a menu redesign later does not require the kitchen to plate everything a second time.
We already photographed our dishes in the dining room. Why shoot them again on white?
Because the platform crops your photograph into a small square next to forty others. A dish shot on a wooden table in warm evening light looks like a restaurant scene at full size and like a brown rectangle at thumbnail size. The two sets do different work and both are worth having — the room images sell the visit, these sell the order.
How many dishes fit into one session?
There is no fixed number: the session is booked by the hour (minimum booking 2 hours — 380 €, each additional hour — 190 € excl. VAT), and the number of dishes is agreed with the chef in advance. The limiting factor is your kitchen’s pace rather than the camera: each plate is photographed as it leaves the pass.
A platform rejected the photographs we already have. Can those be fixed?
Sometimes. Rejections for dimensions, file weight or format are corrected from your existing files without a reshoot. Rejections for content — several dishes in one frame, people, text burnt into the image — cannot be, because the required photograph was never taken. Send the rejection notice and it will be clear within 8 working hours which case you are in.
How is this different from packshot photography?
Technically it is the same discipline: consistent framing, controlled background, files built to a platform specification. The difference is that a product waits and a plate does not, so the sequence is planned around the kitchen and each dish is lit as it arrives rather than adjusted for an hour.
We need images for the printed card as well. One shoot or two?
One. The printed card and the delivery listing use the same photographs at different resolutions and crops, and both outputs are prepared from the same session.
Are studio lighting and a backdrop included in the price?
No — the price covers shooting with the light available in your space. If there is little daylight — a windowless meeting room, the evening, a dark venue — I bring studio lighting and a backdrop: +100 € within Brussels. We decide together at the briefing, from photos of the space.
Show It the Way It Deserves
Your brand deserves to be seen in the best light. You've invested months of hard work and passion into creating your perfect product, menu, or culinary concept. It's time for visuals that match that perfection. From a targeted product feature to full-scale commercial advertising campaign production, I am ready to bring your vision to life. Don't settle for less. Contact me to let your efforts shine at full power!