We often get asked, ‘Why should I book a food photographer for my restaurant?’ There are so many answers to this question. However, considering we live in a visually driven world, photography could open the door to a whole host of new opportunities for you, your food, and your business.
With the world reopening and the UK hospitality industry’s bars, restaurants, and food markets easing into our new sense of ‘normal’, now is the perfect time to promote your restaurant, food stall, or foodie brand in the best possible way; through the camera’s lens. Show your food off and elevate your branding.
A Feast For The Eyes
We’ve all been there when you see something delicious that you immediately crave or are put off by a bad photo or stock website food picture that you can guarantee isn’t from the restaurant you’re looking at booking. We eat with our eyes first, so make your food photographs count! How many times have you looked around at other diners in a restaurant before ordering your food from the menu? Photographs are the ‘restaurant look around’ of the restaurant booking process. A process that helps determine your stock and staff levels, one of the most important metrics for restaurants right now.
Continuity Is Key – Especially When Establishing Your Brand 
You want your photography to be cohesive. Having a set of photographs that you can use across all your marketing efforts for your restaurant, such as email marketing, social media marketing, advertising, and your restaurants’ website, is imperative. And truthfully makes your life a lot easier, trust us, we’re photographers!
Having a cohesive vision for your restaurant immediately informs your customer that they’re looking at the right restaurant, whether they are looking on your website or social media. It’s also great if you have any third-party platforms you sell through, such as Just Eat, Uber Eats, Deliveroo, or Too Good To Go.
Eat Out & Helping Out
It’s been a while since restaurants were fully booked most nights of the week or driving as much interest and booking traffic as they currently are as we, of the lockdown in the UK. It’s the perfect time to have a fresh new set of photography featuring your food and your restaurant and perhaps even your staff too. You want to present a fresh new look and feel to your old and new and potential customers, especially as it’s been a year since they’ve been able to dine with you. Looking fresh and appealing with up-to-date food photography will entice old customers back and invite new customers in.
Having appetising professional food photography elevates your food and your restaurant brand further. It shows your customer that you’re serious about your food and how you present it. At Culinary Camera, we love the process of photographing food and understanding what chefs, restaurant owners, and bakers want to communicate through their food and to their customers. We enjoy the challenge of making sure food looks fantastic, that it genuinely looks good enough to eat!
Hiring a professional food photographer will make or break your photo. Hiring a food photographer allows you to elevate your aesthetic, drawing on their professional experience, creativity and knowledge of styling and lighting.
In a crowded marketplace such as hospitality, you want to make your mark and stand out from your competitors. Having a set of photographs goes beyond the food itself. A great collection of food photographs and pictures of your restaurant internally and externally can be used for promotional materials, third-party sites and Google places. Photos are also a fantastic snapshot of time that you can look back on in years to come. Photography is the content that keeps on giving. It can be repurposed, reused and reformatted time and time again for whatever your business needs.
Let us take a shot
Good food demands excellent photography. Here at the Culinary Camera, we specialise in food photography, food styling and restaurant photography for foodie businesses, chefs, and restaurant owners. If you’d like to know more about us and our work, please book a friendly and free chat. Let’s see how we can help each other bring your food vision to fruition!