A restaurant's pictures are crucial when it comes to convincing customers to make their reservations. They have the power to determine the taste of the food, even before the customer takes a bite. They are the kings of the online reputation of any restaurant business and are undoubtedly the first introduction to your offering.
Because of this, and with such a visual and varied market, you should nowadays make sure that the pictures that you publish, especially on social media showcase your dishes as the best in the world. Fortunately, technology is making it increasingly easier, and having a good digital image is achievable. How? Keep reading:
Follow the pictures' formats. The minimum crucial thing to do is to publish images that are in the correct sizes according to each social network. To that end, remember to take pictures of each dish or situation in different formats, vertically, horizontally and at different resolutions to make them versatile for marketing measures.
Take clean photos with little clutter. Less is more. What we mean is that it is better to take pictures of a dish with the right amount of ingredients and portions so that the whole ensemble looks good than a dish loaded with products, just like it is very important to maintain its cleanliness by cleaning the small crumbs, drops or stains.
Bird's-eye view pictures. Although it is also important to have a variety of frames, it is better to take overhead shots of your food in particular, i.e. from above, so that the entire offering can be seen.
Use good equipment to take your pictures. If you take your business's pictures in-house, you would be well-advised to invest in a good camera (a reflex camera, for instance) and also have a cell phone with a high-resolution camera to ensure the quality of everything you publish.
Take advantage of natural lighting. If your kitchen or restaurant has great external lighting during the day (especially the morning light), it would be interesting to take advantage of it to take the most natural and brightest photos. For instance, you can use baking paper on your windows to blur the light and combine it. You can also take pictures with special sunlight rays and achieve a more poetic effect that is very suitable for Instagram.
Invest in a direct light source It is also a good idea to have a direct light source to take pictures indoors or at times when natural lighting is unavailable. The important thing is for it to be powerful and preferably white.
Place the light at one side. Another trick to achieve better lighting is to place your staging in such a manner that the light source comes from one side of the dish and afterwards tinker around with it until you achieve the best picture.
Combine utensils with the food. For very colorful dishes, it is better to use white utensils that help to make the ingredients stand out. Conversely, if it is vegetable cream with more opaque colors, you can make the image stand out with decorated utensils. The important thing is to achieve balance.
Create images with fresh ingredients. The ideal thing is to make the pictures of the food as fresh and succulent as possible, since it's what will be shown and what customers will see. A good time to take pictures of your food for your social media on a daily basis is when it is sizzling, freshly plated, and about to go to the dining hall.
Use elements to embellish the food. There are some products that require a bit of help to look spectacular. You can use oil to make fruits look more vibrant and alive. You can use mint springs, rosemary, coriander or thyme to give some texture to a simple dish.
Take pictures of each ingredient. It is trendy on social media to show pictures of raw or separated ingredients as a creative way to count the recipes of the dishes. An attractive picture of a fresh and very green broccoli stick with a contrasting background color, for instance, can be eye-catching. Or a picture of creamy, fresh-sliced avocado.
Take pictures of the best areas of the restaurant. Instagram feeds off of stories, which is why food is not the only thing that speaks of the restaurant. That area with plants and a chalkboard with motivational phrases or that purple sofa at your entrance with a decorated wall or that striking lamp in your dining hall also say a lot about your business philosophy and are very popular images on this social network.
Use elements for depth of field. Large plants, mosaic walls, shelves or neon signs are the perfect elements to place in the background, experiment with the depth of field, and achieve more attractive compositions.
Make periodic professional sessions. In addition to organic day-to-day pictures to upload to Instagram or Facebook, it is crucial to have professional sessions every 3 months, for instance, and to have pictures of various aspects of the restaurant such as the decoration, kitchen activity, each dish on the menu, and pictures of your team at work. This will give you an updated and varied image database.
Are you using some of these tricks for your restaurant's pictures for social media? We hope so, and we hope that they consistently attract customers through your publications. Don't forget to publish impressive pictures on your profile on TheFork and thereby directly attract reservations to your business.
Also read the following article to obtain more tips for your images on TheFork:
How to take quality pictures to increase your reservations
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