Why Restaurants Have Bad Photos.

I’ve been doing photography for a few years, but before that I was deeply involved in the restaurant industry. I was a long-time chef, and I owned a restaurant for nearly ten years.

That's me with my business partner & chef at Hawker, my restaurant back in 2022.

My experience as a restaurant owner taught me that I could not afford professional photography. My experience as a photographer taught me otherwise.

Back when I owned a restaurant, I tried doing the photography myself. That was probably a huge mistake. I was focused on saving money, and I ended up representing my brand poorly. Now, as a photographer, I see restaurants making the same mistake over and over again. I sympathize with their struggle, even though it’s often impossible to explain to them why they’re making the wrong decision.

If you own a restaurant, you basically have four options.

The first option is getting a free photo shoot from Uber Eats or one of the delivery platforms. It’s going to look terrible.

The second option is hiring an amateur photographer who will probably do a menu photo shoot for a couple hundred bucks. It’ll look better than the Uber Eats shoot, but it still won’t be brand-worthy. It also won’t help you compete with high-end restaurant groups that can afford real professional food photography.

The third option is hiring a professional food photographer who actually knows what they’re doing. This is going to cost you thousands of dollars. The problem is that restaurant margins are extremely thin. I know this firsthand. As a restaurant owner, it was hard to put money together, and for most of the year it’s difficult to justify spending thousands of dollars on photos.

The fourth option, which is fairly common, is hiring someone to manage your social media—and sometimes that person is also the one taking the photos. This is easier to sell to restaurants because it’s packaged as a recurring monthly expense. Restaurants need to feel comfortable with their monthly costs, and it’s much easier to justify paying $300–$500 a month for everything than doing seasonal photo shoots for $1,000–$2,000.

Unfortunately, this usually costs more in the long run. Anyone offering monthly social media content creation services to restaurants is probably very young and very amateur, and the results are usually lackluster.

There needs to be a clear distinction between content creation and actual assets that serve as your brand identity.

Sure, as a restaurant you need ongoing content for social media. In the past, I didn’t really participate in this game, and maybe I should have. Volume was not my MO. But I understand why restaurants feel pressure to keep up in a fast-paced world and fight for attention.

That said, there’s a huge difference between low-quality, high-volume, low-effort content that you can’t afford to spend much money on, and the content that shows up when someone is discovering your brand for the first time.

When it comes to your website or your Google listing, you need to look high-quality immediately. You need to convince people that you’re the right option.

This work, which I did for Chotto Matte, cost them a lot. And they could afford it, because they're not your average restaurant. They're owned by a big group.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/5bd3ea_010f90892eec46eabafa87cfecd32651/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

Conversion rates for restaurants are actually very high.

When someone is looking for a place to eat and they find the cuisine they want, all you really have to do is look good and not have a terrible Google rating. At that point, you’ve probably sold them.

People are desperate to stop browsing Google Maps. Personally, the moment I find something that looks suitable, I’m easy to convince. I hate searching for restaurants, especially if it’s for a date or something similar.

So what’s the solution?

If you invest $1,500—or even $2,500—into a professional photo shoot done by someone with real experience, not just some amateur kid, you’re going to convert more people over time. Realistically, you only need to seat 10–15 additional people over a year for that shoot to pay for itself.

I don’t think restaurants think about branding deeply enough. They focus too much on keeping up with the Joneses instead of focusing on what actually matters.

If you create a website that functions as a strong landing page, you will convert people. You’ll get more traffic than competitors who rely on endless social posts filled with bad photos.

Posting constantly on social media doesn’t get people into your restaurant if your audience is negligible to begin with. At that point, you might as well run ads. And if you’re running ads to bad content, you’re going to get bad results.

Yes, I’m biased. I’m a photographer, and my job is to make restaurants look amazing. But I also spent over a decade in the industry. I designed menus, marketed my own restaurant, and made every mistake possible.

Restaurants burn money creating constant flows of bad content because they think they need to. I don’t think that’s true. Restaurants can recycle high-quality content and end up spending less than hiring someone to produce endless mediocre posts.

I’ve worked with these social media managers. They’re kids. If they’re any good, they quickly outgrow restaurants as clients and move on to something more lucrative. That’s the reality.

You can’t hire an experienced social media manager for one small business, because small businesses can’t afford someone who’s actually good.

Most of my restaurant photo shoots yield 50–150 images. These can be reused for literal years without constantly worrying about new content.

And they actually look good, unlike half-baked ideas from a 21-year-old charging $399 a month to generate slop. No offense to young people; it’s just that this job mostly exists for people starting out.

After shooting over 100 restaurants around Toronto, I’ve learned that most don’t understand the economic value of a proper photo shoot. They’d rather get a ton of low-quality volume for their dollar.

And honestly, I get it. I had the exact same mentality when I ran a restaurant. The economics of the industry are brutal. Keeping your head above water long enough to justify an expensive photo shoot is rare.

So what’s my advice for restaurant owners in 2026?

Please don’t do yourself the massive disservice of using AI images for your content. It’s better not to post at all than to destroy trust by posting fake AI slop.

If you’re over 40, it might look impressive to you, no offense. But the people going out to eat between 20 and 35 recognize AI instantly. We grew up on the internet and on content. The moment you use fake food images, people click away and move on.

I’m not telling you to spend $1,500 on a photo shoot. I am telling you that authenticity is the name of the game.

Represent yourself as well as you can within your means. Don’t burn money trying to create endless low-quality content. Focus on quality over quantity.

People talk about quantity all the time, but they rarely talk about quality, especially in this industry. Look at the most successful restaurants in the world, even single-location ones. Look at their websites and social media. You won’t find low-quality content.

That pattern exists for a reason.

If you own a restaurant, bar, café, or any hospitality-adjacent business in Toronto, I’d be happy to talk to you about what might help.