6 Mistakes You May Be Making When Using Images for Your Restaurant Marketing

In my web design business, I follow many interesting Instagram restaurant accounts. Maybe I have dined there, enjoyed a glass of Chardonnay on a hot summer afternoon, or read about them in a local guide. Something always draws me to search for these restaurants on social media. I follow accounts for two main reasons: either their photos are so beautiful that it’s a pleasure just to look at them, or their images are not doing them any favors. If they have an equally unappealing website or no website at all, they are my dream clients.

Why You Should Step Back and Look at Your Photos as a Potential Client

Let’s be honest: Instagram is full of top-class photos. It’s a glamorous place where everything looks fresh and juicy.

When I scroll and see cakes, for example, the ones I eventually want to try are the ones that I want to eat with my eyes. I see a delicious cake, read an interesting inside story below it, and make a mental note to visit “Cakes and Coffees” or whatever the coffee shop’s name is, to try it.

And, if you are not the owner of “Cakes and Coffees,” then chances are you are making one of the following mistakes in your social media marketing.

Here I list 6 mistakes that I often see restaurant and cafe owners make on Social Media:

• You are using amateur photography

  
  

Yes, I know you might think it’s crazy to hire a professional to take photos of your food. Actually, it’s not. If you own an eatery, food is by far your most important asset, so if you are not investing in professional photography, you are losing to every business that does.

• You are not taking advantage of generative AI

Ask yourself: is it so important to post a photo of that actual plate of food? Or that one croissant? Or that one glass of beer? The answer is no in most cases. Of course, strawberry cheesecakes are not all the same, but have you ever seen anyone come to a café with a mobile in hand, showing a photo they took off Instagram? I bet you haven’t. Use generative AI like Midjourney.

Take a photo of your dish, generate AI images similar to it, choose the best, and use them.

• You ignore the details around the plate of food

Any beautiful food plate can be ruined by the wrong details you may have ignored: a stained tablecloth, a messy kitchen, a kitchen towel that shouldn’t be there, a dirty napkin, or someone’s foot that somehow got into the corner of the photo. Let me tell you again—AI is your friend.

• You Are Not “Branding” Your Photos

Have you ever seen a photo and immediately knew who it belonged to? Perhaps because of the angle, a filter used, or something else that made it a “branded” photo?

If you look at the Instagram account of any respectable restaurant with a large following, you’ll see that all their photographs follow the same style. They may use the same lighting or the same filter.

Before starting an account on any social media platform, you should have your Style Guide. If you have a web designer who made your website, they should have created a style guide before even starting the site. If not, you might want to consider getting a new designer. A style guide is a collection of colors, fonts, font sizes, and styles, along with the “tone of voice” that must be used in all your communication channels. Simple.

• You Are Not Adding Any Story

If you are posting a photo without any story attached, you are not connecting with your customer. People love stories; they want to know who is behind the scenes or why this photo has been posted.

But writing something like “our pizza,” “lunch is served,” or “our delicious brunch” really doesn’t do anything. Your potential customer is going to say, “So, OK, this is your brunch. Congratulations. Then what?”

What do you want to tell your audience? They don’t need to see yet another plate of pasta, no matter how beautiful it is. Do you really think they will be like, “Wow! Thanks for reminding me! I forgot that I really wanted to eat some pasta today, so I am on my way over to you!” ?

What you need to do is prepare before posting anything. Think what is the message you want to send. Tell the story. It doesn’t have to be about you all the time. Write about the Fair Trade coffee beans you are buying, tell the story about small coffee producers, and add a good photo of a cup of coffee. It will make a whole lot of difference.

• You are only featuring your food.

As I said before, people love stories. I don’t mean Instagram 24h stories, but rather the stories you tell below your photographs.

Yes, there will be people who go to your restaurant because they love your food, or somebody told them about it.

But what brings the first-time customer to your door? These people somehow identify themselves with your business. This is why it is so important to know who your ideal customer is and market to them. But I won’t talk about it here; this is for another blog post.

You need to talk about yourself, your story, your passion, and why and how you started your business. Feature the chef, the barman, and the help, to tell your audience about who is behind the scenes. The right people will identify themselves with your restaurant and surely will visit you.

And that’s about it for today.

To finish it up, here are some examples of how AI-generated photographs can be so much more impactful than real photos. So, don’t be afraid to use AI tools in your marketing!

The first photo is a real photo. Other images are generated by Midjourney, using a description of the real photo.

Example 1:

Example 2:

Example 3:

Example 4:

Example 5: