Why Your Food Photography Doesn't Sell Your Food.

If you're doing food photography the right way — paying what it takes to hire an expert food photography team with a specialized food photographer, food stylist and art director — then you can pretty much ignore this post.

For you other guys who aren't doing it the right way (and you know who you are), I've got a bone to pick with you!

You're probably falling back on one or more of these rationalizations:

• I get a cheaper price by using a general photographer.
  
• Why hire a stylist when we have a corporate chef to style food?
• I want to cram a boatload of shots into a shoot day and specialists don't like that.
  
• Why pay a premium to shoot a bunch of photos we might not end up using?
  
• We bought an expensive digital camera and lights, so we can do it ourselves.
• Our foodservice company gives us pictures for free, so why pay?

For the record, none of these wash.

Nearly every restaurant marketing or operations manager will swear that the food is what makes their restaurant. So why do they place so little importance on making their food absolutely irrresistible to potential and core customers in photographs?

The only way customers will realize how "craveable" your menu offerings are is to see them. And the better they look in pictures, the better your customers know they'll taste. In fact, along with price and cuisine, the appearance of your food is the chief criterion a diner uses to measure you against your competitors.

After 15 years of doing restaurant promotions, I can cite plenty of before-and-after stories of double-digit sales increases that followed when resources were properly allocated to food photography.

Given that a relatively small investment can pay impressive and almost immediate dividends, I'm baffled that so many large, established chains are willing to skimp.

What's wrong with this picture?