Menu Photography: The Tangibles & The Intangibles

If you’re wondering if it is worth the expense to hire a professional food photographer, there are more than just numbers to consider. Some of those numbers are tangible and others are not.

The Tangibles…

When it comes to photos on the ordering apps, Menu Cover Depot has found that professional photos are likely to increase sales by 30%. Grub Hub also states that professional photos increase sales by 30%, for Uber Eats it’s 28%. Door Dash did a study in 2022 of over 15,000 small restaurants and found that menus with photos received up to 44% more in sales. They’ve also found that menus with photos increase the Conversion Rate by 25%. This means that of all the people who are browsing your page online, 25% more of them order. (THAT’S HUGE!)

From our personal experience with one of our clients, they found that within a few weeks of posting all the photos to the ordering apps, their most expensive item became one of their bestsellers.

The Intangibles…

As I had mentioned in my “Oooh or Ewww” post, having professional photographs on your website does far more to entice potential customers to your restaurant than no photos or even worse, bad photos. If beautiful images on your website and/or social media do their job of getting people to come and try your restaurant, using those images in marketing e-mails instantly reminds those customers of your restaurant and spurs repeat visits.

A rarely considered but very important intangible is the ability for you to control your visual narrative with the photographs. Your website, social media, ordering apps, printed menus and review sites like Yelp will have the same professional images, which means the customer consistently sees your food in the manner in which you want them to. Because let’s be honest, the photos that people post on your Yelp page are very rarely appetizing.

Also, if you have any TV screens in your restaurant, a slide show of your menu is a great way of suggestive sales. You’ll definitely want to showcase any specialty cocktails and desserts in this slide show to spur those add on sales and increase your per check average.

Let’s do the math

Let’s assume you have 500 unique visitors to your web order page every month.
If 100 of those visitors place an order that averages $30.00, it equates to $3,000 in sales per month.
If you increase that amount by 30% as the apps suggest, it now equates to $3900 in sales per month.

It’s impossible for me to tell you exactly how much money those increased orders and visitors will create. Even if I could, that would only be the tangible number. You’ll have to take a hard look at what your customers are already seeing online and decide for yourself how valuable those intangibles are.

Sources: Menu Cover Depot: https://get.grubhub.com/blog/why-food-photography-matters/#:~:text=According%20to%20Menu%20Cover%20Depot,menu%20dishes%20come%20to%20life.

Grub Hub: https://get.grubhub.com/blog/improve-online-ordering-experience/
Door Dash: https://get.doordash.com/en-us/learning-center/photos