WHY RESTAURANT PHOTOGRAPHY IS SO IMPORTANT

A key to having a successful restaurant these days is by appealing to your customers’ senses, especially vision. While taste is ultimately the final judgement of your restaurant and food, you need to appeal to your customers visual sense before they will come in the door. Now more than ever, people are Googling what restaurants to go to and are making their decision based on reviews and the look of the food and environment.

This is especially true in a large city like Chicago where there is a decent amount of tourists that aren’t familiar with the food options near them.  If your restaurant doesn’t use restaurant photography or food photography in Chicago to get customers in the door to enjoy your food, you could be missing out on a significant amount of business.

In today’s digital world, most people are going to look at a restaurant’s website before making the decision to visit there. If you have poor quality photos on your restaurant’s website or worse, no photos at all, you may be losing significant business because of it.

As the manager or owner of a restaurant or bar, we don’t have to tell you how important your menu is. In many cases it is a potential customer’s first introduction to your cuisine and having professional photos can mean a world of difference. Especially living in a large, diverse city like Chicago, where not everyone can read English, having quality food photography will entice people to visit your restaurant much more than descriptions will.

Many people want to see a photo of their food before they order, whether that be from the menu at your restaurant or from your website. People like to know exactly what they’re receiving, and nothing accomplishes that better than mouth-watering images of your food offerings. Food photography also allows you to highlight the best dishes at your restaurant to entice customers. Moreover, if both the pictures and the food are presented well, great photography of your Chicago restaurant, by a restaurant photographer, can make people hungry even when they’re not!

INCREASE PROFITS

Having a professional restaurant photographer will increase your restaurant’s bottom line. Professional food photographers will create the very best, high quality photos of your menu items and display them prominently which will increase the appeal of your cuisine. You may also feature your best dishes and/or ones that are most profitable for your restaurant on your website and menu which will not only help your customers but will increase your profits as well.

In addition to being used on your website and menu, the pictures captured by your Chicago professional restaurant photographer can be used in all kinds of marketing materials such as brochures, business cards, flyers, Google advertising, social media advertising, and in promotions. The photos will last a long time so it is certainly well worth hiring a professional restaurant photographer to take them rather than having unprofessional pictures that don’t represent the care and attention to detail that went into selecting each item on your menu.

When you decide to hire a food photographer, there are important things to keep in mind. For instance, food photography is very difficult and takes years of experience to master. This means you have to find a professional food photographer in Chicago that has an extensive portfolio of quality food photography that makes the food look appetizing.

THE 3 SECOND RULE​

In the world of graphic design, the three second rule is very important. The premise is that there is 3 seconds, a very small window, to capture the attention of a passing consumer. This applies to everything – billboards, people walking past a storefront, people thumbing through the pages of a magazine, etc. This applies more than ever to people viewing restaurant websites or menus.

When people are hungry, they aren’t going to spend a whole lot of time reading or even viewing any one particular restaurant online. They simply want to find something that looks good and go. So, a restaurant that has perfectly staged, high resolution food photography is much more likely to attract business than one that has mediocre pictures of their food.

We’ve all been to a restaurant that has very low quality, poorly staged food photography and, in the least, it is very unappetizing and puts a negative perception of the restaurant in your mind before you even eat.

The food at a restaurant with mediocre photography may in fact have better food than the restaurant with compelling images, but how is the customer to know if they’ve never been there? Don’t make the mistake of not having a professional food photography company take winning photos of both your restaurant and your food selection. Make the investment in your restaurant photography and it will pay itself back in droves!

DON’T FORGET TO CAPTURE THE RESTAURANT TOO!

It is baffling that in many cases, even restaurants that have great food photography do not have many pictures of the restaurant itself. Many people not only want to see pictures of the food, but also want to see the atmosphere they will be dining in. It is also important that the photographer not only be good at capturing the food, but also the environment. You want your restaurant to come across as a place where people will have fun and appreciate the aesthetic. An experienced restaurant photographer can make this happen for you.

When you hire a professional restaurant photography company such as Chicago Corporate Photography and Video to photograph your food, make sure you capture photos of the restaurant too. Your potential customers will surely appreciate it and will be more inclined to visit your establishment if they get a sense of what it is like to dine there beforehand.

PROFESSIONAL RESTAURANT PHOTOGRAPHER IN CHICAGO

The only way to produce professional restaurant photography is to use an experienced restaurant  photographer. Taking the photos yourself will just not work in this era of increased competition when your competitors all use high resolution photos on their menus.

Chicago Corporate Photography and Video has produced photos for literally dozens of restaurants in the Chicago area, as well as photography for hotels, bars, lounges and convention halls. We have the best equipment and the most experience and will develop a winning strategy along with you to create compelling food photography that will entice more customers to visit your restaurant and provide you with a real edge over your competition.

Chicago Corporate Photography and Video is located in River North, in the heart of downtown Chicago. Our experienced photographers will offer you a free consultation, and then create a plan to capture the very best photography of your restaurant, bar or establishment. We will schedule a day to shoot, and then edit and retouch the photos afterward to make sure everything is just right – especially the lighting. We also offer all of our customers cross marketing services upon request, as we want to do everything we can to promote the brands of our customers.

We’ll be happy to answer any questions you have regarding Chicago restaurant photography. Please feel free to Contact Us Here or give us a call at 312-623-3456.