Digital menu photography for a Caribbean fusion QSR in Holloway
It started at Carnival.
Chip 'n Jerk, Holloway Road and Portobello.
The business
Chip 'n Jerk started at Notting Hill Carnival. Kelvin was cooking to sell there six or seven years ago, and the shop came after that. Holloway Road first, Portobello second, and it is modern Caribbean fusion, sold fast.
What they needed
The owner wanted a menu that came through the sauces, and he wanted it dynamic rather than a set of static plates. Three things had to carry it: the sauces, the crispiness of the chicken, and the toppings. All of it against a look clean enough that a bowl still reads at the size of a thumbnail.
What I did
Movement, and sauce that is actually moving.
Seasoning falling through the frame. Honey pouring. A drip of scotch bonnet sauce caught coming over the rim of the tub with the bead still hanging off it. Those drips became a device that repeats across the menu in several places, so the set holds together as one idea rather than as a folder of good pictures.
Alongside the product shots, lifestyle frames: hands reaching in, a piece of chicken lifted out of the sauce pot, the table shot from above with the whole spread on it. On a delivery listing a hand in the frame is the difference between a product and a meal.
How a menu that moves gets made
Directing a hand model into the frame while the shutter runs is the difference between a plate that sits there and a plate something is happening to. I have cooked professionally for ten years, so I know which second that is.
Where the pictures live now
On their live ordering screens in the shops, on the delivery apps, on their own website, and in their promotional material. The product pictures are still in use, and the second shop opened more than a year after the shoot and went live on the same set.
Questions I get asked about this kind of shoot
Can you make a menu that is not just static plates?
Yes, and it is mostly preparation rather than trickery. Seasoning falling, honey pouring and a sauce drip caught coming over a rim are all real, and all planned before the shutter goes.
Do you shoot for the delivery apps differently?
Yes. On the app they are seen small, in a grid, next to a competitor, so consistency across the set beats any single hero shot. Then the same pictures get seen big: the ordering terminals in the shop, posters, the website. One set sells the product over and over, everywhere you put it afterwards.
Who plates it, you or our kitchen?
The baseline is that your kitchen plates it and I photograph it. I am talking to your chefs the whole way through so it comes out right for the lens rather than for the pass, and I will make small changes on the plate as we go. If you want the food properly built and styled, that takes longer and it is a separate service.
Selling through the apps? Send me your menu and I will tell you what I would do with it.
Food photography, Holloway and North London. Digital menu photography, delivery app photography, Uber Eats, Deliveroo and Just Eat photography, food styling, lifestyle photography, QSR photography, Caribbean food photography, jerk chicken photography, multi-site menu photography, London food photographer.
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