Food manufacturers

Photography and film for food manufacturers

Your product as the hero, in content people actually want to watch and share.

The gallery

Dark chocolate bar with roasted hazelnuts falling around it against a yellow background

Jamaican beef patty broken open to show the spiced filling, stacked on more golden patties

Jamaican patty beside its Port Royal branded wrapper with allspice berries and scotch bonnet

Forkful of tagliatelle in tomato sauce lifted above an open tin of peeled tomatoes

Properoni pepperoni pack in front of a full English breakfast with fried eggs and baked beans

Properoni pepperoni with flatbread and two bowls of chickpea salad, shot overhead on yellow

Properoni pack beside a plate of baked beans, fried egg and toast on a blue painted surface

Tomato ketchup squeezed from a bottle into a wine glass, cherry tomatoes scattered below

Sliced rare steak fanned across a wooden board with a blue-handled steak knife laid over it

Two yellow-handled kitchen knives on a wooden board with sliced courgette, red onion and greens

Yellow-handled knife cutting into a whole honeydew melon against a turquoise background

Five Savernake DNA chef's knives with coloured handles laid across an oak board

Hot sauce poured over fried chicken pieces served in glass tumblers on a dark counter

Brie, figs, grapes, walnuts and pecans on a dark board with a Global paring knife

Global knife block in black with the knives fanned out, lit low key against dark tiles

Hand lifting a Global chef's knife from its block, stir fry vegetables flying above a wok

Global santoku knife on a board beside a wok in full flame, pak choi waiting in a steel colander

Global chef's knives in a wooden block with squid, ginger and chilli frozen mid-air above a pan

Overhead of buffalo wings with celery, cucumber and hummus, beer being poured, Global Ukon knife

Bacon and fried egg bao bun on a white board with a bamboo steamer basket behind

Overhead bao burgers and plain steamed buns arranged on round wooden plates

Bao buns filled with pulled meat, sriracha and pickled red onion in a bamboo steamer basket

Hand holding a bao bun filled with pulled pork and spring onion above a plate of more

Four plain white steamed bao buns arranged on a white background for packaging

Chopsticks lifting pulled pork from a bowl beside a plain steamed bao bun

Six plain teardrop-shaped steamed bao buns arranged on a white background for packaging

Four hands reaching across a cheese board with brie, blue cheese and hard cheeses

Cheese knife cutting through a wedge of ash-rinded soft cheese on a board

Hand cutting a slice of cranberry-studded cheese on an olive wood board

Hand holding a boxed camembert against a soft pink background

Hand holding a boxed artisan blue cheese against a soft pink background

Hand placing a cheese pack above an arrangement of artisan cheese packaging on stone

You make the product. You probably do not have a creative department, and you certainly do not have a production department. So the content gets handed to whoever is free, or to a creator, and it comes back mixed. Some of it is good. Some of it does not look like your product at all.

Let me do the cooking and the filming

I cook it and I shoot it, on the same day, in the same head. You get crisp content that fits every channel you actually sell through: the pack, the listing, the trade deck, the retailer’s site, the ads and the socials. One brief, one supplier, no coordination between three people who have never met.

The entertaining recipe

This is the thing I would sell you first, and it has a name because it works.

A recipe that entertains puts your product in the middle of something somebody actually wants to watch. Not a pack shot they scroll past. Not a demo nobody finishes. A dish being made, with your product doing the work, and a reason to keep watching until the end.

It is still brand content. It has your look, your positioning and your product doing its job. It just has to stay interesting, because interesting is what gets watched, saved and sent on.

Your product as the hero

Hero means the dish exists because of your product. That is a deliberate choice and it changes everything about how the thing is shot: what is in focus, what the hands do, which second the camera stays on. I have cooked in professional kitchens for ten years, so I know which second that is.

What the work has looked like

Port Royal Patties, a Jamaican patty and pie manufacturer in Park Royal supplying Asda, Morrisons and Tesco. Factory shoots and factory film, and one of my photographs is printed on the retail box on the shelf. The owner called it a mini art department and video department inside the company.

Ming Foods, traditional bao styled with a modern twist: five product shots, all different, plus eight short videos. And the full wholesale listing package: the pack, the height, the inside of the product, then matching lifestyle shot in the factory while everything cooks.

Haloodies, a halal meat factory that supplied the supermarkets. Packaging and styling shots, and product content built for the listing rather than for a portfolio.

Global Knives, the Elements range launch: forty styled pictures, four set films, four ad cuts and three reels. Their site still runs those photographs today.

What somebody who buys this for a living says

Gabrielle Lily Darne, who commissions this work for her own food manufacturing clients, left this publicly, her words verbatim:

“I have worked with Smart Food Media multiple times in recent years. It is always a pleasure doing so. Andras’s cooking and photography knowledge is immense and he always hits it out of the park for my food manufacturing clients. I highly recommend using them for any food or cooking-related brands. Product photography, Social Video Reels, Lifestyle photography, and Product use demonstration content. Wholesale listing content.”

Three places it can happen

On site in your factory. In the studio. Or in a kitchen studio. Sometimes all three on the same project. It depends what the work is aiming for, and the mobile studio is what makes that a choice rather than a compromise. The product goes from the line onto the set while it still looks like it did when it was made, or it comes to me and gets built here.

Three sizes, the same work

The whole thing is a Creative Bank: the structured set of assets your team pulls from, built once and kept filled. Or take a piece of it. Recipe content built around your product, or a single Content Day. Same work, different size.

Where to next

Want the recipe developed properly as well as filmed? Recipe development. Just want to see the food? Food photography.

Talk about the project

What a product client says

“The photos are beautiful. Genuinely beyond what I expected. Andras has a natural ability to capture not just a product but the feeling behind it, and that's rare. Every shot reflects the quality and care that goes into Hyde's Real Sweet and I know these images are going to represent the brand for a long time to come.”

Charesa Gayle, Hyde's Real Sweet Artisanal Cookies, Croydon. Five stars on Google.

Case studies

Related work.

See recent work

Vegan sustainable brand, 150 videos and 500 pictures

I run Purezza's Instagram account, and I have produced and posted all the content for a year and a half. The profile sent over 700 link clicks a month straight to the brand. It drove excitement for product launches and showcased the specials and all the new flavours.

A mini art department, inside a patty factory that produces 28,000 patties a day

Port Royal Patties, Jamaican patty and pie manufacturer in Park Royal. Supplies Asda, Morrisons and Tesco. Over a year of work together, across multiple shoots.

One feel, one look, to show the meatiness of their food. Real BBQ

Red Dog Saloon, Shoreditch-based Texas-style barbecue group, multiple sites, multiple cities. Over a year, half a dozen shoots. Big bite, big flavour, the food as it actually is.