For restaurants and their marketing teams
Restaurant Marketing Strategy: Photography & Video
The photos and video your restaurant marketing strategy runs on.
Your story, told on every screen.
Food, people and place, planned as one visual library.
Good restaurant marketing starts with good pictures. I'm Alan De Herrera, and for twenty years I've photographed and filmed restaurants across Orange County, Los Angeles and San Diego. Menus, reels, chef portraits and kitchen stories all come out of one plan.
I don't run your ads or manage your accounts. I work with you, your in-house team or your marketer on the visual side, then build the photo and video library that makes your social media, website and YouTube channel look like the place people want to eat.
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Photography that sells the plate.
Menus, websites, delivery apps and social, from one shoot.
Food is the hero, so it gets the most care: plated dishes, drinks, the dining room, the bar, and lifestyle shots with hands and tables that feel like a real night out. You watch the images come up on a monitor as we shoot, so nothing is a surprise.
See restaurant photography, menu photography, delivery app photos and lifestyle photography.
Video for the scroll. Video for the story.
Reels, vertical videos and long-form storytelling.
Short vertical reels catch attention on Instagram and TikTok. Longer storytelling videos, with interviews and the sound of the kitchen, give people a reason to care about who is cooking. I shoot both, often in the same visit as the photos.
Chef Cody Storts at Grits, Fullerton. A long-form story with interviews.
Hidden House Coffee. A brand story video.
More examples on the restaurant video and reels page.
The people behind the plate.
Chef and owner portraits, and the back of the house.
Guests connect with people before they connect with a menu. Portraits of the owner, the chef and the team give your marketing a face. Back-of-house coverage shows the work: prep, fire on the line, plating and the pass. Those are the pictures and clips that make a restaurant feel real.
See more chef and restaurant portraits.
What a restaurant marketing strategy needs.
Five visual pieces to have ready before you post, print or advertise.
Every restaurant marketing strategy, whether you write it yourself or an agency writes it for you, depends on the same raw material. These are the five I plan for with every client.
1. Menu photos that make people hungry. Your best sellers and highest-margin dishes, shot for your website, menus, Google profile and delivery apps.
2. Short vertical video. Reels for Instagram, TikTok and YouTube Shorts. This is where new guests find you first.
3. One story video. Who you are and why you cook, told in a minute or two for your homepage and YouTube.
4. Faces. Portraits of the owner, chef and team, so press, posts and your About page have real people in them.
5. A refresh schedule. New photos and clips each season or menu change, so your marketing never runs out of fresh material.
A plan before the camera comes out.
A restaurant visual marketing strategy, built with you or your team.
Every project starts with a creative session. We look at your brand, your menu and examples you like, then I write a shot list and a creative brief so shoot day is organized.
If you have a marketing manager or an agency, I work to their calendar and campaigns. If you do your own marketing, I work directly with you and help decide what to shoot first.
Read how the plan comes together
1. Goals. We talk about what you want the pictures to do and where they will be seen.
2. Shot list. Hero dishes, kitchen action, portraits, the bar and the dining room, written down before the shoot.
3. Shoot day. I bring all the equipment and work around live service.
4. Delivery. Photos are edited and delivered within three business days. Videos can be edited and delivered within a week or less.
5. Refresh. Many restaurants bring me back each season, so the library keeps up with the menu.
One library. Every channel.
Social media, your website, YouTube and more.
The goal is an image and video library you can pull from for months: vertical and horizontal crops of every photo, short clips for reels, and longer cuts for your website and YouTube. With one organized set of files, every post, page and ad looks like the same restaurant.
Photo shoots start at $495, and restaurant video packages start as low as $695. See pricing for more.
Restaurant marketing strategy questions.
What is a restaurant marketing strategy?
A restaurant marketing strategy is your plan for how new guests find you and why regulars come back: who you want to reach, where you will show up (Google, social media, your website, delivery apps, email) and what you will show them. Photos and video are the part I handle, because every one of those channels needs them.
How do photos and video fit into a restaurant marketing strategy?
They are the raw material. Your website, Google Business Profile, Instagram, ads, menus and delivery apps all need images, and guests decide where to eat largely by what they see. Planning one photo and video library up front means every channel stays consistent and you are not scrambling for content each week.
Do you offer restaurant marketing services?
No. I do not run ads, manage social media accounts or do SEO. I create the photography and video, and I help plan what to shoot so your marketing has what it needs. Many clients pair me with their own marketer or agency.
Can you work with our marketing team or agency?
Yes. I regularly work with in-house marketing teams and outside agencies. Send me the campaign calendar or the brief and I will build the shot list around it.
We do our own marketing. Where should we start?
Start with the pictures guests see first: your menu items, your Google profile and your delivery apps. Then add short video and a few portraits of the people behind the food.
What is a restaurant storytelling video?
It is a longer video, usually one to three minutes, that tells the story of the restaurant through interviews with the owner or chef, kitchen footage and the dining room. It works well on your website and YouTube.
Can you shoot photos and video in the same visit?
Yes. Most restaurants book photos and video together, so everything matches and the kitchen is only interrupted once.
Do we need to close the restaurant for the shoot?
No. I work around live service and bring all the equipment.
Which cities do you cover?
I work with restaurants across Orange County, Los Angeles, San Diego and Riverside, including Irvine, Newport Beach, Costa Mesa, Anaheim, Long Beach and Pasadena.
Let's build your visual library.
Restaurants and marketing teams across Orange County, Los Angeles and San Diego.
Get a quote