There's a question that comes up in almost every quote, usually towards the end: "but how often do they need redoing?".
It's an excellent question, and one of the few that can't be answered with a number. Because a photograph for a website and a photograph for an October post are two different objects: they have two different lives, two different ways of being made and two different prices.
This article tries to put some order into it. It's meant to help a restaurateur plan the spending a little in advance, and — I hope — also anyone in my line of work who finds themselves explaining the same things with every quote.
The first criterion: the medium decides how long it lasts
Even before the budget, the useful question is: where does this image live?
The website: photos that have to age well
A website gets redone once every two, three, four years. The photos that go into it have to hold up for that whole span without looking dated.
This changes the way they're shot. Less chasing the look of the moment — food photography has its fashions too, and they pass as quickly as those of plating — and more attention to what doesn't wear out: light, material, gesture, the relationship between the dish and the dining room.
They cost more per shot, and that's consistent: you're buying them for four years. Divided by the months they stay online, they're probably the cheapest item in a restaurant's entire communication.
The sign that it's time to redo them isn't aesthetic but substantial: if the dining room, the kitchen, the hand in the kitchen or the positioning have changed, the photos are telling the story of a restaurant that no longer exists. Even if they're beautiful.
The menu: the season is the clock
Here the rhythm isn't set by communication, it's set by the kitchen.
A dish goes on the menu and a few months later it comes off. Photographing it with the same care meant to last for years means buying durability you don't need; not photographing it at all means that dish, outside the dining room, has never existed.
The frequency follows that of the menu, which in the restaurant world typically moves between one and four revisions a year: fine dining at the slowest, most deliberate pace, the contemporary trattoria at the fastest. The classic industry recommendation — update at least once a year, better two or three times — also applies to the images that go with that menu.
In practice: one shoot for every menu change. One to six times a year, depending on how the kitchen works.
Social media: not a shoot, a flow
This is the part that causes the most misunderstanding when quoting, and rightly so: it goes by the same word but it's a different thing.
Social isn't a shoot that gets repeated. Its purpose isn't to document the menu, but to rediscover a different side of the place every month: the supplier, the hand kneading, the dining room at seven in the evening before the first guest walks in. The same old things, told from an angle nobody has seen yet.
The typical frequency is monthly, and it still ties in with the seasonal changes, with an archive large enough to cover the months in between.
And this is where the work has changed the most in the last two years.
The second criterion: how much content you need, and of what kind
Until recently a social media shoot meant twenty or thirty images. Today the number matters less than the format.
Short vertical video has become the way people discover where to go and eat. Reels consistently reach far more people than static posts, because the platform also shows them to those who don't follow the profile — which is exactly what a restaurant lives on: new people walking through the door. And the content that works best isn't the glossy dish: it's behind the scenes, the kitchen in motion, what the great majority of customers say they want to see.
This has a concrete consequence for who you choose to do it.
One professional, two languages
In practice, a complete social media shoot today needs photos and video together. And for most independent restaurants having two different professionals isn't sustainable: you end up choosing just one.
That's why, for those behind the camera, being able to shoot video is no longer a bonus. It doesn't mean becoming a director: it means producing short content on the same set and in the same light you're already photographing in. For someone who's already there with the lights up the extra cost is minimal, and the result covers two needs in one go.
For the restaurant the advantage is practical even before it's financial: one person in the kitchen during service, one trip, a single visual language between the menu photos and the social videos.
A plan to work from
| Where | How often | What kind of images |
|---|---|---|
| Website and identity | Every 2-4 years, or at the first major change | Timeless, few, highly crafted |
| Menu and dishes | At every menu change (1-4 times a year) | Descriptive, consistent with each other |
| Social media | Monthly, ongoing | Photos and short video, lots of behind the scenes |
| Brochures, packaging, products | By project | Built around the final medium |
There's only one trap that's easy to fall into, and it has nothing to do with frequency: using the same images everywhere. Photos made for the website, reused on the menu, then on social media, then on delivery apps. On paper it's efficient. In practice, after a few months the website looks alive and the social channels look frozen — not because the photos have aged, but because the same image, the fourth time it's published, no longer says anything.
Better a few right images at the right time than a large archive that ages all at once.
"You don't take a photograph, you make it."
— Ansel Adams
The same goes for planning. A restaurant's images aren't taken once and done with: they're built over time, with the same attention that goes into building a menu.
If you have a menu change coming up or a website to redo and you want to understand what you really need, write to me: it always starts there, not from the quote.
Read next: how a tasting-menu shoot is organised.
