Caviar Food Photography: What to Shoot and How to Crop

What Caviar actually publishes

Caviar is a brand of DoorDash. DoorDash acquired Caviar in 2019, and Caviar restaurants are managed through DoorDash's merchant tools. There is no separate Caviar image specification document to follow.

Caviar does not publish pixel specs, file size limits or aspect ratio rules for menu images. Any exact number you see quoted for Caviar, including resolution or file size, is not published by Caviar. Treat the upload screen in your merchant dashboard as the only authoritative source, and check it before every large batch of uploads because portals change.

• Check the image requirements shown in your DoorDash merchant dashboard before shooting or exporting.
• If a spec is not displayed, upload a test image and read any error message for the real limit.
• Keep a master file of every approved image so you can re-export if the portal changes.

Plan the shoot around the dish, not the platform

Caviar's positioning is premium, so the photography job is to make the plate look deliberate. That changes with the dish. A caviar service on ice, blini and creme fraiche needs a low, slightly angled camera so the tin and the garnishes read as separate layers. A composed seafood plate needs a higher angle so the arrangement is legible. A dessert with a mirror glaze needs a hard side light to show the surface, while a soup needs soft, broad light to avoid a blown-out highlight in the liquid.

Set the camera at roughly 45 degrees for most plates and drop to 20 to 30 degrees for tall or stacked presentations. Shoot from directly above at 90 degrees only when the dish is flat and patterned, such as a tartare or a platter. Keep the plate 40 to 60 cm from the window or light source, and use a white foam board on the shadow side to lift the dark areas without flattening the food.

Shoot on a surface that suits the price point. Dark slate, unglazed ceramic or brushed metal reads more upscale than a bright wood table, but only if the food contrasts against it. Pale dishes such as scallop crudo or white fish disappear on white plates and white marble, so switch to a darker board for those. Shoot a few frames per dish at different angles and pick later on a large screen, not on the camera back.

• Shoot each dish on a clean plate with no fingerprints, drips or stray crumbs on the rim.
• Remove background clutter: no visible tickets, foil, thermometers or kitchen towel.
• Keep portions exactly as served so the delivered dish matches the photo.
• Use natural window light or a single diffused source; avoid mixed color temperature from overhead fluorescents.

Crop for a square thumbnail first

Even without published specs, plan for a square 1:1 crop because that is the most common grid shape in delivery apps and it survives almost every other crop. Compose in camera so the food sits inside a centered square, with a small margin around the plate. If you frame tight to the edges, the app's crop will cut into the food.

Shoot wider than you need and export a square master at a generous resolution, then let the dashboard downscale. A 2000 x 2000 pixel master gives you room to produce a portrait 4:5 for social, a 16:9 for a website hero banner and a square for the app without re-shooting. Keep the main subject in the middle third so a 4:5 or 16:9 crop still holds the dish.

Check the thumbnail test before uploading: view the square crop at phone size, roughly the width of a thumb. If you cannot tell what the dish is, reshoot closer or simplify the garnish. Premium dishes often fail here because the plating is spread across a wide plate; a tighter crop on the centerpiece usually fixes it.

Review pitfalls that get premium listings flagged

Marketplace reviews tend to reject images that misrepresent the food or the setting. Do not add text, logos, watermarks, price tags or promotional badges to the image. Do not composite a dish into a stock dining room or add props that are not part of the order. Do not use heavy filters that shift the color of the fish, caviar or sauce, since customers compare the delivered dish to the photo.

Avoid showing a portion larger than what is served. If a caviar service comes with a specific garnish set, show that set, not an aspirational version with extra components. Keep backgrounds plain and consistent across the menu so the listing looks like one restaurant rather than a collage.

Caviar does not publish its own review rules, so the standards in force are the ones in your DoorDash merchant tools. Read the image guidance there and follow it, and if an image is rejected, fix the specific reason rather than resubmitting the same file.

• No text overlays, watermarks or logos on the food image.
• No stock backgrounds or props that are not served with the dish.
• No color grading that changes the appearance of the ingredients.
• Consistent background and lighting across the whole menu.

Build one photo kit for every channel

Your delivery listing is one output, not the whole job. The same approved square photo can feed your website menu, a QR code menu, Google Business Profile and Instagram, but each needs a different crop and sometimes a different brightness level. Print menus need more contrast than screens because ink on paper looks flatter than a backlit phone display.

Name files by dish and channel, for example scallop-crudo-square.jpg and scallop-crudo-4x5.jpg, so the right version goes to the right place. Keep the original raw or full-resolution file archived; when a portal changes its crop or a seasonal dish returns, you re-export instead of re-shooting. FoodPhoto takes a real photo of your own dish and improves light, background and crop for menus, delivery apps and social while keeping the food as it is, and delivers each photo as a kit of sizes for those channels. It cannot guarantee approval by any platform, so always check the final image against the upload screen.

A repeatable workflow for a premium menu

Shoot in batches by lighting condition, not by menu section. All window-light dishes in one session, all dark-background dishes in another, so the menu looks consistent. Photograph the ten dishes that drive the most orders first, then fill in the rest. Keep a shot list with the dish name, angle, surface and light setup so a reshoot matches the original.

After the shoot, cull on a calibrated screen, correct exposure and white balance, and export the square master. Upload one dish, check how it renders on a phone in the app, then upload the rest. This order catches crop or brightness problems on one image instead of forty.

• Shoot the highest-margin and most-ordered dishes first.
• Log angle, surface and light for every frame in a shared shot list.
• Upload one test image and inspect it on a phone before the full batch.