Copenhagen Menu Photography for Print, QR Menus and Delivery Apps

Build the shot list from the menu, not from the dishes

Start by exporting the current menu as a list, one row per item, including modifiers that get their own tile on a delivery app. A smørrebrød with three toppings, a herring plate and a flæskesteg portion are three separate photographs, and so is the vegetarian version of a dish if it appears as its own listing.

Group the list by how the item is plated and by which station makes it. Cold open sandwiches, fried items, bakery, and desserts each need a different setup, and grouping them means the kitchen can produce a batch of one group while you shoot, instead of hunting for one dish at a time.

Decide before the shoot which items will never look good in a photo, such as a sauce-heavy dish served in a closed container for delivery. Those still need a photo for the app tile, but you shoot them as the customer receives them, not styled on a plate.

• One row per item, including size and modifier variants that get their own tile
• Sort rows by station and plating style to batch the shoot
• Mark which items are photographed plated and which in delivery packaging
• Note any item whose recipe is about to change so you do not shoot it twice

Use Copenhagen daylight deliberately

Copenhagen's daylight swings hard across the year. Around the June solstice there are about 17 h 16 min of daylight and the noon sun sits about 58 degrees above the horizon; around the December solstice there are about 6 h 44 min and the noon sun is only about 11 degrees up. That low winter sun comes in almost horizontally through a window, which is soft and useful, but it also means the light angle changes fast and shadows get long early.

In summer, shoot away from the window or hang a diffusion sheet, because a high sun throws short, hard shadows straight down and blows out white plates. The best window is a north-facing one, or any window in the two hours after opening before direct sun reaches it. In December, use the window directly but put the table about 1 m back so the low light rakes across the food instead of flattening it, and plan the shoot for late morning when the sun is highest.

• June to August: diffuse the window, shoot mid-morning, avoid the 11:00 to 15:00 direct sun
• March and September: window light is workable most of the day, still diffuse near noon
• November to January: shoot between 10:00 and 13:00, when the low sun is strongest and most usable
• Overcast days are the safest for a full batch in any month

Shoot a full menu in one pass

Set one camera position and keep it. A 45 degree angle shows height on a stacked smørrebrød and reads well as a small tile; a straight overhead shot suits flat plates and pastry and makes a tidy grid. Pick one for the whole menu, or one per category, and write it down so a reshoot months later matches.

Lock the background and the surface. The same table, the same board or plate family, and the same distance from the lens. If you change the plate halfway through, the delivery grid looks like two different restaurants. Keep a folded cloth and a small brush on set, and wipe plate rims between every shot.

Work in batches of five to eight dishes so nothing sits under the light and dries out. Shoot the whole dish first at your standard angle, then a tighter crop for the app tile, then move on. Check each frame on a laptop or tablet at thumbnail size, because that is how the customer will see it.

• Fix the angle, the surface and the lens-to-plate distance for the whole shoot
• Shoot one wide frame and one tight frame per dish
• Review at thumbnail size before the dish leaves the table
• Reshoot any item whose recipe or portion size changes

Name, store and sync the files

Agree a naming pattern before the first frame, for example menuitem_category_date_version. Use the same item name that appears on the menu and on the delivery listing, so the person uploading does not have to guess which photo belongs to which line. Keep the original files untouched in one folder and export working copies for each channel.

Sync is the part most restaurants skip. When a dish leaves the menu, its photo should leave the QR menu, the website and the delivery listing on the same day, and when a portion changes, the old photo should be archived rather than overwritten, so you can prove what was shown and when. Give one person ownership of the photo folder and a monthly check against the live menu.

Remember the labeling side: under EU Regulation 1169/2011 the 14 regulated allergens must be available for food sold without packaging, and for distance selling the mandatory information must be available before the purchase is concluded. A photo never carries that information, and a photo should not suggest an ingredient the dish does not contain.

• One naming pattern, using the exact menu item name
• Originals archived, exports regenerated per channel
• Monthly check: every live menu item has a current photo, every archived photo is off the live menu

Match each channel's requirements

Printed menus want the highest resolution you have and a crop that leaves room for the dish name. A QR menu loads faster with smaller files, so export a compressed version at the size it displays. Social posts and your Google Business Profile need their own formats, and a delivery app tile is usually square.

For delivery apps, check the upload screen rather than trusting a blog post. This site publishes a Wolt photo spec page for Denmark at /delivery-photo-specs/wolt/denmark/, and Uber Eats also operates in Denmark. Where a platform does not publish pixel specs, the upload screen is the authority on crop and minimum size.

Wolt do not accept AI-generated or altered images. For Wolt, shoot and upload your own real photograph of the dish. FoodPhoto takes a real photo of the restaurant's own dish and improves light, background and crop for the restaurant's own channels such as the website menu, Instagram, QR menu and print, keeping the food as it is, and every photo comes as a kit of sizes. It cannot guarantee approval by any platform.

Seasonal and menu-change rhythm

Plan reshoots around the menu, not the calendar alone. A Copenhagen kitchen with a spring and autumn menu needs two full shoots a year plus a rolling top-up for specials. Winter dishes shot in December window light will not match a July reshoot, so if you replace half the menu in summer, reshoot the whole category rather than mixing light.

Keep a short list of items that photograph badly and revisit them with a different treatment, such as a tighter crop or a different plate, rather than accepting a weak tile forever.