Bakery Menu Photos on Uber Eats: Specs, Angles and Upload Rules

What Uber Eats actually publishes about image files

Uber's developer documentation for menu integrations is the clearest technical source: files under 25 MB, in JPG, WEBP or PNG, with width and height each between 320 px and 6000 px. That is a wide corridor, and it is the only pixel guidance Uber publishes in one place. Uber Eats does not publish a single required aspect ratio or a fixed crop for item photos, so any number you see quoted elsewhere (5:4, 550x440, 10 MB) is not from Uber.

In practice, upload a landscape or square file at roughly 2000 px on the long edge. That sits comfortably inside the published range, stays well under 25 MB, and leaves room for the app to crop for different screens. Check the upload screen in Menu Maker before you batch-export a whole menu, since it shows the crop your items will actually get.

Photos are uploaded per item inside Menu Maker in Uber Eats Manager, and each one shows an in-review or rejected status in the Items tab. Build a habit of checking that status column a day after uploading rather than assuming a photo went live.

• File type: JPG, WEBP or PNG
• File size: under 25 MB
• Dimensions: width and height each between 320 px and 6000 px
• Upload point: per item in Menu Maker, status visible in the Items tab

Uber's own photo tips, applied to bread and pastry

Uber Eats' merchant photo guidance asks for indirect natural window light, not harsh direct sun and not fluorescent tubes. For a bakery this matters more than for most kitchens, because pastry is mostly about surface texture: laminations, sugar crust, seeded tops, the shine on a glaze. Direct sun blows out the top of a croissant and turns a pale sourdough into a white shape with no crumb detail. Stand your table a meter or two back from a north-facing window and shoot mid-morning, and the same loaf reads as brown, blistered and crusty.

Uber's tips also ask for top-down shots for plates and bowls and about 45 degrees for burgers, sandwiches and other tall items. A bakery maps onto this neatly. Flat items shot from above: sheet cakes, brownies, focaccia, pizza al taglio, tartlets, a tray of cookies. Tall or layered items at about 45 degrees: filled croissants, sausage rolls, layer cakes on a stand, sandwich loaves, éclairs. A whole round cake is the awkward case; shoot it at 45 degrees to show height and cut one slice so the interior is visible.

Uber's rules also say to cut and stack burgers, wraps and burritos so the filling shows, to garnish for color without misrepresenting the dish, and to avoid extreme close-ups that hide ingredients and portion size. Bakery translations: cut a custard tart so the set custard is visible, break a croissant open to show the honeycomb inside, and photograph a single cookie next to a hand or a coffee cup so the buyer can judge scale.

Which bakery items to photograph first

Start with the items that carry your margin and your identity, not the whole case. For most bakeries the first pass is: the signature loaf or sourdough, the best-selling croissant or viennoiserie, one filled or savory item (sausage roll, quiche, sandwich), one celebration cake, and two or three small items that work as add-ons such as cookies, brownies or a cinnamon roll.

Think about how the order is assembled. A bakery order on a delivery app is usually a main item plus small add-ons, and the add-ons are chosen from thumbnails at the bottom of a cart. If your cookies are photographed as a pile on a tray, every cookie looks identical and none looks big. Photograph two cookies side by side on a plain surface and the size reads instantly.

Skip anything that changes daily or seasonally until the rest is done. A photo of a sold-out item is worse than no photo, because the customer taps it and finds it unavailable. Anything you photograph should be something you can bake again on a normal week.

• Signature bread or sourdough loaf, one shot whole and one cut
• Best-selling viennoiserie, shot at about 45 degrees
• One filled or savory item with the filling visible
• One celebration cake, whole plus a cut slice
• Two to three small add-ons shot together for scale

Crops, backgrounds and thumbnails

Uber Eats does not publish a fixed aspect ratio for menu photos, so the safest approach is to frame so that the item survives a square crop. Keep the pastry centered with a small margin on all sides; anything important within the outer edge of the frame will be trimmed on some screens. A square export also works on Instagram and a QR menu without re-shooting.

Keep the background quiet and true to the bakery: a wooden board, a plain paper liner, a marble counter, a linen cloth. Avoid a busy tray of mixed pastries behind a single croissant, because at thumbnail size the background becomes the subject. Avoid heavy vignetting and colored gels for the same reason.

Shoot a few items in a set so the menu looks coherent: same surface, same light, same distance. A menu where one croissant is shot on dark slate in evening light and the next is on a white plate in daylight looks assembled from different shops, even when both photos are technically fine.

Why bakery photos get rejected or sit in review

Most rejections come from a mismatch between the photo and the item description or price, not from technical faults. A photo of a whole cake next to an item sold by the slice, or a croissant photo used for a pain au chocolat, is the kind of thing review catches. Name the item exactly as it is sold and photograph exactly that.

A second common cause is a photo that hides portion size. Uber's guidance against extreme close-ups exists for this reason, and bakeries fall into it constantly because pastry looks good very close up. A tight macro of a croissant's crust tells the buyer nothing about whether it is small or large.

Finally, check the Items tab in Uber Eats Manager after uploading. A rejected photo leaves the item with no image, which in a thumbnail-driven menu is worse than a plain but honest photo. Replace it, do not wait for review to change its mind.

Getting the shoot done in one session

Book a two-hour window in the morning, after the first bake but before the counter gets busy. Set up near a window with indirect light, put down one surface, and shoot in a fixed order: flat items from above, tall items at about 45 degrees, then cut-open versions of anything with a filling. Shoot each item landscape and square while the item is in front of you; reshooting later costs more than the extra frames.

For your own channels, FoodPhoto takes a real photo of your own bake and improves the light, background and crop for your website menu, Instagram, a QR menu and print, keeping the pastry as it is, and delivers each photo as a kit of sizes. Upload your own real photographs to Uber Eats directly through Menu Maker, and check the Items tab after they go in.