Just Eat Food Photography: What the Platform Asks For

What Just Eat actually publishes about photos

Just Eat publishes partial pixel specifications. Its official guidance asks for landscape item and header photos, and states that the header photo uses a 3:2 ratio. It does not publish a full set of pixel dimensions for item photos, so do not trust third-party blog posts that quote exact widths and heights as if they were official. Check the upload screen in Partner Hub when you upload, and confirm any size limits there before you export.

The platform's written rules are more useful than pixel numbers anyway. Show the dish as it is served, in its takeaway container or on a plate, centered in the frame. If a dish normally comes with a side such as sauce or chips, include it. Do not include items that are sold separately. Every photo is checked by Just Eat before it goes live, and its guide says review takes 3 to 5 working days.

Uploads split into two paths. Item photos go through Partner Hub. The single header photo goes through the photo uploader. That distinction matters when you plan a shoot: the header is one image for the whole listing, so it should represent the restaurant rather than one dish.

Plan the shoot around your menu, not around a template

Start by listing every item that needs a photo and grouping dishes by how they look on camera. A burger, a curry in a foil tray, a pizza in its box, and a salad bowl each need a different setup. A kebab shop in Birmingham shooting donor wraps in paper has a different problem from a sushi counter in Copenhagen plating nigiri on slate. The rule that ties them together is Just Eat's: show the dish as served, in its container or on a plate.

Shoot the container you actually deliver in. If biryani leaves the kitchen in a foil tray with a lid, photograph the open tray, not a ceramic bowl you never use. Customers compare what arrives with what they saw, and a mismatch shows up in ratings.

For each dish, decide the side question before the camera comes out. If the menu listing includes chips or a pot of sauce, they belong in the frame. If the sauce is a paid extra, keep it out. Write this next to each item on your shot list so nobody improvises on the day.

Shoot landscape for Just Eat. Phone cameras default to portrait when held upright, so turn the phone sideways or shoot in a landscape orientation setting. Leave space around the dish so the platform's own crop does not cut the edge of the container.

• One dish per photo, centered, with the full container visible
• Include included sides; exclude anything sold separately
• Shoot landscape, with breathing room on all four sides
• Photograph the real takeaway container or plate used in service
• Keep a separate shortlist for the single header photo

Lighting and camera setup for takeaway food

Delivery food is often glossy, wet, or stacked in a foil container, and all three fight a phone camera. Put the dish near a window with indirect daylight, not in direct sun, which blows out white rice and sauce highlights. If you shoot after dark, use two diffused lights at roughly 45 degrees to the dish on either side, and keep the phone's flash off.

Get low and close. A camera angle around 30 to 45 degrees above the table shows the depth of a stacked burger or a filled tray better than a flat overhead shot, which flattens curry and pasta. Reserve straight overhead shots for pizzas and sharing platters where the layout is the point.

Fill the frame with the food but keep the whole container inside it. A tray that runs off the edge looks like a mistake, not a style choice. Wipe the rim of the container, remove stray sauce drips, and check that no logo or sticker on the packaging is half cut off.

For the header, plan a 3:2 landscape composition. A spread of two or three signature dishes on the counter, or a clean shot of the kitchen pass, works better than a single close-up, because the header represents the whole listing.

Crops and exports before you upload

Shoot wider than you need and crop later. A landscape frame with space around the dish gives you room for the platform's own cropping and for your other channels. Keep a master file at full resolution and export copies from it rather than re-cropping a compressed image.

Because Just Eat publishes only partial pixel specifications, export at a generous size and check the Partner Hub upload screen for the current limits on format and file size. If the screen shows no limit, keep files reasonable in size so uploads do not time out on a slow connection.

Prepare three crops from each master: the landscape item photo for Just Eat, a square 1:1 version for your own menu and social, and a wider 16:9 version for your website banner or Google Business Profile. Doing this in one pass saves a second shoot later.

Review pitfalls and how to avoid them

Most rejections trace back to the written rules rather than image quality. A photo of a dish without its included chips looks incomplete to a reviewer. A photo that includes a drink sold separately looks like a menu error. A dish off to one side of the frame breaks the centering rule. Read your own shot against the three rules before uploading.

Allow for the 3 to 5 working days Just Eat's guide gives for review, and do not schedule a menu launch around same-day approval. If a photo is rejected, fix the specific issue rather than reshooting the whole menu, and keep a note of what was flagged so the next batch avoids it.

Use real photos of your own dishes. Stock images and borrowed photos from other restaurants create a mismatch with what customers receive, and they can complicate review. On your own channels, website menu, Instagram, Google Business Profile, QR menu and print, you have full control over crops and styling. FoodPhoto takes a real photo of your own dish and improves light, background and crop for menus, delivery apps and social, keeping the food as it is, and delivers every photo as a kit of sizes. It cannot guarantee approval by any platform, so always check the final image against Just Eat's published rules before uploading.