Restaurant Photography in Athens: A Practical Guide for Delivery Apps, Menus and Google

Plan your shoots around Athens daylight

Around the June solstice Athens gets about 14 h 38 min of daylight and the noon sun reaches about 75 degrees above the horizon. That near-vertical sun throws short, hard shadows and blows out white plates and marble tables. Around the December solstice you get about 9 h 22 min of daylight and a noon sun only about 29 degrees high, which sends low, warm light deep into the room but also makes long shadows across a table.

Use the angles rather than the clock. When the sun is above roughly 60 degrees, shoot away from the window and use it as a soft side light from a meter or two back, or wait until it drops. When the sun is below roughly 35 degrees, as it is most of a winter day, the light comes in almost horizontally: place the dish so the light rakes across it from the side, and flag the window with a white card on the opposite side so the shadow side of the food does not go black.

• Late spring to early autumn: shoot roughly 2 to 3 hours after sunrise or 2 to 3 hours before sunset, when the sun sits between about 30 and 50 degrees.
• Midsummer midday: avoid direct window light between about 11:00 and 15:00; use a shaded table or a diffuser.
• Late autumn to early spring: the low sun works as a side light for most of the day, so midday is usable if you block the hard edge.
• Overcast days: the most forgiving light in Athens, good for shooting a whole menu in one session.

Delivery apps in Greece and what to shoot for each

Restaurants in Athens commonly list on efood, Box and Wolt. Each app runs its own upload rules, and this site publishes a photo spec page only for Wolt in Greece, at /delivery-photo-specs/wolt/greece/. For efood and Box, check the requirements on the upload screen in the partner dashboard, since the specs are not published here.

Wolt does not accept AI-generated or altered images. For Wolt, shoot the real dish yourself and upload that photo. The same applies to any platform whose rules restrict generated or manipulated images: the merchant uploads their own real photo.

What travels well on a phone screen is a tight, single-dish frame with the food filling most of the image. Shoot a top-down at 90 degrees for bowls, salads and meze plates, and a 45-degree angle for souvlaki, gyros portions, moussaka and anything with height. Keep the same angle and background across a category so the menu grid looks consistent, and shoot one dish per image rather than a full table.

Google Business Profile and your own menu

Google Business Profile is where a lot of diners in Athens first see your food, before they open any delivery app. Upload a cover photo that reads at small size: one hero dish, no text overlay, no crowded table. Add interior and exterior shots taken in the same session so the profile looks current, and replace photos when the menu changes rather than letting old dishes sit there.

For your own website and QR menu, shoot the dishes that carry the check: grilled fish by weight, a shared meze spread, a dessert. A 1:1 crop works for menu tiles, 16:9 for a website banner, and a vertical 4:5 for Instagram. Keep backgrounds plain, a bare table or a neutral wall, so the same photo can be reused on print without a busy backdrop.

Under EU Regulation 1169/2011, allergen information for the 14 regulated allergens must be available for food sold without packaging, and for distance selling including delivery apps the mandatory information must be available before the purchase is concluded. A photo never replaces that information, and the picture should not suggest ingredients the dish does not contain: do not garnish a dish with nuts, sesame or cheese the recipe leaves out.

A seasonal shooting schedule for window light

Build two shooting windows into the year and repeat them when the menu changes. From about April to September, book sessions for the first two hours after opening if your window faces east, or the last two hours before service if it faces west; the sun is low enough to use as a side light. In July and August, push the session later and shoot away from the glass.

From October to March, the low winter sun stays useful for most of the day. Shoot between about 10:00 and 14:00 with the dish placed parallel to the window, a white card on the shadow side, and the camera at the same height as the food. Keep a small notebook of which dish was shot at which angle so a reshoot matches the existing menu.

Shoot in batches by category, not by dish: all salads, then all grilled items, then all desserts. This keeps styling, background and light identical within a category and cuts the time a plate sits out of the kitchen.

Editing for Athens menus, social and print

Set exposure for the brightest part of the plate, usually a white rim or a piece of bread, and let the background fall slightly darker. Athens daylight is strong, so pull highlights down before you touch saturation; oversaturated food looks artificial and, on platforms that restrict altered images, invites a rejection.

Crop with intent. Delivery thumbnails are small, so leave very little empty table around the dish. For print, keep at least a few hundred pixels of margin so a designer can trim. Keep a plain version of each photo without text for platforms that forbid overlays.

• Correct white balance first: window light in Athens shifts warm in the afternoon.
• Lift shadows on the plate, not the whole frame.
• Do not add steam, grill marks, ice or ingredients that were not on the dish.
• Export one master file, then crop per channel rather than reshooting.

Where FoodPhoto fits

FoodPhoto takes a real photo of the restaurant's own dish and improves light, background and crop, keeping the food as it is, and delivers every photo as a kit of sizes for the merchant's own channels: website menu, Instagram, QR menu and print. It does not generate a different dish and cannot guarantee approval by any platform, so for Wolt, shoot and upload your own real photo.