Miami Menu Photography for Print, QR Menus and Delivery Apps

Plan the shoot around Miami's daylight

Miami sits at about 25.8 degrees north, so the sun is close to overhead in summer and much lower in winter. Around the June solstice you get roughly 13 h 37 min of daylight and the noon sun reaches about 88 degrees above the horizon. That near-vertical sun means a west or east window throws a short, hard patch of light onto a table around midday, then a long, low band of glare late in the afternoon. Around the December solstice you get about 10 h 23 min and the noon sun sits at about 41 degrees, so window light comes in at a flatter angle for most of the day and reaches further across the room.

Build a seasonal schedule from that. From May through August, shoot north-facing window light between about 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., when the sun is high and the direct beam is least likely to hit your table. From November through January, the low sun enters side windows for hours, so use a north window in the morning and switch to a wall away from the window after about 3 p.m. In the equinox months, April and September, the light changes fastest: block a two-hour window and shoot the whole menu inside it.

Diffuse the window with a white sheer or a sheet of tracing paper clipped to a stand. Keep a white foam board on the shadow side, about 45 degrees off the plate and a meter away, to lift the dark side of the food. Turn off overheads and any colored signage light, and set white balance manually rather than trusting auto.

Batch shooting a full menu in one or two sessions

Group dishes by how they are served, not by menu order. Cold plates, fried plates, sauced plates and grilled plates each behave differently on set: fried food loses its shine in minutes, ice melts, sauces skin over. Shoot all the cold items first, then fried, then sauced, then grilled, so nothing sits under a lamp waiting for its turn.

Set a station: one table, one background, one camera position, one lens. A 50mm equivalent at about 45 degrees gives a natural diner's view; a straight overhead at 90 degrees works for bowls, pizzas and shared platters. Pick one for the whole menu and stay with it, because mixed angles on a grid look accidental. Keep the camera at the same height for every dish and mark the table with tape so the tripod or phone stand returns to the same spot.

Shoot each dish as a set: one clean hero on the standard background, one tighter crop for thumbnails, and one wider frame showing the side dish or garnish. That gives you options later without a reshoot. For a Cuban sandwich, cut it on the diagonal and show the cross-section; for ropa vieja, shoot slightly high so the rice and the meat read as separate elements; for stone crab, keep the shell in frame because the shape identifies the dish.

Practical numbers that hold across a menu: fill 70 to 80 percent of the frame with food, leave a margin so a square crop does not clip the plate, and keep the background simple enough that a 1:1 crop still reads at thumbnail size.

• Shoot in the same session, same background, same angle for every item
• Photograph the dish as served, including the sides the guest receives
• Cut or portion one item before shooting so the cross-section is visible
• Keep a shot list printed in menu order and tick items off as you go
• Reshoot only what changed, using the same setup notes

Naming files so the photo and the menu stay in sync

The most common failure in menu photography is not a bad photo, it is a good photo attached to the wrong dish. Build a filename convention before you start and use it for every file: menu section, item name in lowercase with hyphens, and a version date. For example, entradas-ropa-vieja-2025-03. That name survives uploads, shared drives and a change of staff.

Keep a single spreadsheet as the source of truth with one row per menu item: the item name in English and Spanish, the filename of the approved photo, the date it was shot, and whether it appears on the printed menu, the QR menu, the website or a delivery app. When a price changes or an item is dropped, update the row first, then the platforms.

Because Miami menus are commonly bilingual, decide whether the photo library is named in English, Spanish or both, and be consistent. If the printed menu lists a dish in Spanish and the delivery app in English, the filename should match the internal item, not the language of the day.

Keep the original files, not just the exports. Delivery apps and print both recrop, and a 1:1 thumbnail export cannot be turned back into a wide print image.

Matching photos to the menu, the calories and the platforms

In the United States, restaurant chains with 20 or more locations must show calorie counts for standard menu items, and FDA guidance covers online menus as well as menu boards. A photo must match the item the calories describe. If the photo shows a larger portion, an extra side or a different preparation than the listed item, the picture and the number disagree. Photograph the standard portion exactly as the calorie figure was calculated.

For delivery apps, check the current upload requirements on the platform's own screen rather than relying on a remembered number. This site publishes spec pages for Uber Eats, DoorDash, Grubhub and BentoBox covering the United States. Where a platform does not publish pixel specs, check the upload screen itself, because the accepted crop and file type can differ by market and by app version.

Print has its own constraints: a photo needs enough resolution for the printed size, and a dark dish on a dark background will fill in on uncoated paper. Test one page proof before committing the whole menu.

Keeping the library current as the menu changes

Menus move constantly: a seasonal special, a price change, a supplier swap that changes the garnish. Treat the photo library as a living document with a monthly review rather than a project you finish once. On the review, compare the spreadsheet against each platform and flag any item whose photo is older than the last recipe change.

When you add a dish, shoot it the same week in the same setup, not in a different room with a different background. A single mismatched tile is more visible on a delivery feed than a whole menu shot plainly.

For the restaurant's own channels, a consistent set matters most on the website menu, Instagram, Google Business Profile, a QR menu and printed material. 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 each photo as a kit of sizes for those surfaces. It does not generate a different dish and cannot guarantee approval by any platform, so keep your own originals as the master.