Food Photography for Olo Menus: What to Shoot and How to Check It

What Olo actually publishes about images

Olo is an ordering platform for restaurant brands. It does not publish pixel specifications, official image rules or verified technical requirements for menu photography. Any number you see quoted as an 'Olo size' online, including square crops or file-size caps, is not confirmed by Olo itself.

That does not mean image quality is irrelevant. It means the requirement lives in the brand's own menu standards and in the upload screen inside the Olo dashboard, which is where you should confirm dimensions, file type and file size before a shoot. Ask your Olo account contact or menu administrator for the brand's current image guidance, then treat that document as the spec.

Practical consequence: do not build a shoot around one fixed resolution. Build it around a high-resolution master file you can crop several ways.

Shoot a master file, not a menu tile

Menu images get reused across the order page, brand website, printed menus and in-store screens, and each placement crops differently. Photograph each dish on a larger canvas than you think you need so a square, a 4:5 and a 16:9 crop all survive.

Shoot on a tripod at roughly 45 degrees above the plate for a natural diner's view, or straight down at 90 degrees for flat, top-down compositions that crop cleanly to a square. Leave at least 15 percent empty margin on every side of the plate so crops do not clip the rim. Frame the dish to fill roughly 60 to 70 percent of the frame.

Use a 50mm equivalent focal length or longer. Wider lenses bend plate rims and make portions look distorted. A longer lens at a slightly greater distance keeps proportions honest, which matters when the customer is judging portion size before ordering.

• Shoot RAW plus a high-quality JPEG so you keep latitude for brightening later
• Set white balance manually against a gray card; mixed kitchen lighting shifts color between dishes
• Diffuse one key light from the side or back at about 45 degrees to show texture
• Fill shadows with a white card or bounce on the opposite side, not a second hard light
• Underexpose by about a third of a stop to protect highlights on glossy sauces

Dish-specific planning by cuisine

A burger needs a side-on or 30-degree angle so the layers read, with the cut face toward the camera if the brand allows it. A bowl dish, ramen or grain bowl, reads best at 60 to 70 degrees so the toppings are visible without hiding the broth. Pizza and flatbreads are strongest at 90 degrees, with one slice pulled slightly for depth.

Desserts and drinks need cooler, softer light and a clean surface; condensation on a cold glass shows in high detail, so shoot drinks quickly after pouring. Saucy or wet dishes benefit from a small spray of oil and a fresh garnish placed after plating for the shot, provided the photographed portion matches what is actually served.

For multi-location brands, write a one-page shot list per menu category with angle, surface and garnish rules. Consistency across locations is what makes a chain menu look deliberate rather than assembled from different kitchens.

Crops and exports to prepare

Even without a published Olo spec, prepare a small export set so you are ready for whatever the dashboard asks for. A square 1:1 crop suits most menu tiles and thumbnail grids. A 4:5 portrait crop works for mobile-first placements and social. A 16:9 landscape crop suits hero banners, in-store screens and email.

Keep the food centered in the square and 4:5 versions; leave headroom in the 16:9 version for any text or branding the brand layer adds. Export JPEG at the highest quality the file size allows, and keep a lossless master archived. If the upload screen states a maximum file size, resize down rather than recompressing repeatedly.

Name files by brand, menu item, location and crop, for example brand-itemname-store01-1x1.jpg. When a menu has hundreds of items across locations, file naming is the difference between a clean rollout and a week of guesswork.

Review pitfalls before anything goes live

The most common failure is a photo that shows a portion or garnish the kitchen does not actually serve. That creates complaints and refunds, and it is the first thing a brand's legal or operations reviewer will flag. Compare every image against the current recipe card.

Second, check contrast at thumbnail size. Shrink the image to roughly 200 pixels wide on your screen and look again: if the dish disappears into a dark table or a busy background, reshoot rather than brighten. Third, confirm color accuracy on a calibrated screen; a sauce that looks orange in the file and red in the bowl will read as a different product.

Finally, keep one owner for image approval per brand. When several locations upload independently, style drift appears within weeks.

• No text, logos or watermarks burned into the food image
• No props that imply an ingredient the dish does not contain
• No heavy vignettes or filters that change the food's color
• Consistent background surface across items in the same category

Where FoodPhoto fits

For the brand's own channels, including the website menu, Instagram, Google Business Profile, QR menus and print, FoodPhoto takes a real photo of the restaurant's own dish and improves light, background and crop while keeping the food as it is. Every photo comes as a kit of sizes, which covers the square, portrait and landscape crops described above. It does not generate a different dish and cannot guarantee approval by any platform, so always confirm the final file against the Olo upload screen or your brand's own image guidance.