Restaurants shoot hundreds of plates and then lose track of which is which. Worse, guests scrolling a feed of beautiful food have no idea what any of it is called or whether it is still on the menu. A dish name on the image fixes both problems and travels with the photo everywhere it gets reposted.
What belongs on a food photo
- Dish name — exactly as written on the menu, so guests can order it.
- Price — useful for delivery apps and digital boards; skip it on evergreen social assets.
- Section — starter, main, dessert. Helps when photos are sorted later.
- Dietary marks — V, VG, GF. Short, high-contrast, easy to read at thumbnail size.
Styling that suits food
Food photography is warm and busy, so unmodified white text usually disappears into a sauce. Two reliable approaches: a translucent dark caption bar along the bottom edge, or outlined text placed on the negative space of the table or plate rim. Keep the font size at roughly 4% of image width — big enough to read in a feed thumbnail without covering the food.
Shoot once, label per channel
The same plate photo becomes a menu-board tile with the name and price, a social post with just the name, and an internal training image with prep notes. Label each version from the same original rather than re-shooting.
Keep a dated archive
Add the shoot date from the photo's metadata to your internal copies. When the menu changes seasonally, the date tells you instantly whether the image matches the current recipe and plating — a detail that saves a reshoot every spring.
Consistency across the menu
Pick one corner, one style, and one capitalization rule for the whole menu, then keep it for every dish. A gallery labeled the same way reads as a menu; a gallery labeled ten different ways reads as a scrapbook.
Do it now: open the free photo labeler, drop in your image, and drag the label where you want it. Everything runs in your browser — the photo is never uploaded.