Urban Plate Restaurants
How a restaurant group used Magic Eraser to create professional menu photos in-house, saving $2,000/month on food photography while increasing online orders.
The Challenge
Urban Plate operates 6 fast-casual restaurants with menus that change seasonally. Professional food photography for menu updates, delivery app listings, and social media cost $2,000-3,000 per shoot. With 4 seasonal refreshes per year across 6 locations, the annual photography budget exceeded $60,000. Staff phone photos were a cheaper alternative but looked unprofessional on delivery platforms — resulting in lower click-through rates on DoorDash and Uber Eats compared to competitors with studio-quality imagery.
The Solution
The marketing team trained location managers to capture dishes using smartphones with basic lighting guidelines. Magic Eraser handles the post-production: background cleanup removes kitchen clutter and table mess from behind dishes, the eraser tool cleans up plate edges and removes unwanted garnish or spills, and AI enhancement corrects the warm fluorescent lighting in restaurant kitchens to produce appetizing, vibrant food images. Each location now produces menu-ready photos same-day when new dishes launch.
Results
Eliminated most professional food photography shoots, reducing annual spending from $60K+ to under $12K for special campaigns only.
Updated listing images on DoorDash and Uber Eats increased click-through rates by 34% compared to the previous staff phone photos.
New dishes go from kitchen to menu photo to delivery app listing the same day, versus the previous 2-3 week scheduling cycle with professional photographers.
“Our DoorDash listings used to look amateur compared to chains with huge marketing budgets. Now our photos look professional and we update them the same day a new dish hits the menu.”
Marcus Rivera
Marketing Director, Urban Plate Restaurants
Tools Used
Create menu-ready food photos without a professional shoot?
Try Magic Eraser free and turn smartphone food photos into delivery-app-ready imagery.
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