A restaurant gallery is the door to the soul of your establishment, giving audiences a tempting glimpse into the dishes and ambiance. Just as a chef selects cooking ingredients thoughtfully to create dishes, crafting a gripping gallery involves a careful picking of images that stir the senses, making people hungry immediately.
In this blog, you will learn how to create a restaurant gallery to leave a lasting impression and invite diners to set an expectation even before they visit your restaurant physically.
Okay, without further ado, let’s learn the tips of creating a visual feast through your galleries.
Tips to Create a Captivating Restaurant Gallery
A professionally designed gallery is crucial to establish the unique personality of your restaurant. According to the latest survey, excellent images can increase a website’s traffic by up to 400%. Therefore, if you want to skyrocket your site traffic by uploading excellent restaurant galleries, follow the tips shared below.
1. Determine Your Goals
Firstly, define your objective. What do you want to achieve by uploading restaurant galleries on your website? Do you want to highlight your restaurant’s ambiance or showcase your dishes? Finding answers to these questions is vital because the answers will help you decide what type of images you want to include in your gallery.
2. Take Photographs
You need to be very careful about lighting, props, etc during photo shoots of your dishes and ambiance. Make sure you’re considering all the points suggested here.
- Natural Lighting: Prefer soft and natural light during photography. Use the flattering glow to make your dishes and ambiance appear brighter. Avoid shooting under harsh overhead light to prevent shadow formations.
- Experiment with Different Angles: Consider eye-level shots for plated meals and overhead shots for flat lays. The eye-level shots will make your audience feel as if they are sitting inside the restaurant and overhead shots are great for displaying the arrangement of various dishes. Close-ups are perfect for highlighting the details and texture of the food items.
- Make Proper Use of Props: Use props to enhance the aesthetic appeal of your restaurant gallery and to add context to them. Some of the props you can use are napkins, ingredients, and utensils. Make sure the props complement the dishes without creating any mess around them.
3. Edit Your Photos
Post processing is crucial to make your galleries look captivating. Adjust contrast and brightness to make the photos appear clear. Under artificial lighting, correct white balance to highlight details and to remove any unwanted color tints. Enhance colors, and then crop and straighten the images for a lively and attractive look of both the decor and food items of your restaurant.
4. Align the Photos With Your Restaurant’s Brand
Select a cohesive color style and palette to align the photos with your brand. For example, if your restaurant is lively and vibrant, use colors having playful elements. You can also try bold colors in this case. Similarly, if your restaurant is elegant and modern, choose muted tones and clear lines. Strengthen your branding further by maintaining consistency in your photos.
5. Upload a Variety of Images
Showcase variety while creating galleries for your restaurant. The more variety of images you include in your restaurant gallery, the more interesting your audience will find it. For instance, you can include the images of signature dishes, your staff, kitchen etc along with the decor and dishes you offer. This will also give your customers an idea of what to expect from your restaurant.
6. Use a Gallery Layout
A well-designed restaurant gallery layout can significantly improve the online presence of your restaurant. Choose a gallery layout that matches the style of your content. For a dynamic presentation, you can select a slideshow. Likewise, you can use a grid layout for a more neat and organized gallery look. Make sure the layout you are selecting is responsive so that your audience can see your gallery from mobile phones and tablets.
If you’re finding it difficult to select the proper gallery layout, browse different restaurant themes for your website to get the best one. Then, create your gallery to enhance the gallery aesthetically.
7. Properly Arrange Galleries
Arrange your restaurant gallery in the proper sequential order. It is important to engage the audiences and make the gallery visually appealing. Group similar images together. Start by organizing the dishes. Keep the starters, main course, desserts sequentially. After that, include the images of your restaurant’s ambiance, and then the staff. Maintain page load speed and balance the visual impact by mixing full-size and thumbnail images.
8. Consider Plugins to Upload Galleries
Creating galleries using plugins is a powerful way to engage your customers. Follow the tips shared below while considering plugins for your restaurant gallery.
- Select a User-friendly Plugin: Choose a plugin which doesn’t require any technical knowledge for using.
- Optimize Images of Galleries: Optimize each image of your gallery to ensure that your gallery is loading quickly without compromising its resolution. You can either manually optimize your galleries or use a plugin offering gallery optimization features.
- Customize Your Gallery: Pick plugins offering multiple customization options like various gallery layouts, lightbox effects, and hover animations to remain consistent with your restaurant’s brand.
Finding the best restaurant gallery plugin is tiresome. You can either trust recommendations of your friends and families or research online yourself.
WP Food Manager is becoming popular among the restaurant owners nowadays. It is a software having various plugins to help restaurants manage their operations online. The Restaurant Gallery plugin of WP Food Manager enables you to upload galleries in an attractive way. Let’s dive into the features of this plugin so that you can know whether this plugin will be able to meet your needs.
Restaurant Gallery Plugin of WP Food Manager
The Restaurant Gallery plugin of WP Food Manager enables you to add a stunning gallery to your website in less than one minute to entice customers. Not only is the plugin SEO-friendly, but it is also easy-to-use. Some other features that deserve a mention here are:
- Multiple galleries
- Effortless management of galleries
- Organized view
- Full admin control
- Responsive layout
- Quality support
If you’re looking for the best restaurant galleries plugin, look no further. Get our plugin. Install and then activate it to start using. Our plugins are available both in bundles and in standalone forms. Choose the package that caters to your requirements the best possible way.
Wrapping Up
Creating a restaurant gallery like a pro involves careful attention to details. You need to find out your goals, take high-quality photos, edit them post-processing, organize them, and then upload them to your website for an excellent visual showcase. Don’t forget to update your gallery regularly to keep it fresh. It’s better to use a reputed image gallery plugin to make your gallery stand out with its advanced features. Choosing the best gallery plugin will help you to strengthen your restaurant’s brand and build trust.
