HOW PROFESSIONAL FOOD PHOTOGRAPHY INCREASES DELIVEROO & TALABAT ORDERS BY 25%

Let me ask you something. When you open Talabat or Deliveroo right now and search for, let's say, burgers in your area, what do you click on first?

You click on the one that looks good. You don't read the description first. You don't check the rating first. You look at the image, and if it makes you feel something, if it makes you even slightly hungry, you tap it.

That decision happens in less than a second. And it's happening thousands of times a day across the UAE, for your restaurant, or against it.

I've been doing commercial photography in Dubai for over 12 years. I've watched the UAE food delivery market go from a novelty to an industry worth nearly USD 720 million. I've shot menus for brands that went from having no photos on their listing to having a full, properly styled visual menu. And every single time, the result is the same: more orders. Better orders. Customers who already trust the brand before the food even arrives.

This post is specifically about delivery platforms. Talabat, Deliveroo, and now Keeta. How photography works on each of them, what the data actually says, why the platform's own photography service isn't the same as hiring a specialist, and what you should be doing right now if you're serious about your delivery revenue.

The Numbers First, Because They're Uncomfortable

I know restaurant owners are busy. So let me put the most important data right at the top, before anything else.

Restaurants with food photos receive up to 70% more orders than those without.

That's from GrubHub's data across millions of orders. Deliveroo's own research puts the boost at 24% more orders when professional photography is used. DoorDash sees a 15% increase in delivery volume. Just Eat sees 4x more basket additions with food photography present.

73% of consumers won't order a menu item that doesn't have a photo. Not won't prefer it. Won't order it. That item simply doesn't exist for them.

82% of people will order a dish based purely on how it looks, even if it wasn't something they were originally planning. That's an impulse purchase driven entirely by a single image. And 84% of diners say they want to see food photos before choosing a restaurant at all.

Here's the one that stops people: simply uploading food photos to your online menu, before any quality improvements, drives up sales by 10%. Just having a photo. Any photo. That's the baseline. Quality is what takes you from 10% to 35%.

Now look at your Talabat or Deliveroo listing right now. How many of your menu items have photos? How many of those photos were taken on a phone under your restaurant's ceiling lights? How many look, honestly, like they were taken quickly because you needed something there?

Every menu item without a photo is revenue you're actively leaving on the table. Every photo that looks generic or flat is a customer who clicked on your listing, felt nothing, and went back to the search results.

Talabat vs. Deliveroo: They Are Not the Same Platform

This is something I tell every restaurant client before we start planning a shoot, and it changes how we approach the entire project.

Talabat dominates the UAE delivery market with around 45% market share and over 15,000 restaurant partners. It's the volume platform. The average order value sits around USD 18. The customer base is broad, price-conscious in a practical way, and making fast decisions across a huge range of options. On Talabat, your image needs to cut through a lot of visual noise quickly. Bold. Clear. Immediately legible on a small mobile screen.

Deliveroo is the premium platform. Around 25% market share, but their average order value is nearly double Talabat's, around USD 35. The Deliveroo customer is looking for a slightly more considered experience. They're willing to spend more, which means they're also more visually discerning. They respond to images that feel elevated. Composition, styling, the sense that real care went into both the food and the photograph.

Deliveroo's technical specification is 1920x1080 pixels, 16:9 aspect ratio, JPEG format. These aren't suggestions. If your images don't meet these specs, you lose quality in the platform's compression. And compressed, pixelated food photography on a premium platform immediately signals to the customer that you're not a premium restaurant, regardless of what your actual food is like.

The approach I take is what I call an open gate image. When we shoot, we always compose with flexibility built in. Clean negative space on the edges, a composition that can be cropped into different aspect ratios without losing the hero of the shot. One strong image, shot properly, can then be adapted for Talabat, Deliveroo, your Instagram, your website, and Keeta, each optimized for that platform's specific requirements. This saves the restaurant money and time while maintaining visual consistency across every touchpoint.

What This Means Practically

If you're starting from zero and can only invest in one platform right now, start with Talabat. The volume is there. Getting your images right on the platform with 45% market share first is simply good math. But don't use that as a reason to cut corners on quality. A strong image that works on Talabat will also work everywhere else.

If you're on Deliveroo and your average order value matters to you, which it should because their AOV is nearly double Talabat's, invest in photography that matches the platform's premium positioning. A cheap or generic image on Deliveroo doesn't just fail to attract orders. It actively contradicts what the platform's customer is expecting when they open the app.

Keeta Just Entered Dubai. Here's What That Actually Means for Your Visuals.

Keeta launched in Dubai in September 2025. Backed by Meituan, the Chinese tech giant that captured 60% of Hong Kong's food delivery market within two years of entering, Keeta is not a small player. They launched with free delivery, lower commissions for restaurants, a drone delivery license in the UAE, and a 'Founding Vendor Program' that offers free marketing and tech support to early partners.

Every restaurant owner I've spoken to recently has been asking about Keeta. And the question is always the same: do I need to be on it, and what do I do about visuals?

Here's my honest answer. Yes, get on it. Getting your restaurant listed on a fast-growing platform early, before the competition catches up, is a real advantage. The Keeta customer base right now is smaller but highly engaged, and the platform is actively promoting its early partners. Being there with strong visual content while others haven't bothered yet puts you in front of customers with almost no competition.

Keeta hasn't published formal photography specifications yet. For now, I recommend using Deliveroo's standard: 1920x1080, 16:9, JPEG. It's the safest and most adaptable format while their technical requirements evolve.

The worst thing you can do when a new platform enters the market is get listed with weak visuals just to be there quickly. First impressions on a new platform set a perception that's very hard to reverse. If you're going to be on Keeta, go in looking like you mean it.

This also makes the open gate approach even more valuable. If you shoot properly once, you're already ready for Talabat, Deliveroo, Keeta, and whatever comes next. You're not scrambling to reshoot every time the market shifts.

The Platform's Own Photography Service vs. Hiring a Specialist

Deliveroo offers its own in-house photography service directly to restaurant partners. 15 images for USD 382. 25 images for USD 587. 50 images for USD 962. 100 images for USD 1,517. It sounds convenient, and it is convenient. But I want to be honest with you about what you're actually getting.

Think about it this way. When you buy a car, the manufacturer includes engine oil. They include tyres. They include a stereo. And every one of those components is selected to be cost-effective, not to be the best available. The car manufacturer is the best possible person to build that car. They are not the best possible person to make engine oil. So they source it at a price that works for them, not a price that gets you the best engine oil on the market.

Deliveroo's photography service works the same way. Photography is a feature they offer to make their platform more attractive to restaurant partners. It is not their core business. They want to provide it at a cost that makes sense for Deliveroo, which means the photographer they send to your restaurant is working at a rate that reflects that constraint. Two hours, cover the menu, move on. The photographer is not thinking about your brand. They're not thinking about whether this image will actually sell the dish or just document it. They're thinking about getting through the shoot in the time they have.

I'll tell you something I genuinely believe: every job I do is also an audition for the next one. When I'm shooting your menu, I'm not just delivering images. I'm thinking about whether you're going to hire me again. Whether you're going to refer me to someone else. Whether I can put this in my portfolio. That accountability, that personal stake in the outcome, changes how I approach every single shot. It changes which dishes I push you to reshoot. It changes how long I spend getting the light exactly right on a difficult dish. It changes everything.

The Deliveroo photographer has none of that stake in your success. Not because they don't care as people, but because the structure of that service doesn't create any reason for them to. They're paid the same whether your orders go up or not.

I've had clients come to me after using platform photography services with 15 or 20 images that looked, honestly, like someone had pointed a camera at a plate in a brightly lit room and pressed the button. Technically exposed. Completely inert. No story, no texture revealed, no sense of what it feels like to eat that dish. And they couldn't understand why their conversion rate hadn't moved.

The image documented the food. It didn't sell it. That's the entire difference.

What Happens When You Get It Right: The Before and After

I don't like throwing around specific percentage increases because every restaurant is different and I don't want anyone to read this and think I'm promising a guaranteed outcome. That's not honest and it's not how this works.

What I can tell you is the pattern I've seen consistently across brands in the UAE. Saudi Dates Center. Era Coffee and Matcha. Cookie brands. Coffee brands. The pattern is always the same.

They start with either no photos on their delivery listing or phone shots taken under kitchen lights. Generic, flat, uninviting. Maybe a few items photographed, not the full menu. They're getting orders from loyal customers but not converting new ones.

We do a shoot. Not just the hero dishes, the full menu. Properly lit. Properly styled. Shot with the platform specifications in mind. Composed so each image has a clear focal point and makes you feel something about the dish.

Then they keep hiring me. That's the real signal I pay attention to. Clients who come in for 10 shots and then come back for their entire menu. And then come back again when they launch a new item or a seasonal special. Because they saw what happened to their listing when the images changed. The menu started to look like a completely different restaurant. High-end. Considered. Like a place that takes its food seriously.

And when your delivery listing looks like you take your food seriously, customers order like you take your food seriously. They order more items. They order the premium options. They come back. They send the listing to friends.

There's something the data shows that I think is underappreciated: restaurants with a larger portion of their menu photographed receive more orders on Deliveroo. Not just more clicks on the photographed items. More orders overall. Because a fully photographed menu communicates confidence. It says: we are proud of everything we make. And that confidence is contagious.

The Coverage Question: Why You Can't Just Shoot Your Hero Dishes

This is the mistake I see most often, even from restaurants that do invest in professional photography.

They shoot five dishes. The most photogenic ones. The ones they're most proud of. And they leave the rest of the menu with no photos or bad phone shots. And then they wonder why their conversion rate is inconsistent.

Here's the problem. 73% of consumers won't order a menu item without a photo. So every unphotogged item on your menu is essentially invisible to the majority of your potential customers. They're not choosing your biryani over someone else's biryani. They're not seeing your biryani at all.

But there's a bigger issue. When a customer opens your listing and sees five beautifully shot images alongside twenty phone shots or blank menu items, the inconsistency itself creates doubt. It signals that you're not consistent in how you approach things. And in a food delivery context, where the customer is taking a chance on a restaurant they can't see or touch or smell, consistency and professionalism are exactly what creates enough trust to press order.

The goal should always be full menu coverage, shot to the same standard, with the same visual language. Not all at once if the budget doesn't allow it. But with a clear plan to get there. Start with your highest-margin dishes, your most-ordered items, and your most photogenic categories. Then work through the rest systematically.

The ROI Calculation: What the Numbers Actually Say

Let me make this as concrete as possible.

Professional food photography in Dubai typically costs between AED 1,500 and AED 4,400 for a 10-dish shoot, depending on the scope, the styling requirements, and the deliverables. Let's call it AED 3,000 for a solid mid-range shoot.

If your restaurant currently does AED 15,000 a month in delivery orders across Talabat and Deliveroo, and professional photography increases your conversion rate by 25% (which is the conservative end of what the data shows), that's an additional AED 3,750 in monthly revenue. Your shoot pays for itself in less than a month.

And unlike almost every other marketing spend, photography doesn't expire. A properly done shoot serves you for 12 to 18 months. That same AED 3,000 investment, spread over 12 months, is AED 250 a month. The monthly revenue upside is many times that.

Deliveroo's own data shows that their average order value is nearly double Talabat's: USD 35 versus USD 18. Which means on Deliveroo specifically, every improvement in your visual presentation doesn't just get you more orders. It gets you larger orders. Customers who are already primed to spend more, and whose spending is influenced by how premium your food looks.

The question isn't whether you can afford good photography. It's whether you can afford the delivery revenue you're currently not getting because your visuals aren't doing the job.

What to Look for When Hiring a Food Photographer for Delivery

Not every photographer who shoots food is the right person for delivery platform work. Here's what actually matters.

Platform knowledge

Do they know the technical specifications for Talabat, Deliveroo, and Keeta? Do they talk about aspect ratios, image compression, mobile-first composition? If they don't bring this up, they're thinking about making beautiful images, not images that perform on the specific platforms where your customers are making decisions.

The ability to shoot for flexibility

As I described earlier with the open gate approach, a skilled photographer shoots with your entire digital ecosystem in mind. One properly composed shot can serve five different platforms with appropriate crops. If your photographer is only thinking about one final image, you're going to need to reshoot every time your needs change.

A stake in your success

This sounds intangible but it's the most important thing. Does this photographer want to come back? Are they asking about your brand, your target customer, your price point, what makes your food different? Or are they showing up to document dishes and leave? The difference in the final images is visible even if you can't articulate why.

Consistency across a full menu

Ask to see a full menu shoot, not just individual hero shots. Anyone can get one great image. The real skill is maintaining consistent quality, consistent lighting, consistent visual language across 30, 50, or 100 dishes. That consistency is what builds a delivery listing that converts.

Final Thought

The UAE delivery market is not slowing down. It's growing toward USD 3.96 billion by 2030. Keeta is disrupting a market that was already competitive. Deliveroo is attracting high-spending customers who are specifically looking for premium experiences. Talabat is where the volume is.

Every one of those platforms runs on visuals. Your customers are making order decisions in under a second based on a single image. That image is either earning you revenue or costing you revenue. There's no neutral.

If you're serious about your delivery numbers, photography isn't a nice-to-have. It's the infrastructure of your entire online presence.

For the full picture of what goes into food photography in the UAE market, including how lighting, food styling, and the specific challenges of shooting in Dubai's climate affect your results, go back and read the pillar guide: The Ultimate Guide to Food Photography for Dubai Restaurants.

And if you want to understand what makes food content actually stop someone from scrolling in 2026, beyond just static menu photos, read: Why Your Restaurant Needs 'Multisensory' Visuals in 2026.

If you want to talk about what this could look like for your restaurant specifically, whether it's a full menu shoot, platform optimization, or figuring out where to start, I'm always up for a conversation. Reach me on Instagram at @ibrahim_food_photographer or take a look at what we do at spinthirasmedia.com.