Food Delivery Menu Photos on Your Phone: GoFood & GrabFood Guide

Someone opening GoFood or GrabFood is hungry and scrolling. They don’t read your menu descriptions first. They see a thumbnail-sized photo and decide in a split second: that looks good, or next.

Good food delivery menu photos only need the phone in your pocket and one window, so you can take them yourself. No expensive camera, no photographer. Block out a Saturday morning. Below is the method we use when helping small food businesses reshoot their menus, with a shot list you can follow today.

The timing works too. World Food Day falls on 16 October every year,¹ and plenty of food sellers use that week to launch a new dish or a promo. If you’re joining in, don’t let the new item go live with a dark photo taken in the kitchen at 9 pm.

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Quick Summary

• One window with indirect light is enough. The only extras are a sheet of white styrofoam and some baking paper, under Rp 150,000 in total.
• Match the angle to the shape of the dish: overhead (90°), 45°, eye level (0°), texture close-up, and a hand shot to show portion size.
• Turn off the flash and the room lights, use the 1x or 2x lens, tap to focus, then pull the brightness down a touch.
• Shoot in 4:3 and keep your edited photo as a master file. Crop it to square for GoFood, or to whatever ratio GrabMerchant asks for.
• GoFood asks for square 1:1 photos, at least 1080 x 1080 pixels and 2 MB at most. For GrabFood, check the ratio in GrabMerchant before you upload.

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Why Food Delivery Menu Photos Play by Different Rules Than Instagram

In a delivery app your menu photo is small, in a list next to dozens of nearby sellers, so buyers judge one thing: can they see the food clearly? The dish should fill 70–80% of the frame, and the leaves and linen that look lovely on Instagram turn into clutter on a small screen.

The photo also has to be honest about portions. Delivery customers can’t see the food before they pay. If it shows three pieces of chicken and two arrive, your rating pays for it. For us this is rule number one: an honest, slightly less pretty photo is safer than a beautiful one that makes customers feel tricked. Use the same background and light for every dish, too, so your store page doesn’t look like borrowed pictures.

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The Window-Light Setup: Under Rp 150,000

Window light has two weaknesses: it can be harsh, and the side of the dish away from the window goes dark. Baking paper fixes the first, styrofoam the second.

What to buy

Item	What it does	Typical price
White styrofoam sheet (about 50 x 70 cm) or white card	Bounces light back into the dark side of the dish	Rp 10,000–20,000
Baking paper or a thin white curtain	Softens sunlight that’s too strong	Rp 10,000–25,000
Surface: wood or marble-pattern vinyl backdrop, a wooden chopping board, or your own table	The same background for every dish	Rp 0–60,000
Masking tape or clothes pegs	Holds the baking paper up and the styrofoam in place	Rp 5,000
1–2 plain plates or bowls in a neutral color	Dishware that doesn’t compete with the food	Rp 0–35,000

If you already have all of this at home, it costs Rp 0. Buying everything new still stays under Rp 150,000.

Setting it up, step by step

1. Pick a window that isn’t getting direct sun at the time you plan to shoot: bright, but no glaring square of sunlight on the table.
2. Switch off every room light. Mixed lamp and window light turns food yellow on one side and blue on the other, which is hard to fix.
3. Put a small table or chair beside the window, about 50 cm to 1 meter from the glass. Closer means brighter, with a bigger difference between the window side and the far side of the dish.
4. Position the food so light comes from the side or slightly behind. Picture a clock face with the dish in the middle and you standing at 6 o’clock: the window should sit somewhere between 9 and 11 o’clock. Light from behind and to the side makes broth glisten and steam show up.
5. If the light is too harsh (pitch-black shadows, glare on sauces or soup), tape baking paper over the window glass.
6. Stand the styrofoam on the side opposite the window, angled towards the food. Slide it closer or further away until the dark side of the dish brightens but keeps the soft shadow that gives food its shape.
7. Take one test shot, check it on the screen, then adjust. Don’t shoot all 12 dishes before the setup looks right.

Good times are usually around 8–11 am or 2–4 pm. This setup won’t work if you have no bright window or can only shoot at night. A small LED panel behind baking paper can stand in, but expect more practice.

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The 5-Angle Shot List: Which Dish Suits Which Angle

The most common mistake we see is every dish shot from the same angle, usually a random tilt from above. The shape of the food decides its best angle. Copy this shot list into the notes app on your phone.

No	Angle	Where the phone goes	Works for	Avoid for
1	Overhead (90°)	Straight above the food, screen parallel to the table	Rice bowls, nasi kotak or bento boxes, pizza, martabak, rice-plus-sides sets, salads	Burgers, tall drinks, layered cakes
2	45°	Your eye height when you sit down to eat	Mie ayam, nasi goreng, soto, bakso, ayam geprek on a plate	Flat dishes with toppings spread evenly
3	Eye level (0°)	Level with the food, from the side	Burgers, sandwiches, cake slices, es kopi susu, boba, layered drinks	Food on flat plates
4	Texture close-up	10–20 cm away, at 30–45°	Melting cheese, crispy chicken skin, sambal, generous toppings	Your main menu photo (too close to read the portion)
5	Hand / portion scale	A hand holding the glass, chopsticks lifting noodles, a fork raising a piece	Drinks, noodles, dim sum, snacks sold by weight	Dishes with many components

A plain-text version to paste into your notes app:

MENU SHOT LIST
1. Overhead 90°: rice bowls, combo sets, martabak
2. 45°: noodles, soto, bakso, geprek
3. Eye level 0°: burgers, cakes, all drinks
4. Close-up: sambal, cheese, crispy skin (supporting)
5. Hand: drinks, noodles, dim sum (supporting)
Check: flash off, room lights off, 1x/2x lens, 4:3 ratio

The practical rule: angles 1, 2 or 3 are for your main menu photo, one photo per item, and the dish should be instantly recognizable from it. Angles 4 and 5 are supporting shots for your store banner, your WhatsApp catalog or social posts when you run a promo.

A few notes from real shoots:

• Overhead is the easiest angle for beginners and the most consistent. If you’re unsure, start there.
• Soupy dishes often look flat from above. A 45° angle with light from behind and to the side makes the broth shine.
• Drinks almost always go eye level. From above, an iced coffee is just a brown circle.
• For combo sets, one overhead photo that shows everything in the box helps customers more than a dramatic close-up.

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How to Take Food Photos With a Phone: Camera Settings Worth Changing

You don’t need Pro mode. Change these five things:

1. Wipe the lens with a clean T-shirt or cloth. A lens greasy from handling fried snacks is the most common cause of hazy photos.
2. Turn on the grid. On iPhone: Settings > Camera > Grid.² On Android it’s usually under the settings icon inside the Camera app (called “Grid lines” or similar). The grid helps you keep the phone straight, especially for overhead shots.
3. Use the 1x or 2x lens, never 0.5x. The ultra-wide lens bends plates and makes portions look smaller. If you have a 2x lens, use it for the 45° and eye-level angles. The 2x button on a mid-range Android is fine in bright window light, but don’t pinch to 5x or 10x, because the image falls apart. Switch Portrait mode off for overhead shots too, since it blurs the edges of the food.
4. Turn off the flash. Phone flash makes food shine like plastic.
5. Tap the most important part of the dish to focus, then lower the brightness slightly. On iPhone, drag the sun icon down; press and hold to lock focus and exposure (you’ll see AE/AF Lock).² On Android there’s usually a brightness slider after you tap the screen. A slightly dark photo can be brightened in editing. An overexposed one, where the white rice turns into a flat white blob with no detail, can’t be saved.

One more: shoot in 4:3, not square. You’ll crop later to whatever ratio the app wants, and that extra room saves you when the dish turns out to be a little off-center.

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Edit and Prepare the Files Before Uploading

For editing, we use the free Snapseed app.³ Here is the order we use, two minutes per photo at most:

1. Rotate to straighten the table or plate line, then Crop to tidy the frame, staying at 4:3. The 1:1 or other crops come later, from the master file.
2. Tune Image: raise Brightness a little and Saturation only slightly. If the colors start looking like highlighter pens, pull it back.
3. White Balance: if the rice looks yellowish or bluish, adjust until it looks like normal white rice.
4. Healing: remove crumbs, sauce drips on the plate rim and marks on the surface.

Save that edit as your master file, and don’t delete it. From the master, make a light version for uploading with Squoosh (squoosh.app), which runs free in your phone’s browser.⁴

1. In Snapseed, open the master, tap Crop, pick 1:1, then Export.
2. In Squoosh, open that square photo, switch on Resize and set the width to 1080. Leave the format on MozJPEG (that’s just a regular JPG, Squoosh’s default) and drag Quality to about 75.
3. Watch the file size at the bottom. If it’s still over 500 KB, nudge Quality down a little, then download.

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GoFood and GrabFood Menu Photo Size and Format

According to the GoFood Merchant help center: 1:1 ratio, at least 1080 x 1080 pixels, JPEG or PNG, 2 MB at most.⁵ Rules like this can change, so check GoBiz again before you upload.

Grab has a help page on menu/item photo criteria for GrabFood and GrabMart.⁶ At the time of writing, it lists a 1:1 ratio for menu item photos (the store cover uses its own ratio), but still check the photo screen in GrabMerchant before uploading, and crop from your master file to match.

The numbers below are our own house default. If the app asks for something different, the app wins.

File	What it is	Notes
Master	Your edited photo in the phone’s original 4:3, at full resolution	Keep it in a “Menu Photos Master” folder in Google Drive or your gallery; you can crop it to any ratio from here
GoFood upload	Square 1:1 JPG, at least 1080 x 1080 pixels, which we shrink to under 500 KB	Sharp enough for phone screens and quick to upload
GrabFood upload	Currently 1:1 per Grab’s help page; follow the ratio shown on GrabMerchant’s photo screen	If that screen asks for square, the GoFood file works

Two extra habits. Place the food in the center with empty space above, below and on both sides, so it survives a crop to any ratio. And keep text, logos and prices off your menu photos. The price already shows in the app, and busy photos covered in text often fail the guidelines.

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Worked Example: A Home Kitchen in Ciputat, 12 Dishes in One Morning

To make this concrete, here’s how a shoot might go for a home kitchen in Ciputat selling ayam geprek and rice bowls, with 12 items on the menu. The owner shoots everything herself on a mid-range phone, at the living-room window, on a Saturday morning.

Shopping: styrofoam Rp 15,000, baking paper Rp 18,000, wood-pattern vinyl backdrop Rp 45,000, two plain white bowls Rp 34,000. Total: Rp 112,000.

Angle plan:

Menu items	Count	Main photo angle	Supporting shots
Rice bowls (teriyaki chicken, squid in Padang sauce, chicken katsu, etc.)	5	Overhead (90°)	1 Padang sauce close-up for the banner
Ayam geprek (sambal bawang, sambal ijo, sambal matah)	3	45°	1 crispy-skin close-up
Geprek + rice + iced tea combo	2	Overhead (90°), every item in the set visible	None needed
Jumbo iced tea and iced orange	2	Eye level (0°)	1 shot of a hand holding the glass

Schedule: 8.00 setup and test shot, 8.30–10.30 shooting (ingredients prepped and sambal made the night before; the chicken is fried in batches of two or three during the shoot, so every plate hits the camera within 10 minutes of leaving the wok), 10.30–11.30 editing in Snapseed and shrinking the files. About three and a half hours for the whole catalog.

Two tricks from that morning. Sambal and toppings go on last, right before the shot, so nothing wilts. And the three geprek variants are told apart by a sambal you can clearly see in each photo (red-orange sambal bawang, green sambal ijo, and sambal matah with its sliced shallots and chilies), so customers don’t order the wrong one. Shoot the crispy-skin close-up first, while the chicken is at its crunchiest.

A professional food photographer for 12 items would cost far more than Rp 112,000. For a new business, window light and a phone already make your store page look tidy and trustworthy. Save the photographer for when revenue is steady and you need images for paid ads or a big banner.

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One Set of Photos, Many Places to Use Them

Upload a few of your best master files to your Google Business Profile, because honest menu photos and customer reviews build trust together (see our guide to Google Business Profile and Google reviews, and our Google Business Profile photo strategy for shopfront and interior shots). The same photos also fit your WhatsApp Business catalog, so customers ordering by chat see the same pictures as in the app.

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If You’d Like a Hand

You can do all of this yourself this week, and we’d encourage you to try it on your own first. If you then want those photos to bring in customers from Google Maps too, or you’d like a simple menu page that connects to WhatsApp, the Eranya Digital team can help set it up. Start with a free strategy chat, no package pushed on you.

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References

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Footnotes

1. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). World Food Day. fao.org/world-food-day. Official information on World Food Day, observed every 16 October. ↩

2. Apple Support. iPhone User Guide: Camera (grid, focus and exposure). support.apple.com/guide/iphone. How to turn on the camera grid and adjust or lock focus and exposure on iPhone. ↩ ↩²

3. Snapseed Help. Snapseed tools. support.google.com/snapseed. Official guide to Snapseed editing tools such as Tune Image, White Balance, Crop and Healing. ↩

4. Google Chrome Labs. Squoosh. squoosh.app. Free browser-based tool for compressing and resizing images. ↩

5. GoFood Merchant. Photo guidelines for GoFood Merchant (Indonesian). gofoodmerchant.co.id/bantuan. Official help page on menu photo requirements for GoFood partners. ↩

6. Grab Help Center. GrabFood and GrabMart menu/item photo criteria (Indonesian). help.grab.com/merchant/id-id. Official help page on menu photo criteria for GrabFood partners. ↩