- The Menu Spotlight is one session of up to 3 hours, scheduled between services rather than instead of them.
- It produces 4 Reels, each on a different subject and in three ratios, 8 social stills and the raw footage, delivered in 3 to 5 working days.
- The rights are organic: your own channels, your website and your booking pages, with no time limit. Paid adverts come with the Content Day and the monthly retainer.
- The venue provides the dishes and drinks being filmed, and a meal for each of us during the session. Nothing else.
- The four subjects matter more than anything else: film the plates that sell, a drink being made, the room, and the one thing a competitor cannot copy.
What the Menu Spotlight is
Most restaurants know they need better content and cannot see how to get it. A monthly agency retainer feels like a commitment before you know whether it works. A photographer gives you beautiful stills but no video. And phone footage shot by the team in the middle of service rarely shows the food the way it looks on the plate.
The Menu Spotlight sits in the gap. It is a single, focused session at your restaurant, on your signature dishes, your drinks and your room, scheduled in the quiet window between services. Velena and Dragos come to you, both on site for up to three hours, and film everything the session needs: the Reels, the stills and the footage behind them.
It is the smallest of our three restaurant packages, and it is often the first one a restaurant books with us. It is built for a new menu or a special that you want seen the week it goes on, not months later, and for a venue that wants to see what professional content does for it before thinking about anything monthly.
How the session runs
Nothing about the Menu Spotlight asks you to close, stage a service or clear the room. The session is scheduled with you in the window between services, so the kitchen and the room are yours again when the doors open. Velena and Dragos have both worked front of house, so the timing of a kitchen is something we plan around rather than something we learn on the day.
- OrderAdd the package to your basket on the Menu Spotlight page. Nothing is filmed until the shot list is agreed.
- Brief and shot listSend your order number, the four subjects and the quiet window between services. We reply within one business day and agree the shot list with you in writing.
- The sessionTwo creators on site for up to three hours. We agree with the kitchen when each dish comes out, film it while it is at its best, then move to the drink, the room and the detail.
- Receive the ReelsThe four Reels, eight stills and the raw footage arrive in a shared folder within 3 to 5 working days, with the rights stated in writing.
Travel within 90 minutes of High Wycombe is included. Elsewhere in the UK and Ireland it is £180, and Europe is £450 on at least 21 days notice, all stated before you order rather than added afterwards. A dish filmed for three minutes under the right light, plated as the kitchen plates it, looks like the dish the guest will be served. That is the whole point: content that matches the plate, so nobody is disappointed when it arrives.
Choosing the four subjects
Four Reels means four subjects, and choosing them well matters more than anything that happens on the day. The temptation is to film the four dishes the kitchen is proudest of. The better choice is usually the four things that bring people through the door and make them spend.
- The dish that sellsThe plate with the margin, the one that already sells well and could sell more. A plate that takes twenty minutes and sells four a night is not worth six seconds of a stranger's attention; the one that goes out sixty times a weekend is.
- A drink being madeA cocktail, a pour, a coffee. Movement in a glass holds attention on a phone better than almost anything, and drinks carry a margin that food often does not.
- The roomThe table by the window, the bar at seven o'clock, the terrace in the sun. People book a room as much as a menu, and the room is what tells them what kind of evening it will be.
- The thing a competitor cannot copyThe wood fire, the view, the chef's signature, the dessert people photograph. Every restaurant has one, and it is the reason someone chooses you over the place next door.
If you have a new menu or a special to launch, make it one of the four. The Menu Spotlight is at its best filmed the week a dish goes on, so it can be seen while it is new. For what makes dishes sell on video, shot by shot, read our guide to restaurant food video content.
Where the content goes
The question restaurant owners most often ask before booking is a practical one: what do I actually do with this? The Menu Spotlight is designed so that the same Reels and stills work across every place a guest looks before deciding where to eat.
All of this is covered by the organic rights in the package: your own channels, your website and your booking pages, with no time limit. The one place it does not cover is paid advertising, which is the next section.
Restaurant videos we have made
Tap a video to play it. Nothing loads from outside the site until you do. There is more on the hotel and restaurant work page.
What the Menu Spotlight does not include
A focused session is focused for a reason, and it is worth being plain about what sits outside it, so you choose the right package first time.
If there is any chance you will want to run the Reels as adverts, choose the Content Day from the start. Buying the Menu Spotlight first and then needing advert rights means paying for two sessions when one would have done.
Menu Spotlight and the other restaurant packages
What the menu does decides the package. A fixed menu wants one good session on the plates that sell. A kitchen worth showing, and adverts to run, want a full day. A menu that moves with the season wants two visits a month, so a special is filmed the week it goes on.
All three are made in house by Velena and Dragos, with no crew, and all three include the raw footage. Our guides to the restaurant Content Day and the restaurant social media retainer explain the other two in the same detail as this one.
Is it worth it for your restaurant?
An earlier version of this page had a calculator that turned a guessed booking uplift into an annual revenue figure. We have taken it out. Nobody can know in advance how many extra covers four Reels will bring, and a figure built on a guess looks more certain than it is.
What you can do is check the numbers yourself, honestly. Work out what one extra table on a quiet night is worth to you, and how many of those it would take to cover the session. Then judge whether better content on your menu page, your listings and your feed is likely to bring that many in over the months you use it. Our free social media ROI calculator lets you put your own figures in, and our best time to post tool helps the Reels land when your guests are looking.
A few things make it more likely to pay its way. A menu or a special that is new, so there is something to say. A venue whose current photos are old, dark or taken on a phone. Listings and a booking page that people already visit, so better pictures reach people who are already deciding. And a plan to post the Reels rather than leave them in a folder.
And a few make it less likely. If your feed is not posted to at all, four Reels will not change much on their own; that is a posting problem, and the answer is someone to post. If the food is changing next week, film the new menu, not the old one. We would rather tell you that before you order than after.
After the session: posting it
Content works when someone posts it, answers the comments and watches what does well. If your team has the time, the Menu Spotlight gives them a month of Reels and a grid of stills to work with. If they do not, our social media management plans plan, create, publish and report, with every post approved by you. Every plan runs month to month, with 2 months notice.
For a restaurant group or a venue that wants a post every working day, the Social Media Management: Elite Plan covers up to five platforms. All five plans are on the social media management page, and hospitality social media management explains how we run them for venues. You can see how that works over years rather than weeks in our case studies of Purgatory Bar and No Escape London.
Menu Spotlight: questions before you book
What is included in the Menu Spotlight?
One session of up to 3 hours between services, with two creators on site. It produces 4 Reels, each on a different subject and in three ratios, 8 social stills formatted for feed and Stories, and the raw footage, delivered in 3 to 5 working days.
How much does it cost?
The Menu Spotlight is £650 for the session. Travel within 90 minutes of High Wycombe is included; the charges for the rest of the UK, Ireland and Europe are stated on the package page before you order.
Do you film during service?
No. The session is scheduled between services so that the kitchen and the room are yours. If you want the kitchen at work during service, that is the Content Day.
What does the restaurant provide?
The dishes and drinks being filmed, and a meal for each of us during the session. Nothing else: no crew charge, no equipment hire and no expenses invoice afterwards.
Can we run the Reels as adverts?
Not on this package. The rights cover your own channels, website and booking pages with no time limit. A 12 month paid media licence comes with the Content Day and the monthly retainer.
Do we get the footage?
Yes. The raw footage from the session is yours to keep and re-cut.
What should we put on camera?
The dishes that sell. Four subjects usually means the margin dish, a drink being made, the room, and the one thing a competitor cannot copy. A new menu or a special is a good fifth reason to book.
Can restaurants outside the UK book it?
Yes. Europe is on at least 21 days notice, with the travel charge stated on the package page. Payment is in pounds sterling from any country.
How do we book?
Order on the Menu Spotlight page, then send your order number, the four subjects and your quiet window. We reply within one business day and agree the shot list with you in writing before anything is filmed.
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