Food Photographer, Recipe Developer, and Food Stylist - Do you need to hire all of them
Food Photographer, Recipe Developer, and Food Stylist - Do you need to hire all of them?
Marketing a food brand requires learning about the different ways to get content for your brand and hiring the right team to make sure your food brand is represented well. In order to obtain marketing materials you may be considering a food photographer, a recipe developer, and a food stylist, but do you need to hire all of them?
Knowing what each of these professionals can do and the services they offer will make that decision much easier, and then you can begin to look at your budget and determine what your plan will be to get your product images turned into marketing materials and in front of your ideal customers.
What Does Each Professional Do?
Food Photographer: A food photographer is a professional photographer that specializes in capturing food for many purposes, such as cookbooks, packaging, advertising, website content, magazine ads, and more.
They know how to light food the best to make it look appetizing and what angles and images you need to have for each purpose you will use your images for. Photographing food is not like taking portraits of people or animals or landscapes, you have to make sure the food looks as appetizing as possible.
They will plan the photoshoot, take the photos, edit them, and deliver them to you in the formats you need for your purposes.
Recipe Developer: A recipe developer is a professional that specializes in creating a delicious recipe using the ingredients they are asked to use, if you hire them to work with your food brand they will make sure your product(s) is featured in the recipe. They will then test the recipe a few times to make sure it comes the same each time and make any adjustments needed.
Generally, they will take notes and provide them to go along with the recipe they create for you, giving substitution options for some ingredients, notes that will make re-creating the recipe at home easier, and how to store the food once it is cooked for the best results and food safety of leftovers.
This could be someone that is familiar in a home cooking capacity or a trained chef, baker, or other foodservice industry professional.
Food Stylist: A food stylist is a professional you will usually see on a food photography photoshoot and their entire role is to make food look good and style the area with the food to complement it well. They will plate the food, choose the linens, dishes, silverware, surfaces to be photographed on, and add things like garnishes and sauces to add to the appeal of the food.
They may be working independently and then the photographer comes in and takes the photos after everything is set up or they may plan the photoshoot with the photographer to work together on the end result.
Often they will work with a restaurant to figure out the standard of how to plate a new dish, the best way to garnish dishes on a menu, they will work with cookbook writers to determine the overall style of the cookbook so that it flows throughout the publication images. They can also work with a food brand to come up with a style and brand guide for all the marketing that will take place.
Who Do You Need To Hire?
Now that you know what each of these professionals do you have some decisions to make. Do you need to hire all of these professionals to get the marketing done for your food brand? Do any of them do multiple tasks? What kind of budget can you expect?
Hiring Three People for Your Photoshoot
You can hire all three of these professionals, or two of them to make sure your food brand is well represented. Sometimes a food photographer will also be a food stylist, or they will prefer to do all the styling themselves.
Some food photographers don’t do any styling, they arrive at the photoshoot and set up the lighting the way they want it and take the photos and leave to edit and deliver. You will need to communicate with the photographer that you choose and make sure that styling is addressed.
You will need to make sure that all expectations and directives are communicated to each person you hire for your food brand marketing project, as they may or may not work together in these roles.
Hiring One Person for Your Photoshoot
You also have an option to hire one person to fulfill all these roles and you only need to communicate with one person. There are many people in the food blogging industry that do all three of these roles, or two of the roles.
Food photographers that serve the food blogging and influencer niche will usually do the food styling and photography themselves. There is also a large majority of them that do recipe development too. Often a food brand will approach a food blogger or food photographer to create a recipe using their product and that same person will style and photograph the recipe themselves and turn in the images.
This approach saves the food brand time and often money, but you will have to gather quotes and find out that part yourself, as it is different from person to person. If you choose to use one person you won’t have transportation fees for a team, you won’t spend as much time communicating between the team members, and you will only be worrying about making sure expectations are met by one person.
So What Do You Do?
The choice is yours, there are pros and cons to each setup and you will have to determine what is best for your food brand in the long run. You could try one set up for Product A and one set up for Product B and see which works better for you or fits your budget more. It may take just reaching out and asking for quotes to determine what works with your budget too.
If you decide to work with a food photographer or food blogger that also posts to social media you may be able to address your marketing needs at the same time as well, which may be worthwhile to keep the entire project within one person’s control and further reduce time and energy needed.
In the end, the choice is yours and you will need to consider your options and contact your prospects. Now you know more about each job description and what to expect when looking for your prospects to fulfill your food brand marketing needs.
