The Untapped Goldmine in POS Systems: Craveable Food Photos
The expected role of a restaurant POS system has grown dramatically. Once upon a time it was primarily about taking orders and processing payments. Now POS providers are expected to supply a host of advanced features for functions like customer targeting and menu optimization.
Small to medium-sized restaurants try to focus on creating the best food, drinks, and service that they possibly can. In this context, a POS system has to make everything else as easy as possible.
It’s true that it takes time for restaurants to switch POS providers. But they do it. When they do, the decision is based on a sum total of comparative value.
High-converting food and drink photos are an under-appreciated way to add value. To-date POS systems have been largely passive about helping restaurant clients with food and drink photos.
This can change. It should change.
POS providers at the cutting edge can take the initiative to provide restaurants with affordable, on-demand shoots, tools and targeted suggestions so they can improve their photos.
Let’s figure out how, and why it would be a natural extension of a POS provider’s existing expertise and assets.
The Bottom Line: Restaurant Photos Matter
Food and drink photos matter to consumers and POS providers know it.
- According to a 2024 Toast survey of guests who use social media at least once per week, 84% want to see food and drink photos on a restaurant’s social media pages.
- According to a 2024 Owner survey, nearly nine out of ten consumers check a restaurant’s menu photos before they order.
Snappr’s own study of 600 consumers in 2020 found that menu photos were more important than written descriptions and customer reviews.
People see the food before they eat it. When it comes to food and drink, visual content says more than words can because words still require imagination.
Putting great photos in front of hungry people tells them what they want to know faster: Do I want to eat this? Do I want to drink this?
By this standard, it’s possible to see gaps in a platform’s array of images.
Help is needed
Restaurants need photos for:
- Existing items
- Menu changes
- Single items
- Combinations
- Promotional activity
- Cross-selling opportunities
Restaurants with more niche or experimental items, or smaller outfits with great food and drink, especially need high quality photos.
It’s easy to search for and review the most popular restaurants in one’s own area. It’s common to see gaps in displays of menus and lower-quality photos. If restaurants filled those gaps and made the necessary improvements, they would make even more money.
Consider photos made specifically for online orders.
Customers looking at a restaurant’s Instagram or website can see what the food will actually look like in its proper packaging.
Covered by plastic, these desserts still look scrumptious. Cut, fresh strawberries are snugly nestled in between pastry bread and crinkly paper that fits neatly into a hand.
Restaurants can’t solve this problem by themselves
A restaurant with great drinks and food has the product it needs to create such photos.
A restaurant with quality photos across the board for its offering will make more money.
There are two specific criteria for a restaurant to achieve photo excellence:
- One, coverage; there needs to be enough photos.
- Two, quality; the image conveys the basic sensational aspects of the item (taste, texture, and so on).
For this to happen, restaurants need talent and technology.
They also need better pricing.
But restaurants haven’t acquired the access to existing, functioning:
- Networks of qualified, reliable photographers, and
- Tools for creating with AI, housing, receiving, editing (with AI) and publishing photos in an integrated, systematic way.
Most restaurants also lack a champion to harness available economies of scale and garner the benefits of enterprise-level discounts for both photographer-created and AI-generated photos.
Existing POS providers in other industries have found a way to provide this access to SMB clients.
This is where restaurant POS providers can bring existing expertise and technology at their disposal to bear.
The Strategic Position of POS Providers to Lift Restaurant Market Photo Quality
POS providers don’t need to create new networks of photographers or a new tech stack for photo workflows and AI image generation.
What POS providers have is the critical digital material. There are two aspects to focus on.
First, the information and technology relating to menu customization and actual online order flows for pick up and delivery.
Restaurants store and slot food and drink photos in POS systems.
Second, the customer UX which can be adjusted to increase or decrease order volume (without sacrificing on refunds and customer complaints), despite uncontrollable market changes.
The net benefit to a POS provider adding value to restaurants in these ways is twofold.
- Directly: by increasing order volume, which depending on POS pricing may directly increase revenue.
- Indirectly: by adding revenue to restaurants, which increases their willingness to pay the creditable vendor.
The role of a POS provider when it comes to photos
The brand of a POS provider matters to its restaurant clients, and only indirectly affects their consumer clients. In contrast, for example, the brand of a food delivery app directly matters to both groups.
As a result, restaurant POS providers don’t really need to take an active gatekeeping role in restaurant photos unless that sort of automation is an optional value addition to the client firm.
A POS provider can provide in-app or browser access for restaurants who want an easy way to source, create, manage, apply quality control, and publish higher-converting photos.
This product feature alone is valuable.
But second, as a service element, existing analytic capabilities relating to order flows permit greater insight relating to the effects of both having a photo for an item when there wasn’t one before and improvements on existing photos.
In other words, talent working on a POS system has a comfortable learning curve for spotting, and automating, potential improvements to restaurant food and drink photos.
A POS provider committed to adding value through suggestions has multiple strategies available to it.
It can assist restaurants across the board, during onboarding specifically, or focus on strategic accounts.
In certain cases, if a particular target is considering POS alternatives, it may be wise to supervise and subsidize photo shoots and intensive editing work. This can serve to bolster an incumbent’s position or undermine it, depending on the POS provider’s relationship to the target in question.
All this discussion has been good. But it’s been abstract.
Let’s keep things concrete with a real photo.
Hearty, yellow potatoes and juicy shrimp swim in curry. It’s a savory dish, and that fact leaps out to the viewer from the image.
The thyme on top is a nice touch, and so is having the chef’s covered hands in the background without distracting from the food.
Visual generative AI can also provide quality photos.
This is comfort food, a typical online order that would run through POS systems.
The creamy stuff at the bottom of the skillet does poke out, but the viewer would first notice sliced, fresh green onions and fried chicken wings.
It looks delicious, and that’s precisely what a restaurant owner would want to convey about the same dish. AI images, of course, have to be checked for realistic similarity to the particular real-world menu item in question.
Restaurants, especially the SMB segment, struggle to find photos like the ones just discussed.
This can change. Existing POS providers as well as 73% of the Fortune 500, and 48% of the A16Z Top 100 Marketplace, use Snappr.
Snappr Services for Restaurant POS Systems
SMB restaurants need great photos for affordable rates, quickly, and without hassle. To make that happen for their clients, POS providers need a simplified operation with deep access to qualified photographers and cutting edge visual content technology.
Increase speed and reduce hassle
Snappr’s photographers can provide services for 95% of US geography and 90% of the English-speaking population of the globe.
Snappr handles the booking and scheduling process, issues included, from beginning to end.
Book in two minutes with only 24 hour notice and Snappr will locate a pre-vetted photographer with expertise in food photography. They will arrive on time and bring their own equipment.
Photographer-created photos have a 24-48 hour turnaround. AI-generated photos have a 24-hour turnaround.
These times include post-production quality control with customer support.
Create high-converting photos
Snappr’s own team runs post-production quality control. They are available to help with editing.
Customers have access to AI-powered editing and any other value-add visual content tool from a third party.
- Refine and retouch
- Remove unwanted elements
- Replace elements
Snappr has a set of APIs and integrations that make it possible to stay within the dashboard while creating quality photos.
Photographers receive customized shoot guidelines which Snappr helps customers create and update.
If a Snappr AI image performs worse than a competitor AI’s image, Snappr offers no-charge improvements until Snappr is the superior performer.
Use workflow tech tools
Receive and send files wherever desired. Photos are permanently backed up and always accessible.
All visual content is tagged and findable. That includes AI-created and AI-edited images.
Search for and view every active and completed job, pending tasks, visual content, anything else of relevance within the Snappr Workflows dashboard.
Snappr Workflows
Workflows are customizable – no coding necessary. Drag & drop conditions and actions into sequences.
Restaurant POS Providers Face a Leadership Opportunity
SMB restaurants need more, and better, food and drink photos.
But they could use assistance.
POS providers are in the best position to solve this problem.
Working with Snappr will make it happen.
The Snappr team is available to discuss your needs.
