Deliveroo Photo Requirements: The Complete Guide for Restaurants

Getting your photos right on Deliveroo is one of the highest-return investments you can make as a restaurant operator. Deliveroo's own data indicates that menu items with high-quality photos receive up to 25% more orders than those without. With margins tight and competition fierce, that uplift is not something to leave on the table.

This guide covers everything you need to know about Deliveroo photo requirements: the technical specifications, quality standards, what gets rejected, and how to produce images that both pass review and convert browsers into buyers.

Deliveroo Photo Specs: Quick Reference

Before diving into the detail, here is the essential spec table you can refer back to when preparing your images.

These are the baseline requirements for images submitted through the Deliveroo Restaurant Hub. Images that fall outside these parameters are typically flagged for review or rejected outright before going live on the platform.

Why Deliveroo Photo Guidelines Exist

Deliveroo applies photo guidelines for two reasons that are directly tied to platform revenue: conversion rates and customer trust.

When a customer opens the Deliveroo app, they are making quick decisions based almost entirely on visuals. Inconsistent or low-quality photos create friction. A blurry shot of a burger next to a crisp, well-lit pasta dish on the same menu creates an uneven impression that undermines confidence in the whole restaurant.

Beyond conversion, there is the accuracy requirement. Deliveroo, like other delivery platforms, requires that photos accurately represent what the customer will receive. Images that misrepresent portion size, ingredients, or presentation can lead to complaints, refunds, and in repeat cases, listing suspensions.

Understanding the spirit behind the guidelines — not just the technical specs — helps you make smarter decisions when preparing your menu photography.

Technical Requirements in Detail

Resolution and Dimensions

Deliveroo recommends submitting images at a minimum of 1200 x 800 pixels, with higher resolutions preferred. Images at 2000 x 1333 pixels or above give the platform headroom to crop, scale, and display your photos across different device sizes without quality loss.

Submitting low-resolution images is one of the most common reasons photos fail to look professional even when they technically pass upload requirements. A 1200 x 800 pixel image displayed on a modern smartphone screen at high pixel density will appear noticeably soft compared to one submitted at twice that resolution.

Aspect Ratio

The 3:2 landscape aspect ratio is standard across Deliveroo's product image cards. If you submit a square (1:1) image, the platform will either crop it to fit or display it with padding, neither of which is ideal. Shoot and crop to 3:2 from the start to ensure your composition is preserved exactly as intended.

File Format and Colour Profile

JPEG is the standard format for delivery app photography. PNG is also accepted and can be preferable if your image has fine detail or you want to avoid compression artefacts, though file sizes will be larger. Regardless of format, export in the sRGB colour profile. Images saved in Adobe RGB or other wide-gamut profiles will appear desaturated on standard screens.

Watermarks and Branding

Deliveroo does not permit watermarks, logos, or text overlays on product images. The platform has its own branding layer and wants a consistent visual experience across all restaurant listings. If you use a photography service that applies watermarks by default, ensure you have the unwatermarked export before uploading.

Deliveroo Menu Photography: Quality Standards

Meeting the technical specs gets your photo accepted. Meeting the quality standards gets it converting.

Lighting

Good lighting is the single biggest differentiator between an amateur food photo and a professional one. Deliveroo's quality review team looks for photos that are well-lit, evenly exposed, and free from harsh shadows obscuring the dish.

Natural light from a large window is the most accessible option for restaurants without photography equipment. Shoot during the day, diffuse direct sunlight with a white curtain or sheet, and position the dish so the light falls at a 45-degree angle from the side. This creates gentle shadows that add depth without hiding detail.

Avoid overhead fluorescent or warm tungsten lighting common in restaurant kitchens. These produce colour casts (green and orange respectively) that make food look unappetising and are difficult to correct in post-processing.

Composition and Framing

The dish should be the dominant subject in the frame. Deliveroo's guidelines recommend that the food fills at least 60-70% of the image area. Dead space around the subject makes the dish look small and reduces visual impact on a small app screen.

Common composition approaches that perform well on Deliveroo:

• Overhead (flat lay): Works particularly well for bowls, platters, pizza, and dishes with interesting arrangements
• 45-degree angle: The most universally flattering angle for most dishes, showing both the surface of the food and its height or layering
• Eye-level close-up: Effective for burgers, stacked dishes, and anything with visible texture on the side

Avoid wide establishing shots that show the full table setting, multiple dishes, or large amounts of background. They reduce the visual focus on the product you are selling.

Backgrounds and Surfaces

The background should not compete with the food. Clean options include:

• White or off-white plates on a neutral surface (marble, slate, plain wood)
• Dark ceramic or stone surfaces for lighter-coloured dishes
• Plain paper or fabric backgrounds for a studio-clean look

Heavily patterned tablecloths, cluttered counter surfaces, or backgrounds featuring other dishes all detract from the main subject and can make images look less professional in Deliveroo's review process.

Accuracy and Representation

This is the area most likely to cause compliance issues. Deliveroo requires that photos accurately represent the portion and presentation a customer will receive. This means:

• Do not photograph a larger portion than you serve
• Do not add garnishes, sauces, or toppings not included in the order unless you note them clearly
• Do not use images from stock libraries or manufacturer shots that show a different product

This requirement also applies to AI-generated or AI-enhanced images. Enhancement tools that fix lighting, sharpen focus, or correct colour are generally fine. Tools that add elements not present in the original dish — extra cheese, sauce drizzles, unrealistic portion size — can create accuracy problems. The test is simple: does the photo look like what the customer will receive?

Common Reasons Deliveroo Photos Get Rejected

Understanding where photos fail helps you avoid the review cycle.

Under-resolution: Images below the minimum 1200 x 800 pixel threshold are rejected immediately. This catches phone photos that have been resized or exported at low quality.

Wrong aspect ratio: Square or portrait images require manual cropping that often cuts out key parts of the dish.

Blurry or out of focus: Motion blur from handholding in low light, or missed focus on the dish, results in rejection. The food itself — not the background — must be sharp.

Watermarks or text: Any overlay text, price badges, promotional callouts, or logos will fail review.

Non-food content: Images that primarily show packaging, menus, or the restaurant environment rather than the dish itself are generally rejected for product listings.

Heavily filtered: Images with extreme colour grading, heavy vignetting, or filters that significantly alter the appearance of the food may be flagged as misrepresenting the product.

Best Practices for a Cohesive Deliveroo Menu

Getting individual photos accepted is one challenge. Building a menu that looks considered and consistent is another.

Shoot With a Consistent Style

When customers scroll through your Deliveroo menu, visual consistency signals professionalism and care. Pick one shooting angle (most restaurants do best with 45 degrees), one surface or background, and one lighting setup. Apply them to every dish.

Inconsistency happens most often when photos are taken at different times, by different people, or with different equipment. If you are building out your menu photography incrementally, keep a reference shot and match every new image to it.

Prioritise Your Highest-Revenue Items

If you cannot photograph every item at once, start with the dishes that drive the most revenue or the items most likely to be ordered by a new customer. On Deliveroo, the items that appear in category headers or featured positions have a disproportionate impact on first impressions.

Keep Photos Current

Seasonal menu changes, ingredient substitutions, and presentation updates should be reflected in your photos. An image showing a dish that no longer looks like what you serve creates complaints and review risk. Many restaurants treat a photo update cycle the same way they treat a menu print cycle.

How AI-Powered Enhancement Can Help Meet Deliveroo Requirements

Shooting food in a restaurant environment — under artificial light, during service, without a photography studio — produces images that are rarely Deliveroo-ready straight from the camera. Colour casts, soft focus, flat lighting, and distracting backgrounds are all common problems that make otherwise good food photography fail quality review.

AI enhancement tools address exactly this gap. Rather than reshooting or hiring a professional photographer for every update, you can upload a working photo and use AI to correct the issues that would otherwise cause rejection.

Practical things AI enhancement handles well for Deliveroo submissions:

• Lighting correction: Re-illuminating dishes to remove colour casts and create the even, appealing light that Deliveroo's quality review expects
• Background cleanup: Replacing cluttered or distracting backgrounds with clean neutral surfaces without reshooting
• Sharpening and upscaling: Bringing a soft or low-resolution image up to the 1200 x 800 minimum — or beyond — without visible artefacts
• Colour correction: Adjusting white balance and saturation so food looks vibrant rather than washed out or artificially orange under kitchen lighting

The key constraint to keep in mind is Deliveroo's accuracy requirement. AI enhancement that corrects the photo of the actual dish you serve is entirely appropriate. AI generation that replaces the dish with an idealised version that does not match your actual product creates compliance risk. Use enhancement to make your real food look its best, not to show food you do not serve.

For restaurants managing a large menu across multiple delivery platforms, tools like Fudie allow you to enhance photos in bulk, apply consistent brand styling, and export at the correct specs for each platform. The delivery app photo optimization process becomes significantly more manageable when you are not treating each platform as a separate manual workflow.

Deliveroo vs. Other Delivery Platforms

If you are active on multiple platforms, it is worth understanding where Deliveroo's requirements align with and diverge from others.

Deliveroo's 3:2 landscape format is shared by Uber Eats, which similarly recommends 1200 x 800 pixels as a baseline. The accuracy requirement — photos must match what customers receive — is consistent across all major delivery platforms. Where platforms differ is in the strictness of their automated review process and the quality bar their editorial teams apply to featured placements.

Deliveroo's quality review tends to be thorough for restaurants in competitive urban markets where the platform curates prominent placements. If you are targeting those placements, the bar is higher than the minimum spec requirements suggest.

For a detailed breakdown of how requirements differ by platform, the delivery app photo optimization guide covers platform-specific specs and strategy across the major UK and international services. If you are also managing listings on other platforms, see the dedicated guides for DoorDash photo requirements, Uber Eats photo requirements, and Grubhub photo requirements.

Uploading Photos Through the Deliveroo Restaurant Hub

Once your images are ready, uploading through the Restaurant Hub is straightforward. Navigate to your menu, select the item you want to update, and use the photo upload field to submit your image. The Hub displays a preview of how the image will appear in the product card before you save.

A few practical notes for the upload process:

• Name your files descriptively before uploading (e.g., margherita-pizza-main.jpg rather than IMG_4521.jpg). This helps with version control as your menu evolves.
• If an image fails review, the Hub will notify you with a reason. Fixing the specific flagged issue and resubmitting is faster than starting from scratch.
• Deliveroo's review process can take 24-48 hours for new submissions. Plan your menu updates accordingly, particularly ahead of busy periods.

Summary

Deliveroo photo requirements are not onerous, but they are specific. Meeting the technical baseline — 3:2 aspect ratio, 1200 x 800 px minimum, JPEG or PNG in sRGB — gets your photos through the upload process. Meeting the quality standards — good lighting, accurate representation, clean backgrounds, consistent style — gets them converting.

The 25% order uplift Deliveroo attributes to quality menu photos is not a marketing claim to dismiss. It is a measurable return on an investment that, with the right workflow, does not require a professional photographer on retainer.

Start with your top-selling items, get the lighting and composition right for those, then build out the rest of your menu with the same consistent approach. Whether you shoot fresh or enhance existing photos with AI tools, the goal is the same: images that make the customer want to order before they have read the description.