Question 1

What image sizes does Google Ads need for a restaurant campaign?

Accepted Answer

Performance Max and Demand Gen campaigns work from three image shapes. Landscape at 1.91:1, where Google recommends 1200 × 628 pixels. Square at 1:1, recommended 1200 × 1200. Portrait at 4:5, recommended 960 × 1200. Files can be up to 5 MB, an asset group takes up to 20 images, and Performance Max asks for at least one landscape and one square. Google then decides which shape to show where: a wide banner in one placement, a square tile in another, a tall card on a phone. So every dish you upload is really three images. The practical problem is framing, not pixels. If the burger fills a phone photo edge to edge, the wide crop slices off the bun and the tall crop loses the plate. Compose each dish with clean space on every side and all three crops hold. Keep words and logos off the photo itself: Google's own image guidance asks for clean pictures, and the headline belongs in the ad text.

Question 2

Does FoodShot manage Google Ads campaigns, bids or ad copy?

Accepted Answer

No, and it is better said plainly than implied. Google Ads management for restaurants is a real discipline: account structure, keyword and search-term work, bidding strategy, location targeting around the venue, conversion tracking for bookings and orders, budget pacing and reporting. That belongs to you or to the agency you pay, and a good agency earns its fee. FoodShot does none of it. We do not set bids, choose keywords, write headlines or descriptions, build audiences, log in to your Google Ads account or promise a return on ad spend. What we do is the image half: take a phone photo of a dish you actually serve and restyle it into a clean, campaign-ready picture that holds up in landscape, square and portrait. If your agency keeps asking for better photos and you keep sending snaps from the pass, this is the step between those two things. For the wider question of which ad concepts to run across every channel, see restaurant ad creative.

Question 3

Why do dish photos matter if Google decides where the ad appears?

Accepted Answer

Because in Performance Max and Demand Gen the image is one of the few things you still fully control. Google assembles each ad from your pieces, the headlines, descriptions, images and logo, then places it across Search, Maps, Discover, YouTube and Gmail, testing combinations and serving more of the ones that earn engagement. You do not choose the placement, but you do choose the ingredients. A flat, yellow-cast photo of a burger on a crowded table stays in that rotation, and for someone deciding where to eat in the next half hour, the picture is the menu. It answers the questions words cannot: how big, how fresh, how hot. A strong image tends to win the click you want, from someone who has already decided they want that dish. A weak one gets scrolled past, or clicked by someone who leaves the moment the ordering page shows them something different, and on a cost-per-click campaign you pay for that click all the same.

Question 4

How often should a restaurant refresh its Google Ads images?

Accepted Answer

There is no fixed schedule, but there are three honest triggers. The first is the menu: when a dish comes off, its image should come out of the asset group the same day, because advertising something the kitchen no longer makes wastes the click and disappoints the guest. The second is the season: a new special deserves its own image while it is still new, not a month later. The third is performance. Asset-level reporting in Google Ads shows which images are carrying the campaign and which have gone quiet, and a picture that has run for months against the same local audience tends to lose its pull. The usual obstacle is not knowing when to refresh, it is having nothing to refresh with, because the photographer is booked until next month. Keep a bench of two or three restyled alternatives per ad group, ready to rotate in, and change a few images at a time rather than the whole set, so you can see which change moved the numbers.

Question 5

Does FoodShot send a photographer, run a shoot, or create dishes we do not serve?

Accepted Answer

No. FoodShot never sends a photographer, never books or runs a studio, never does an on-site shoot, never prints menus or signage, and never fabricates a dish. It restyles photos you already have. You photograph your own plate on your own phone, at the pass, on a quiet afternoon, wherever it is easiest, then upload it and choose a style. About ninety seconds later the same dish comes back with rebuilt light, a clean surface and framing that survives Google's crops. The portion, the colour, the ingredients and the number of pieces on the plate stay true to your photo, because they are true to the dish. That matters more in paid ads than anywhere else: Google's advertising policies treat misleading ads as a violation, and a guest who orders from an ad expects the plate in the picture. If the photo shows six wings, the ad shows six wings. If the dish changes in the kitchen, photograph it again.

Question 6

Can AI for restaurant marketing replace our agency or our photographer?

Accepted Answer

Neither, and anyone promising both is overselling. Your agency's value is judgement inside the account: what to bid on, where to spend, when to cut a campaign that is not paying back. No image tool touches that. A professional food photographer still wins on a launch campaign, an interior shoot, a brand story with people in it, or a signature dish that deserves an art-directed hour. Where AI for restaurant marketing genuinely earns its place is volume. A Google Ads account wants fresh images for every ad group, in three shapes, updated whenever the menu or the season moves, and no restaurant budget pays a photographer at that cadence. Restyling your own phone photos covers that gap: the agency gets usable assets the same day it asks for them, and the photography budget goes to the few images that carry the brand. If you are planning imagery for the whole venue rather than just the ads, start with our restaurants page.

Google Ads for restaurants is two jobs. We only do the creative one.

Seven places a restaurant's Google Ads images win or waste the click, and the one job we leave to you

One Dish, Three Ratios: Landscape, Square, Portrait

Performance Max Image Assets for a Restaurant

A Hero Dish for Every Ad Group

Seasonal Special Swapped In the Same Day

Local Imagery That Matches the Storefront

Refreshing Creative When CTR Decays

What FoodShot Does Not Do: Bids, Copy, Targeting

Built for the owner paying for clicks and the agency still asking for better photos

Every ratio Google asks for, from the photo you already took

Set the light and framing per ad group, not per photoshoot

One saved look across every campaign and every refresh

One tool, endless possibilities

From phone snap to studio shot

One photo, endless options

Marketing-ready designs

Describe it, get it

Styles for every vibe

Ultra-high resolution output

For restaurants already paying for Google clicks, and the people running those accounts

Owners Running Their Own Campaigns

Small Agencies With Restaurant Clients

Multi-Location Restaurant Groups

Delivery-First Kitchens

Menus That Change With the Seasons

Marketing Managers Fighting Ad Fatigue

Loved by food businesses

Google Ads for Restaurants FAQ: Images, Ratios and What We Leave to You

Keep your agency. Fix the images. Every ratio, every ad group, tonight.