Creating Irresistible Visual Narratives for Your Bar Brand

Raise your glasses high—our 50th edition of the Bar Business Podcast is here, and it's a milestone worth celebrating! With heartfelt appreciation for your unwavering support, I'm dishing out a masterclass on snapping professional-quality photos and videos with just the smartphone in your pocket. Imagine transforming your bar's online allure with captivating visuals that beckon potential patrons to your doorstep. This episode is your VIP pass to marketing success, as I reveal how to harness the power of food and drink photography to skyrocket your establishment's digital appeal.

Picture-perfect burgers and glistening cocktails that leap off the screen don't happen by accident. This week, we're peeling back the curtain on the simplicity and precision behind those irresistible food shots. I'll show you how to set up for the ultimate capture, from employing the rule of thirds to selecting angles that seduce the eye. We'll shine a light on lighting, your behind-the-scenes hero, and its role in giving your shots a professional edge. For every bar owner who's ever wanted to convert "likes" into "walk-ins," the inside scoop on how to make every pixel count awaits right here.

Ready to elevate your food and drink snapshots from the mundane to the magnificent? I'm spilling the trade secrets that keep your vegetables looking lively and your drinks bubbling with charm—like why a pinch of salt could be your photography game-changer. And when we switch focus to bar marketing visuals, remember that the devil is in the details, from the strategic placement of your bottles to the energy beaming from your videos. Whether you're capturing the calm before the storm or the peak hour hustle, learn to craft scenes that narrate your bar's story, one frame at a time. Join me, and let's raise the bar—together!

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Welcome to the Bar Business Podcast, the ultimate resource for bar owners looking to elevate their businesses to the next level. Our podcast is packed with valuable insights, expert advice, and inspiring stories from successful bar owners and industry professionals. Tune in to learn everything from how to craft the perfect cocktail menu to how to manage your staff effectively. Our mission is to help you thrive in the competitive bar industry and achieve your business goals.

Special thank you to our benchmarking data partner Starfish. Starfish works with your bookkeeping software by using AI to help you make smart data-driven decisions and maximize your profits while giving you benchmarking data to understand how you compare to the industry at large.

For more information on how to spend less time working in your bar and more time working on your bar:
The Bar Business Podcast Website
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Chris' Book 'How to Make Top-Shelf Profits in the Bar Business'
Bar Business Nation Facebook Group

Transcript

Announcer: 0:00

You're listening to the Bar Business Podcast where every week, your host, chris Schneider, brings you information, strategies and news on the bar industry, giving you the competitive edge you need to start working on your bar rather than in your bar.

Chris Schneider: 0:20

Welcome to this week's edition of the Bar Business Podcast, your ultimate resource for bar owners. I'm your host, chris Schneider. In today's episode, we're going to talk all about how to take great photos and videos for your bar. Now, we've talked about social media marketing in the past. We've talked about websites in the past. We've talked about a lot of these things, and one thing that I always say is you need professional quality photos and videos, or at least photos. We'll get into videos that we can be a little bit less professional quality on those, interestingly enough. But I've always said you need professional quality photos, and so the big question is how do we do that? And we will answer that question here in a second, but first I just have to say this is episode 50 of the podcast and it is so great to me that you all listen, and I have to thank you for the support you have shown for the podcast over our first 50 episodes. It is so wonderful to be a part of building a community whether it's through the podcast on Facebook of bar owners that want to learn, that want to grow, that want to make their bars better and, seriously, it is a wonderful feeling knowing that this podcast is positively impacting a lot of you, and when I hear from you guys, it really warms my heart to know how much some of this information has helped you. And so I just want to say it's our 15th episode, but, seriously, this is all for you guys, and without your loyal support, without you guys tuning in and listening every week, this would not be possible. Genuinely, sincerely, thank you for listening to this podcast. Thank you for getting involved. If you have in the Facebook group. If you haven't, go join. There's a link in the show notes. But it is just amazing to me to be able to do this every week, and I could not do it without all of you listening. So thank you. But now let's get back to the topic of the day, which is how do we take great photos and videos to use in our marketing for our bar?

Chris Schneider: 2:30

Now you'll hear a lot of times people talk about people eat with their eyes. First, and that's very true, right? We look at something, we look at food and we say does that look great? I used to have a cook at a bar who made this killer. I mean, this stuff was phenomenal, it was great. It was this cream of mushroom soup, but she blended the crap out of it and it kind of looked like baby poop in a really bad way. It was like something you don't want to see that just came out of a diaper. The taste was great, but it looked like crap and it didn't sell that well because it didn't look that good. So people eat with their eyes first.

Chris Schneider: 3:08

If they see something that looks delicious, they're going to eat it and, as we've talked about before, a lot of our patrons, especially people that have never dined with us before, more likely than not they're going to come in contact with us on the internet before they ever step in our door. That means that we need to put our food and our beverages out there in a way that is going to pull them in. We need to make them hungry. We need to make their mouths water when they're on our website, when they're looking at our social media, when even when they're looking at our reviews on review sites, because we can post our own pictures there. Everything we put out in the world needs to make people eat with their eyes, so they come in and eat and drink with their mouths, and this is all essentially because we live in an Instagram world, right? There are great photos of food available everywhere online, and your food should be Instagramable, and the pictures you post on Instagram should make your food look like some of the best food in the world, and I don't care if it's fancy. There are ways to make a plate of wings make people's mouth water in a picture. That is not a problem at all. You just have to have a systemized approach. Like with everything else that you do in your bar, you need a proper approach. You need to utilize the right systems when you're doing your photography, when you're making videos for your bar.

Chris Schneider: 4:26

Now, today, we're going to talk about food and drink photography first. Then we'll talk about photographing your bar. Then we'll talk about videos and video production. So, to get started, we'll talk about food and drink photography, and there's one area, when it comes to taking food photography and drink photography, where people have a misconception.

Chris Schneider: 4:42

Some folks believe that the only way to get photos that are going to look great and professional is to hire a professional and have all the professional equipment. Other folks believe that they can pull out their old Nokia cell phone and take a picture and that's going to work, and frickly neither of those is true. You need to produce a photo that's a high enough quality. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it needs to be high quality and it doesn't require a lot of expensive equipment. But you do need the right stuff to make that shot work. So somewhere in between needing a whole host of expensive equipment and needing nothing is where reality lies, and let's be real honest here.

Chris Schneider: 5:23

If you have a newer cell phone, if you have one of the newer Galaxy phones, if you have a newer iPhone, your camera is more than capable of taking good enough pictures and really professional pictures that could be used in magazines or for any type of advertising that you may do. Not that I'm recommending putting your pictures in magazines or advertising in magazines. I'm just saying you can get really high quality, professional shots. So your phone can do it, assuming, of course, that you have a modern cell phone that has a great camera on it. If you don't, or if you want to go the next level, a DSLR is absolutely great at things like this, but outside of a few people I know that are photographers, I don't know anyone that actually has a camera anymore. Everyone just uses their phone. So your phone will work as long as it's a nicer phone, and if you don't have a nicer phone, I bet you, some of your employees do, so there are people that already work with you, that already have the equipment needed from the camera angle to take care of this. So the last thing you need to do if you're going to take your own photos is to go out and buy a bunch of expensive equipment.

Chris Schneider: 6:28

Now, one place where you will have to buy some equipment is for your lighting. Lighting is terribly, terribly important, and lighting is something that, if you get it right, makes pictures look great, and if you get it wrong, everyone will know. They'll know the picture is wrong. They may not know why, but they'll know that it's wrong. It's kind of like putting bitters in a daiquiri or a mojito or a drink where you don't expect it. Your guests may not be able to know that that's bitters and that's why it tastes off, but they will definitely know it tastes off. The same way, if your photography has bad lighting, they won't necessarily know why it's off, but they will know that it's off. So now, when it comes to lighting, that is one place where you should spend some money to get the right lights in.

Chris Schneider: 7:12

Now, the great thing there is you don't need professional studio lighting. You don't need big box lights, like you think of, for photo shoots. You can go buy ring lights. You can buy LED lights online that are made for influencers. As a matter of fact, there are so many influencers out there nowadays, and there's so much equipment made geared towards influencers that's not expensive, because most wannabe influencers let's be honest they're high school kids, they're college kids. They don't have the budget, but they need the equipment, so there's a lot of really good stuff out there that you can buy that will fit the bill.

Chris Schneider: 7:47

Now for your lighting. You probably want to get ring lights work, or just bar lights, whatever you find, but you can go on Amazon, like I said, and find plenty of these. One thing I do recommend, though, looking for when you're looking for lighting for your photography is to get lights that allow you to adjust both the brightness and the color tone. So we'll talk about this more when we get into actually how to light a shot rather than just talking about equipment. But you want to be able to move from a cool light so a more blue colored light to a warmer light, which is a more amber colored light, or a yellowish light. One way. Easy way to think about this is a lot of your LEDs that are just like that bright, white, daylight color light, or even beyond daylight color light, that's going to be your cool light. And an incandescent light bulb, right. Or think about like the Edison bulb, that have that yellowy, amber tint to them. That's going to be a warmer light. So you want something that can do both, because you're probably not going to use the harsh light as much, but that amber light. Being able to adjust the tone, be able to adjust how bright your light is, is important. Another thing with lights and we'll talk about this again more when we get to talking about how to actually use lighting for your shot but you don't need one light, you need two, maybe three, but you absolutely need two lights to do really good food and drink photography. So make sure when you buy one, you buy two of them.

Chris Schneider: 9:14

Now, the most important thing once we get past the equipment and we start talking about actually taking the photograph, the first thing I would think about is your background, and so often we see people take photos for bars and put them online where they haven't really thought through the background of their photo. Now, generally speaking, if I'm photographing a specific food item or a specific cocktail, I don't really need much background. So there are a couple of different ways you can do this. You can set it all up against a wall. If you have a say, you have wood paneled walls because you're a traditional pub type bar, that can provide a great background. You can use your tables, but make sure you're using a nice table. You don't want to use a background that's scratched or chipped or anything like that if you're setting it up on a table.

Chris Schneider: 10:02

The other option for your background is always just to blur it out. So I can take a shot of a bar with people in it or not in it, or have something on the bar that I'm shooting back against all the bottles behind the back bar. You can blur that out. The good part about this is it used to be to blur out shots like that. To get the front and focus and the back super blurry required a very expensive lens and now there are tons of programs. You can do this on your phone, essentially for free, in about two seconds. So you have that ability on your phone.

Chris Schneider: 10:35

Again, if you don't know some of the software and stuff, I'm not going to recommend anything right now, because I've played with a lot of them and I'll be real honest with you All the photo editing some of my like, some of my don't. Most of them I don't like, everything about them, so I use some different things depending upon what I'm doing, what you have employees that are on Instagram all the time, that are using TikTok, that have some of this editing software on their phone. You can find software that will allow you to blur out the background of an image and when you do that, you brought all the focus to the front and you've made sure that you don't have a cluttered background. Now, some of the time, you're going to want things in the background or other pieces in your frame and your photograph besides just that cocktail or that food item. Maybe you have a cocktail, but you want to have the shaker in the back and the bottle of booze that the base liquor for that cocktail came out of. That's all great. Just make sure that, as you're building that, you're not overdoing it and it's very clear what the subject of your picture is.

Chris Schneider: 11:40

The last thing you want to do in a marketing photo is have too much going on so that the person that's viewing your marketing doesn't automatically immediately, right away, know what it is you're trying to push. You want to make sure that the goal of that image to sell whatever it is you took the picture of is blatantly apparent to the person viewing the picture. Now, once you have your background set up, you're going to put your item there. You have to decide how you're going to frame it. So, whether it's food or a cocktail, you're going to have to decide. How am I looking at this item? And, generally speaking, there's a rule in photography called rule of thirds, and the best way to think about rule of thirds is imagine a tic-tac-toe board overlaid over your screen, and with most phones you can have them put that grid on your camera so you can actually see where those thirds are. But if you just imagine a tic-tac-toe board, rather on the screen, that will give you an idea of what you're looking at.

Chris Schneider: 12:48

And, generally speaking, what you want to avoid is you want to avoid having the main subject of your picture in the center of the frame. Now, sometimes you do. There's reasons that you may want to highlight something right in the center of your picture. Say, you were taking a picture of a salad and you're taking it top down and you just want the whole picture to be the salad Cool. So then you're not using that rule of thirds for the plate itself, but maybe you're going to look at where the tomatoes, where different aspects. What's drawing your eye into that salad, what are the focal points where your eyes are drawn and looking at getting those off center. And the reason why you want it slightly off center is it just? It works better with your brain, it's more aesthetically pleasing. But again, just like any other rule that exists in anything, especially when we're talking about art and design, rules are meant to be broken, except when they're not, and so you should follow this rule unless you don't want to. But rule of thirds is actually something to follow unless you have a reason not to, and you generally want to avoid having your subject just dead center of your photograph.

Chris Schneider: 14:02

Now, the other thing to think about when you're framing the shot is what angle are you photographing things from? And so let's say we're taking a picture of a pizza. Pizzas are flat. I definitely don't want to take a picture of the pizza from, say, a 90 degree angle to the top of the pizza, like from directly, from the side, because all I'm going to get a picture of is crossed. I may want to do a 45 degree angle, so looking down at it at 45 degrees, where your table would be zero. But then now I have some more background. I probably, with something flat like a pizza, want to do my picture directly from above. It's really going to show that pizza off well, but if I want to like pull a piece of pizza up and see that cheese pull, then I want more that 45 degree angle.

Chris Schneider: 14:46

So think about your angles on your shots. Generally speaking, if what you're photographing is flat, the safest, easiest angle is from straight above. And if what you're photographing has some height to it, so think like a burger or something fancy garnish that goes up in the air. If you're photographing food with height, you want to be directly from the side. With a cocktail, almost never do you want to be directly above it, just because there's no real reason to do that, unless you have a cool garnish. There's some different artistic things you might do there, but generally speaking, with a cocktail, you either want to be on that 45 or straight on from the side. And if you're doing something like a layered cocktail or something with a lot of color a lot of interest. Straight on from the side is great. It's going to give you these wonderful cocktail pitch.

Chris Schneider: 15:36

And once you figure out how you want to frame the shot, you have to light the shot. And the best lighting for any photograph ever really almost always the best lighting is naturally, diffused, soft, natural light. And so what I mean by that? Say, you have a giant window. The sun's not coming directly in the window. You put a table right in front of that window, so you're getting all this wonderful light from the outside. It's not direct light, it's not bright sunlight just beating down on that table, but it's just this natural, warm light coming in. That's a great way to do a picture. But let's face it, we're in the bar business. We're not always working when the sun's out. Sometimes it's cloudy, sometimes a lot of bars don't have a lot of windows, so maybe you don't have a window to work in front of, or maybe your window like mine always were is covered with tint, so it's that color isn't coming in.

Chris Schneider: 16:28

Whatever the case may be, there are a lot of reasons to artificially light your picture, and when you do that, you want two lights at least, and you don't want any light coming straight on from the direction of the camera. So you want to avoid using a flash that's going to create harsh light and harsh shadow. What you really want is, if you think about your camera as zero degrees, like a straight forward plane, you want your lights coming both from about 45 degrees towards that, so one on your left and one on your right. And the reason why you use two lights is because it's going to diminish shadows. If you just have light coming from one direction, obviously, if shadows, if you have two lights coming from your 45 degree angle, you won't have shadows in your photo as much, so you're going to get a much crisper, cleaner picture. Now, again, that's generally what you want to do. Maybe you want a shadow, maybe you want something moody, you want to do some light and dark play on your burger there. Well, you can do that. But for most food photography you're going to want two cameras, essentially 45 degrees off of the plane of the shot coming in, one from the left and one from the right, so that you're going to diminish your shadows and you're going to have a food item that is very well and nicely lit. So that's kind of the basics to think through when you're going to stage a photo shoot of your cocktails or your beers or your food or whatever.

Chris Schneider: 17:53

Now there are some definite tricks when it comes to food photography and some of these you may want to use. Some of these I don't recommend using. But if you think about, every time you've ever been to a fast food restaurant, you see the picture of the burger that you're about to buy on the window, on the window cling there, and it never looks like the burger you get. It's always larger in it, it looks like it's taller in it, it looks like there's more in it. And some of that is photography tricks. If I'm real honest with you guys, most food that you see in professionally photographed for chains and stuff a lot of that is not actually edible food. So think of things like ice cream melt, so you really can't take good pictures of ice cream, so you use mashed potatoes and your food color them. Or the reason why those burgers always look so thick and like the layers are just built up so nicely. A lot of times there's cardboard in there between each layer. It keeps the layer separated and it gives you more volume. Same with stacks of pancakes and, for that matter on pancakes.

Chris Schneider: 18:52

A lot of times, syrup in food photography is not actually syrup, because syrup absorbs really quickly into a pancake. But if you use motor oil, so you know, like, go to Walmart, buy a thing of pens oil, buy a quart, pour that on there. It's thick, it's going to drip more, it's going to hold its form more. It's going to sit on top of that pancake more. When you see fries that have that nice gleam on them, they kind of glisten the photography. A lot of times that's oil that's been added, and some people do that by taking some vegetable oil or some fry oil and using a brush and actually brushing it on. You can also get that result by taking WD-40 and just spraying it with some WD-40. Real quick, you just quickly go over the top. It covers it nicely and gives you this wonderful shine.

Chris Schneider: 19:36

The thing is, though, you have to decide how much do you want your food photos to be staged and how much do you not want them to be staged. Personally, I have staged a lot of food photos in the past. I've used WD-40. I've used cardboard rounds in my burgers. I've meticulously made the burgers so that every piece of salad and everything looks perfect, which you should do Make sure it looks perfect, make sure you're giving the best photos possible.

Chris Schneider: 20:06

But to be real honest, I kind of draw the line now at making my food inedible. So what are some things you can do that will make your food look way better in your photography but won't cause it to be inedible? Well, one thing I would always do is undercook the food you're going to take pictures of. Say it's a vegetable, it's a green. If you're going to cook it, just blanch it, undercook it. It'll look more green, it'll look more vibrant and on the plate, it's easier to work with.

Chris Schneider: 20:37

As a subject of your photograph. It has some form to it. Still, you're able to move it around better. You're able to get the picture you want easier. So any vegetables I'm ever photographing, I just blanch them. I don't actually cook them all the way through.

Chris Schneider: 20:52

The same, with meat Most meat that you want to take pictures of you're better off having it rarer than well done. It's just it's more the shape that people expect to see in a photograph, to be real honest. So think about a well done steak. Think about the fact that it's now blackish and a little. It's kind of smashed together and it doesn't quite look like a good juicy steak. You want a steak that is plump, that looks really good on the plate, and so you don't want to overcook it. Essentially, when I do food photographs, and something I really do recommend is cook everything more or less black and blue.

Chris Schneider: 21:31

Turn your heat up way high, get a cast iron skillet, take your steak, throw it in there, get some nice char on it, get some char marks on it. Maybe you're using your grill. Just crank your grill up as hot as it'll go, just char off the side. Flip it over char off that side. Make it look delicious. But don't cook through the middle of the steak, because you'll have better volume. You'll have a better subject to take photos of when you have a steak that is raw in the middle. Chicken is the same way. Fish is a little bit more difficult. But pork, chicken steak, burn the outside or char the outside, or make the outside look really good and like it's been really cooked. Leave the inside rare or raw, because it's going to give you a better subject to photograph.

Chris Schneider: 22:16

Now, when it comes to beverages, there are some tricks you can use there as well. One of the hardest things if you're photographing champagne or beer is to make sure you still have the bubbles in that beverage. And to make sure you have the bubbles the way you want them, the easiest thing to do is to put some salt in the drink. That salt is going to help the CO2 release from within the beverage and it will create bubbles. It will maintain the head on your beer by adding that salt. So quick, easy, great way to really make those photos shine. Because nothing is worse than the picture of a beer where the head has deflated and you still see the legs on the glass but there's no real volume to that head. You want photographs of your beer with a nice, big, frothy head.

Chris Schneider: 23:09

Now, when it comes to your cocktails especially if you're doing cocktails that are interesting colors so maybe it's a red cocktail or a blue cocktail or a purple cocktail or a green cocktail you don't want to add ice until the very last minute, because when you add that ice, that water, it's going to start melting. That water is going to dilute your color. It's going to not give you as great of a picture. So make sure that you make your cocktail and you're adding ice at the exact last second, because you'll have a much better picture that way. The other thing too. That's true about cocktails and garnishes. You don't want to add those until the very last second either. You want to make sure your garnishes look fresh. They look great.

Chris Schneider: 23:47

So, literally, if I'm doing a photo of a cocktail, I will pour the cocktail in the glass, frame the shot, get everything ready to go, dump in ice, cut the garnish or, I'm sorry, cut the garnish first. Stick the garnish on the glass, whether it's a lime, a lemon, an orange, whatever that garnish may be, if it's mint or it's an herb, you know, keep that in water, keep that cold until right before you're going to use it. Take the garnish, slap it on there, add in some ice. Do my pictures, but I frame and light the shot and everything like that before I take the pictures. That way, the ice is going to be as fresh as possible, the garnish is going to be as fresh as possible. It's going to look like I just sat that on the bar, not like I sat that on the bar 10 minutes ago and I've been screwing around trying to get the shot I want. So, with all your ingredients for cocktail, make sure you're doing it fresh. The other thing that you can do that is not bad but makes life a lot easier is you can go on Amazon. You can buy fake ice so you can use fake ice in your photographs and that way you don't have to deal with the issues that exist with ice. Another thing to keep in mind if you want to have glasses that have condensation on them, you can make a really easy mixture of 50-50 water and glycerin. Put it in a Mr Spray bottle and spray the outside. The glycerin will stabilize it, so it just sticks on the glass without having you know the big condensation rolling off. If you don't have glycerin, you can do it with water. Just make sure that you're spraying it literally right after you add the ice, so when you go to take that shot it's fresh condensation fake condensation on that glass. So hopefully that gives you guys some great ideas on how you can stage your food and drink photography for your bar.

Chris Schneider: 25:35

Hey there, bar owners, it's Chris Schneider, the bar business coach. Are you tired of the daily grind and ready to skyrocket your profits? I've got the solution. With my coaching and consulting services. We deep dive into menu management, team empowerment and business optimization Instead of slogging away in your business day in and day out, washing dishes, covering for employees and working 60 plus hours a week. Picture this a thriving business that runs like clockwork, whether you're there or not, letting you enjoy the successes that you've dreamed of. Let's make it happen. Visit barbusinesscoachcom to schedule your free 30 minute strategy session with me, or you can book a session just by clicking the link in the show notes below. Together, we will turn your business into a profit powerhouse, because at the bar business coach, our only goal is to help you spend less time working in your bar and more time working on your bar.

Chris Schneider: 26:31

Now let's talk about if you're photographing the bar itself For your website and other marketing materials. Especially if you're selling private event space, you're going to need photographs of your space. And when it comes to photographing your space, a lot of stuff we talked about with food and drink photography is still true Pay attention to your lighting, pay attention to how you're framing the shot, pay attention to your background. Now, obviously, if you're going to light a whole room, it's a little bit more difficult, and one of the best ways to do photography of your venue is to do it during the day, when no one's there and you can turn all the lights on. Yes, I know sometimes the lights are hiding things. We have lights lower in bars and that hides things that we don't want people to see. But for your photographs, having those lights higher gives you a better image of your establishment. And, like we talked about with drinks, there are so many different ways that you can edit photos nowadays on your phone with free apps that if you want to make the image darker, if you want to increase the contrast or overlay it, there are plenty of ways to do that. But taking a picture with full lights allows you to get a lot of good images without having to use a lot of extra lighting. Because, let's be real honest where those ring lights that influencers use are going to work great for foods and cocktails they are not necessarily great for photographing an entire establishment just because they don't put out that much light. Now, obviously, if you're going to photograph when people are in your bar, you're not going to turn the lights up. So there are different ways you can play with the light in those editing softwares and make that work. Now let's talk about that for a second.

Chris Schneider: 28:12

Do you take pictures of your bar with people in your bar or not? And my answer would be it depends on what your goal is. If your goal is taking pictures of a space to sell, like I said, as meeting space or event space or hey, we have this private room you should book it. You probably don't want people in that room when you're taking pictures. It's better to just have a picture of the room with no one in it. If you're going to take pictures of people in your space, make sure it's full.

Chris Schneider: 28:39

The last thing you want something that never looks good, and you can try this. You cannot believe me, but it never looks good to take pictures of a half full bar. You either want an empty bar or a 100% packed bar. Those are when pictures look good. A half full bar or a bar that has a few people at the bar and a couple of tables is never going to look good when you take pictures of it. If you want pictures of people in your bar having fun but don't have a full bar, look at the way you're framing your shots. Come in and focus on those people. Make the people the subject of the photo, not the bar itself, and showcase those people having fun, but you're not going to take venue pictures that work for your marketing, whatever your marketing goal may be. If you have a half full bar, you either want everyone there or no one there.

Chris Schneider: 29:27

The other thing to consider, especially if you're doing an empty bar shot and it is for something like selling private event space, everything in that room better be perfect. If you have, I mean, think about fine dining and I know we're talking bars and this is a podcast about bars, but think fine dining for a second you have these elaborate table settings. Every table setting should be perfect. If you're going to take photographs of a fine dining restaurant. Now for a bar, we don't necessarily have elaborate table settings. We don't have that same kind of detail on our individual tables, but if you have table tents, they all should be facing the same direction. If your tables are not in a straight line, that photograph is going to show that. If the bottles behind your bar are not all in a straight line, that photograph is going to show that A lot of times when you're taking pictures of a bar, you are going to spend five, ten, twenty, thirty times the amount of time setting that shot up and making that room right to take pictures, as you will taking the actual pictures.

Chris Schneider: 30:24

You'll spend an hour getting ready to take five pictures that take five minutes to take. But you need to do that because when we're using bar shots for marketing, it needs to be the best of our bar. We need to show off the best we can be, so you need to make sure that you achieve that. Now let's talk about videos. So with photography, when we think about still images, we want to be as amazing as possible, get the best shots we possibly can. We're all worried about framing and lighting and background and all those things, and we need to worry about that with the video as well. But because of the way people interact with video and if you think about it, most of video you're going to produce in your bar is probably not a long form thirty minute conversation on how to make a cocktail.

Chris Schneider: 31:06

There's short, quick videos. There are things that are going to go on Instagram reels or YouTube shorts or maybe on your website or on your Facebook page to show people how to do something. They don't have to be quite as refined. You still need to have good lighting. So the same lighting that you use for your photography you can use for your videos, and you still need to think about the shot and what's behind it and you still don't want to show a half full bar in your videos, but overall, you don't have to worry about it being quite as refined. You don't have to be quite as particular with what you're doing. There is one thing every video that you put out for your marketing needs and that is action, whether that's your team or your guests.

Chris Schneider: 31:51

You can have a video of just the room of your bar having a great time on a Friday night. Post it real quick as an Instagram reel and say hey, everybody's here having a good time. Where the heck are you? Or you can show your team and I think one of the best ways to utilize video is when you can show your team having fun. Show your team taking a wonderful time doing their work, having a great experience working for you. So, for instance, if you have a special cocktail or if you have a food special, show your head bartender making that cocktail. Show your kitchen manager or your cook or your chef making that food item. Let people in behind the scenes a little bit. They want to see behind the scenes and obviously make sure if especially if you're going to do photos in your kitchen just like we were, or videos in your kitchen, just like we were talking about photos of your bar. Make sure everything is clean. Make sure everything is in the right spot. The last thing you want to do is put a video out there. That's going to make you look bad. But show people doing action. Show your team doing things. Allow them to teach your guest things. Make media that is going to entertain or inform people.

Chris Schneider: 33:04

If you have bartenders, if you have servers, if you have cooks that are really big on social media, that are making a bunch of videos for themselves, that are creating content that they're putting out in the world, have them help you create content for your bar. Now, obviously, don't give people free range until you set in place some guidelines for videos. They should post or allow them to make the videos and send them to you and then you can post them so that you avoid anything that's going to go against your mission or your vision, anything that's against the culture you're trying to build and project for your bar. But give them some free range to come up with ideas, because probably your Gen Z employee that has a hundred thousand people that follow them on Instagram and that makes Instagram reels every day that people like is going to make a heck of a lot better video than you are, because I don't care how much we research, how much we do. There is no way in the world that I can beat a legitimate influencer on how to make videos. It's just not what I do, it is what they do.

Chris Schneider: 34:13

So rely on your team that already knows how to make videos. That's already producing content, if you have them to do that. But any video you're going to put out there, you need to show action. You should focus on your guests or your team and don't do things that are boring. And if you want to know if something is boring or not, find somebody on your staff that's in their 20s, have them watch the video, say hey, did that entertain you? And if they say no, don't put it out. But they don't have to be as refined.

Chris Schneider: 34:41

Now, one thing that you can do with videos you can edit them to no end. You can chop them up. You can record a half hour video about making every new cocktail on your cocktail list At one time. You can just make a video and then edit that, chop it, make it into different shorts. You can put together photos and videos and take what video folks would call B Real shots, so just images of people making, or videos of people making drinks and things. Voice over them. You can do all sorts of things with editing. You don't need to.

Chris Schneider: 35:15

If you happen to have a brother who's really good friends with a producer in Hollywood who does really good work and will do work for you cheap which, frankly, if I was gonna make videos I know that guy, my brother does have that friend I would use him. But if you don't have that connection, just make stuff that works. Because at the end of the day, when it comes to video unlike photographs where we want the best possible photograph every time and we really wanna be worried about how professional it looks With video you'd wanna get content out there, and some content is better than no content. But if you really think about lighting, if you think about what you're doing and how you're doing it, it will end up great. One other note on video and this is just how to avoid sounding like it's an unnatural situation don't script everything.

Chris Schneider: 36:07

Anytime you're gonna give a talk, your presentation, how, if you're gonna do a podcast, don't script everything you say. When you script things, you end up sounding canned. Give yourself notes. Give yourself an idea, write a storyboard bullet, point it. But don't script everything you're gonna do in your video, because then it will sound scripted. Leave it natural, let your voice flow. If you go on a wild tangent, go on a wild tangent. You guys have listened to this podcast enough to know that I do that all the fricking time. But give yourself an outline and, with videos, seriously rely on your staff that does this. Rely on your resources. Utilize your resources. They can help you with the food and drinks too, and photos of them.

Chris Schneider: 36:50

Now a couple of thoughts before I part with you this week. One is make sure you utilize your team. Other one is and this is huge, make sure your product lives up to your photos and your videos. If you spend all this time taking great pictures of your new cocktails for your cocktail list and you put them out on the internet and everybody goes, oh my God, look at these. And then they come in and the drink that you serve them is not as Instagrammable as the drink you put on your Facebook page or on your Instagram or in your video on TikTok or however they saw it, you got a problem Because they need to get what they saw Right. You don't want people disappointed like the guy sitting at the fast food drive-through who sees a picture of an amazing burger and they get some squished up thing and some paper. Make sure your team is trained. Make sure you have the consistency in your food preparation, in your cocktail preparation, that every guest is getting that perfectly Instagrammable drink, that perfectly Instagrammable plate of food every time.

Chris Schneider: 37:51

So on that note, I am gonna let you guys go for today. If you liked today's episode, make sure to like, subscribe, leave a review. If you want more information, if you wanna interact more with me, if you wanna get ideas and ask questions of your fellow bar owners, join our community on Facebook Bar Business Nation. There's a link for that down in the show notes. If you want to talk one-on-one with me and learn about my coaching programs and ways that we can collaborate to help optimize your success, you can schedule a 30 minute free strategy session with me. The link is also in the show notes for that. Until next time, guys, have a great day and we will talk again later.

Announcer: 38:29

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