Good cameras, unappetising food
Here is the single most important number in the study: the average restaurant nails the technical part of a photo — sharp, in focus, correctly exposed — scoring 81% there. Modern phones made that problem go away. But the same restaurants score just 58% on appetite appeal — whether the photo actually makes you want to order the dish.
That gap is the whole game. Appetite appeal is the most heavily weighted dimension on the rubric — 30 of the 100 points — because it is the only one a customer feels while scrolling. Restaurants have solved the camera. They have not solved the craving. A clean, well-lit photo of a dish that looks flat and grey still loses the order.
The scorecard, by dimension
Average across 76 restaurants · each dimension shown as a share of its maximum
Compliance (90%) and technical quality (81%) are near-universal — almost everyone clears them, so they don't separate one menu from another. The spread that decides who wins the grid lives in appetite appeal and lighting.
Half of every menu scores a C or worse
Distribution of the 76 restaurants · median 69.5, range 41–87
Only three restaurants in 76 produced menu photography that is genuinely appetising end to end. The overwhelming majority sit in a wide middle band — technically fine, commercially invisible.
By city
Average menu score across Lithuania's three largest cities
Klaipėda's higher average sits on a small sample (4 restaurants) and should be read as directional, not definitive.
What the top 4% do differently
The restaurants that broke 85 didn't own better cameras — the whole field is already technically competent. They won on the two dimensions with the widest spread:
- Light that shapes the food — a clear direction and soft falloff that gives sauce sheen, crust texture, and steam somewhere to live. Flat overhead phone light is the single most common failure.
- Framing that fills the plate — the dish is the hero, shot close, with the garnish and the best-looking side turned to camera. Weak menus shoot the whole table from a metre away.
- Colour that reads as fresh — warm, saturated, true-to-life tones instead of the grey-blue cast a phone throws under kitchen strip lighting.
None of that requires a photographer on site. It requires the light, colour and framing to be fixed after the shot — which is exactly the part software now does in seconds.
Methodology & limitations
- Sample. 76 restaurants listed on Wolt across Vilnius, Kaunas and Klaipėda, graded June–July 2026. Each menu carried 10.7 photos on average.
- Grading. Each menu received a single 0–100 score from a five-part rubric — Appetite appeal (30), Lighting (25), Composition (20), Technical quality (15), Platform compliance (10) — the same rubric a professional food photographer uses to critique a shoot, applied by a vision model.
- Limitations. One market (Lithuania), one platform (Wolt), and a single automated grader. The sample is large enough to show clear direction but is not a census; city cuts with few venues (Klaipėda) are directional only. Numbers are a point-in-time snapshot and will shift as menus are updated.
- No fabrication. Every figure on this page is measured from the data set above. We publish the sample size openly rather than inflate it.
Questions
What is a good food-photo score on a delivery app?
On PlateRefresh's 100-point scale, anything above 85 is genuinely appetising work that pulls orders. In this study only 4% of restaurants cleared that bar. The average was 67 and half of all menus scored below 70 — passable, but not selling. A 'good enough' photo and a photo that makes someone hungry are two different things.
Why does food photography matter on Wolt, Bolt Food, or Glovo?
On a delivery app the photo IS the storefront — customers scroll a grid of thumbnails and decide in a fraction of a second. There is no waiter, no smell, no plating in front of them. The single biggest lever a restaurant controls on that grid is how appetising each photo looks, and it is exactly the dimension restaurants score worst on.
How was each restaurant scored?
Every menu was graded on a five-part photographer's rubric: Appetite appeal (30 points), Lighting (25), Composition (20), Technical quality (15), and Platform compliance (10). The grading ran on a vision model against the same rubric a professional food photographer uses to critique a shoot. Full method and limitations are in the Methodology section below.
Can I check my own restaurant's score?
Yes — the free Menu Scan grades your live delivery-app photos on the same 100-point rubric and shows you which dish is dragging your menu down, at no cost.