Why isn’t my food photography converting? The answer nobody is giving you

When a brand tells me their food photography isn’t converting, the first thing I do is ask what they mean by that. I promise you I’m not trying to be difficult, but, to be helpful, I need to see the full picture: “it’s not converting” can mean at least half a dozen completely different things and each of them points to a completely different problem.

Do they mean they posted the photos on social media and got two likes and zero comments? Or they posted and got engagement, but no enquiries or website clicks? Or the website got updated with new images, but sales didn’t change? Or they expected PR opportunities to start coming in naturally and nothing happened? Or they get website traffic, but nobody buys?

All of these situations don’t have the same cause and they don’t have the same solution. The reason I ask is the same reason I’d ask questions before planning any project: you can’t fix something until you know what’s actually broken. And in almost every case, what brands think is broken isn’t what’s actually broken.

If you’ve ever found yourself saying “the photos aren’t working,” this post talks about what that usually means, what’s really going on, and what to do about it (all backed up by insights from nearly a decade of experience working in this industry).

The most common scenario: great photos, no strategy

The most frequent situation I encounter is a brand that invested in a photoshoot, received beautiful images, started posting them on social media and got crickets. So they concluded the photos didn’t work. And sometimes, after that experience, they conclude there’s no point in investing in professional photography again, which is how some brands end up going down the AI-generated content route: they don’t believe it’s better, but they’re convinced the professional photos didn’t deliver, and they’d rather save the money.

The photos almost certainly weren’t the problem. What was missing was everything that needs to be in place around the photos for them to actually perform. A social media strategy that defines who the content is for, what it needs to communicate, and what action it should drive. Captions written with the audience and a goal in mind, because sharing something totally random or a description of the image like it’s 2017 is not a strategy. A posting approach that considers format, timing, and how the image works within the feed rather than just uploading and hoping for the best. And let’s not forget the importance of a marketing approach that’s fully aware of what’s happening on social media in that specific moment, not 3 years earlier. An understanding of what “working” actually looks like for this business at this specific moment, which is rarely “people see the photo and immediately buy”.

Even the most strategically shot, perfectly styled, beautifully lit food photography needs more than itself to produce results on social media. The photo stops the scroll, then everything else (the caption, the strategy, the consistency, the link, the landing page) converts. And if any of those elements are missing, the photos (and the photographer) take the blame for a problem that was never theirs to solve.

The website version of the same problem

The website scenario is slightly different, but the root cause is usually the same: a brand updates their site with new photography, waits for sales to increase, and nothing changes, so they say the photos didn’t work.

Except that if the user experience is confusing, the copy doesn’t match what brought someone to the website in the first place, the page loads slowly, the messaging is inconsistent, or the checkout process is messy — there is nothing photography can do to fix that. Beautiful images on a broken website are like a stunning shopfront with a locked door: people take a quick look, say “oh, that’s nice”, and leave.

Photography improves perception and builds trust, but it doesn’t fix structural problems with how a website communicates or functions. For example, if someone lands on your site from an ad that promised one thing and the page delivers something else, the photos on that page aren’t the issue. Or if someone can’t figure out where to go next after scrolling through your homepage, new photography won’t improve their experience.

Before concluding that photography isn’t converting on your website, be honest with yourself and ask whether anything else changed at the same time the photos did — and if not, whether the problem was ever really about the images.

When the colour palette becomes the enemy

One of the more consistent patterns I see in food and product photography is brands being so committed to their existing colour palette that the images stop working for the audience they’re trying to reach. This isn’t about the brand being wrong about their colours: the point they are missing is the difference between brand identity and content strategy, and what happens when those two things are treated as identical.

I’ve worked with brands that refused to introduce any colour not already on their palette, even when the palette itself was creating visual monotony, when the images were blending in with competitors, or when the audience’s preferences were pointing in a completely different direction. Some of these brands were also rigidly attached to rules about what certain colours communicate (like the classic “this one says luxury, that one says cheap”) without even considering if those rules applied to their market and target audience, or the specific moment in the category they were operating in.

The cost of that rigidity is usually subtle and cumulative, like images that are on-brand but not interesting, content that looks right but doesn’t stop anyone, and a consistent visual identity with zero personality. So the brand shines, but while blending in (which is not exactly what you should aim for).

A few years ago, a client came to me for a product launch with a very fixed idea of which colours should be included, as they were the ones they always used. Through the onboarding process and conversations that followed, I found myself more and more convinced that the original direction the client had in mind wasn’t going to serve them well for a competitive new product entering an already crowded category. After talking with them, they agreed to test something different — new colours, a new visual approach, and a deliberate choice to go in a direction their competitors didn’t explore yet. The launch went really well and the new colours became a permanent part of their visual identity. That client’s willingness to hear an outside perspective and trust the person they hired for the job made a real difference for the brand and the entire campaign.

Creative direction: the gap nobody talks about

This is something that people rarely mention: knowing your brand is not the same as knowing how to direct a photoshoot. These are entirely different skill sets, but they are often seen as interchangeable, and the mix-up leads to a significant proportion of photography that doesn’t deliver.

When a founder or marketing manager (or someone else on the client’s team) steps into the creative direction role on a shoot (because they feel they should, because they’re present, or because they’re in a position of authority and feel the need to use it), there is a set of things that are bound to happen (and I say this from experience): the planning stage that takes longer and goes through more revisions because nobody is quite sure what they want or need, decisions made on the day of the shoot that change multiple times because the direction is unclear, and details that seemed fine on paper become confusing in practice. This happens because the person directing the project lacks the experience to know what they’re looking at until they see the final result — by which point it’s often too late to fix without starting again.

Don’t get me wrong, this is not related to the fact that these people aren’t capable in their own roles. It’s that food photography direction is a specific skill developed through years of working on set, understanding how light, composition, and styling translate to camera, and knowing what the image needs to do in the context it will be used in. A founder who knows their brand inside out still doesn’t have that skill. A marketing manager who is excellent at strategy doesn’t have it either. And trying to acquire it in real time during a shoot (while the clock is running and the produce is wilting) will for sure lead to outcomes that nobody is entirely happy with.

The alternative is trusting the people you hired for the job, contributing what’s actually yours to contribute (brand knowledge, audience understanding, marketing context, etc.), and letting the photographer, stylist, and creative director do theirs. I offer photography, styling, and creative direction all together for most of the projects I work on (but I know when it’s time to hire additional help), and that combination is part of what I bring to every job. For brands working with a photographer who doesn’t offer this, it’s important to factor it in from the start — either by hiring a creative director separately or by being very clear about who has decision-making power on the day and knowing well in advance what the brand needs.

Something I hear fairly often from clients who have come to me after a difficult experience elsewhere is that they weren’t expected to be asked many questions before the shoot. They anticipated a conversation about timelines and number of images delivered, and they got instead a conversation about their audience, their goals, what “not working” meant for them, and what they wanted the images to achieve (like “how does success look like?”). That’s the difference between planning a photoshoot and planning a creative project, and it’s a distinction that changes what the photography can do for the brand.

The website-to-social assumption

There’s a widely repeated rule in marketing that website photography and social media photography are completely different and should never be mixed. Like most of these generic “rules”, this one is partially true and mostly oversimplified.

Plain white background product photography (the kind built for ecommerce pages, designed to show the product in its cleanest and most accurate form) doesn’t translate well to social media. It was designed to do a specific job and of course you can use the product photo with no background to make graphic design assets for your feed or Stories, but that’s it. These images have no personality, context, or visual interest beyond the product itself. Posting it on social media without significant adaptation is a surefire way to produce content that will disappear into the feed.

But most food and product photography isn’t plain white background ecommerce work. And for the rest (imagery shot with intention, thorough styling, and a considered aesthetic), the question is not the simple “is this just for website or just for social?”, but “was this shot in a way that gives it flexibility?”.

This is something I think about in pre-production. Over the past years, I had at least three clients whose budgets made a full separate social-first shoot impractical, so I introduced backdrops from my collection (like a light-toned hand-painted marble and concrete finish in one case, a similar concrete-effect backdrop with cool blue tones in the other situations) — that gave the images enough visual interest and versatility to be used with success on both the website and social media without feeling out of place in either (they were also used in printed promotional material and PR content, so that’s an extra win). The photography served both purposes without requiring two separate investments. When the timing and budget allowed, more social-first content was added alongside, but the foundational photography was built to be flexible from the start.

If you now find yourself hoping I’ll share the magic formula that makes a website image translate reasonably well to social media, I’m afraid I need to tell you there isn’t such a thing. It’s a combination of storytelling, styling, background choice, textures, the presence or absence of human elements, and whether the image has enough visual personality to stop someone mid-scroll, which is a very different brief from “we need photos that show our products clearly on a neutral surface”.

Before you commission new photography

If your food photography isn’t converting and you’re considering a new shoot, the most useful thing you can do before briefing anyone is to look critically at what happened last time.

How was the photographer chosen — on portfolio aesthetic alone, on price, on a recommendation? How was the brief built, and by whom? How much did the photographer ask about your audience, your goals, and how the images would be used? Was there a structured planning process or did the shoot happen quickly with minimal pre-production? Did anyone with creative direction experience shape the visual approach, or did that default to whoever was most senior in the room? How were the images used after delivery — with a strategy or by posting and hoping?

The answers to those questions will tell you far more about why the photography didn’t convert than any technical analysis of the images themselves. In my experience, the gap is almost always in the planning and the strategy, not in the photography itself.

Working with a food photographer who asks more (and different) questions

I work with food, drink, and wellness brands on photography, styling, video, and social media marketing — and the first conversation we have is rarely about timelines or shot counts. We talk about what you’re trying to achieve, what hasn’t worked before and why, who you’re trying to reach, and what success looks like for this specific project.

Clients have told me “you get my brain” and “you immediately understood my rather brief, brief”. And that’s not a coincidence; that feedback comes from a structured onboarding process that asks the right questions before any planning begins, and a background that covers not just photography and styling but the marketing context that makes photography useful for your brand rather than just pretty.

If your food photography isn’t converting and you’re trying to figure out why, get in touch here. The first chat is always about understanding what’s actually going on and how I can help.

Should I hire a food stylist separately from a food photographer?
Not necessarily — it depends on the photographer. Some food photographers also handle styling as part of their service, which means they prepare and arrange the food, manage how it looks throughout the shoot, and bring their own props and surfaces (or help you find props to rent/purchase). Others work purely as photographers and either expect the brand to handle styling or work with a separate stylist. This is one of the most important things to clarify before booking anyone, because the answer changes the cost, the logistics, and what you need to prepare. I offer creative direction, photography and styling for most projects, which means the visual direction and the food preparation are part of the same process rather than separate conversations. There’s more on the difference between the two roles in this post.

How do I brief a food photographer?
A good brief covers where the images will be used, how many you need, what the brand needs to communicate, who the audience is, and what success looks like for this specific project. What most briefs leave out (and what tends to cause problems later) is the strategic context: why you need new photography, what didn’t work before, and how the images will be used after delivery. A photographer with a proper pre-production process will ask you these questions before planning begins. If they don’t, that’s what I would call a red flag. There’s a full guide to what a food photography brief should include here.

Why didn’t my food photography increase sales on my website?
Photography improves perception, increases brand awareness and builds trust, but it can’t fix a product or service and structural problems with how a website communicates or functions. If the user experience is confusing, the copy doesn’t match what brought someone to the site, the page loads slowly, or the messaging is inconsistent, new images won’t change the outcome. In the same way, if your marketing is promising something that doesn’t reflect what you sell, no amount of images will fix that. Before concluding the photography didn’t work, it’s worth checking whether anything else on the site or in your offering changed at the same time — and if not, whether the problem was ever really about the images.

Do I need a creative director for a food photography shoot?
For most commercial brand shoots, yes — someone needs to hold the visual direction together. That person needs to be someone with the experience to make informed decisions on set about what’s working and what isn’t. Founders and marketing managers who step into that role without the relevant background tend to create delays, endless revisions, and outcomes nobody is fully happy with (simply because directing a shoot is a specific skill that is outside of their role in the company). Some photographers, myself included, offer creative direction as part of their service. If yours doesn’t, factor it in separately from the start.

Can I use website food photography on social media?
It depends entirely on how the images were shot. Plain white background ecommerce photography (designed to show a product cleanly and accurately) is not made to be used on social media because it has no visual personality or context. But photography shot with intention and a considered aesthetic can work across both platforms if it was planned with that flexibility in mind. The key is thinking about this in pre-production, not after the delivery of the images. I’ve worked with clients on limited budgets where the photography was specifically planned to serve both the website and social media — the backdrop choices, styling approach, and overall aesthetic were built around that dual use from the start.

Why is my food photography not getting engagement on social media?
Almost always, the photography itself isn’t the issue. What’s missing is everything that needs to be in place around the photos for them to perform — a social media strategy, properly written captions, an approach that takes into account formats, trends, audience and platform updates, and a clear understanding of what the content needs to make someone do. Even the best food photography needs more than itself to convert on social media.

I’m Chiara — a food photographer and stylist, short-form video creator, recipe developer, and social media specialist based in Dublin. I work with food, drink, and wellness brands across Ireland, the UK, and internationally, and I’ve been running A Matter of Nourishment since 2017. My background includes an MSc in chemistry, a diploma in digital marketing, and certifications in nutrition and social media marketing: a combination that shapes everything from how I approach a shoot to how I think about content strategy.

Get in touch

Instagram engagement is down: here’s what’s happening and what to do about it

If you’ve been managing a brand account on Instagram for more than a couple of years and you find yourself looking at your posts and thinking “we used to get so much more engagement than this” — you’re not imagining it, you’re not doing anything wrong, and you’re definitely not alone. Whether we like it or not, the shift is real and it’s something that has been building gradually since around 2020 and has become impossible to ignore since 2024. Almost everyone who has been consistently active on the platform for that long has noticed it and has had to adjust to the new “rules”.

I’ve been managing social media for food, drink, and wellness brands for several years now (multiple client accounts across different categories, sizes, and audiences — including my own account), and at this point, I have seen a bit of everything, including what IG was like between 2017 and 2019 and how things changed after that. I’ve had to adapt the way I work and the way I measure results more times than I can count and this post includes the most straightforward version of what I’ve learned, with data to back it up.

What engagement looked like before (and why it mattered)

Until around 2019/early 2020, the comment section on Instagram was one of the most useful places on the platform. Yes, getting a lot of comments was nice and one of those things that would turn your day around, but it wasn’t just that. Comments (think proper chats, people asking questions, readers learning new things and getting curious, long-time followers supporting your work and letting you know) were a real indicator that something was working and they were also the place where things actually happened.

Regular commenters became familiar faces, conversations started under posts and moved to DMs, and some of those DMs turned into client relationships. Some of those clients talked about the brand to other people, while other followers never bought anything but built a layer of trust and social proof that made the account feel alive and more credible to anyone who looked at it for the first time. And at a platform level, all of that visible interaction (comments, likes, replies) was actively telling Instagram that the content deserved to reach more people.

It was also, honestly, a mood booster. There was something about posting and seeing a wave of comments from people you recognised that made the work feel worthwhile in a way that’s harder to replicate now. I hear this from almost everyone who was active during that era. That version of Instagram was 100% a real thing and it was a completely different platform compared to what we have now in 2026.

What changed and the data that shows it

The shift didn’t happen overnight. It started somewhere around early 2020, accelerated during the difficult months that followed, and has continued ever since. The numbers now confirm what marketing professionals have been observing from the inside for years.

According to Buffer‘s 2026 analysis of over 52 million posts, Instagram’s median engagement rate fell from approximately 7.3% in 2024 to approximately 5.4% in 2025 — a 26% decline that moved Instagram from first place to third among major platforms. Socialinsider‘s data across 35 million posts puts the year-over-year decline at 24%, with the platform-wide average engagement rate being at 0.48% in Q1 2026.

If you were consistently active in 2018 or 2019 and compare those numbers to now, the gap is significant (just to give you an idea, I remember being able to have a steady 10.5% average engagement rate in those years — it was still an impressive number even then, but it’s more impressive now). What hasn’t changed is that people are still on the platform: Instagram crossed 3 billion monthly active users in September 2025, and users worldwide spend on average more than 30 minutes a day on it, rising to over 50 minutes for the 18-24 age group. They’re watching (as I always tell my clients), but they are not interacting at anywhere near the same rate.

The challenging months of 2020 and 2021 are likely part of the explanation. When everyone’s life changed overnight and people had more time online, content volume exploded. Content fatigue (the feeling of having seen too much of the same thing) started to set in and has never fully left. On top of that, a growing demand for more content, more entertainment, and a new level of selectivity about who actually deserves a public interaction (follow, comment, like, share on Stories) started to creep in. More recently, automations like the “comment WORD to get this in your inbox” (which I know can be useful, but I also believe destroyed every bit of honest interactions in comments we had left, plus created a level of entitlement that would deserve its own blog post) and the volume of AI-generated content (which, just so you know, people can spot a mile away) have made things even more difficult to navigate.

The silent watcher shift

Basically, what started in 2020 was a gradual but consistent change in how people behave on the platform. They still use it, and they still scroll, watch, read, save, share, and buy. What they’ve stopped doing as much is publicly interacting.

People are watching in silence, and many of them are watching for weeks or months before doing anything visible at all. Someone who has been watching your account for two months without ever liking a post can still become a client, and someone who saves your content every week and never comments might still be engaging with it in a way that matters. The behaviour changed, but the outcome hasn’t necessarily changed with it.

On top of that, there’s also a theory doing the rounds that low engagement is simply down to people spending less time on social media. The data doesn’t really support that: global daily social media usage dropped from 143 minutes per day in 2024 to 141 minutes in 2025 (a two-minute difference), and the number of social media users worldwide is still growing, now over 5.5 billion. What has changed is not how much time people spend online, but how they spend it: more selective, more passive, and spread across more platforms. That’s a behaviour shift and it requires a different response than simply posting more.

I completely understand why this is disheartening if you’re posting consistently and getting three likes and zero comments. Still, the silence is not the same as indifference, and the absence of public interaction is not the same as the absence of results. In practice, this means you need to look beyond the surface to understand what’s actually happening.

The Instagram Stories situation

Stories deserve their own section because what happened there was its own specific issue, and it caused a significant amount of confusion and unnecessary discouragement across the industry.

For a period, Stories became a powerful way to connect with an audience differently from the main feed: they were (and somehow still are) your chance to show a different side of the business, giving followers a more immediate and informal view of what was happening, and helping you build the kind of familiarity that over time translates into trust. People were posting multiple Stories a day, in sequences, without any specific rules, and it worked.

Then something changed: professionals across the industry started noticing that posting more than one Story at a time (and sometimes more than one in 24 hours), or posting a sequence of slides in close succession rather than spacing them out, seemed to result in a significant drop in reach. It wasn’t the gradual decline you might get because you lose viewers from story one to story eleven and it wasn’t isolated to one account or one niche — I was seeing it consistently across different accounts (with a different approach to Stories) and hearing the same thing from peers. One relatively small client account I managed in 2025 was getting great views (up to 3.2k) consistently on single Stories, with a minimum of around 1.5k views when I posted only one Story per day. Every time I tested posting a 2 or 3-slide sequence, views immediately dropped to the 100s — and the dramatic decline in viewers happened on the first slide, before anyone had even had a chance to drop off. The people who were watching were clearly engaged (there was a minimal change in views from slide one to slide three, meaning there was interest), but the reach simply wasn’t there. It felt like being penalised for posting more than one Story.

Instagram eventually acknowledged that there was an issue when people were posting more than one Story per day and said they had fixed it. Whether they did it or not is hard to know precisely: reach on Stories is now more random than it was before the issue started, which at least means the 1-slide rule no longer seems to apply in the same way. But it still isn’t as consistent as it used to be, and the takeaway is essentially to keep testing, stay flexible, and not give up on Stories as a format because of one difficult period. Metricool‘s June 2026 analysis of Instagram specifically found that Stories replies increased 88% year over year — meaning that when Stories do reach people, the direct interaction is there and the format works. The reach unpredictability is the issue, not the format itself.

The format shift that most people haven’t fully caught up with

There’s a separate conversation happening alongside the engagement one, and it’s about formats. Over a few years, Reels dominated everything: algorithm favour, reach, and the attention of every marketing team and social media strategist (and every client was asking the same question “should I post more Reels?”). Many of them built their entire strategy around Reels and haven’t looked up since. And that’s exactly what happens when you stick to the theory without taking a peek into real life and don’t keep yourself updated with new trends, platform updates and user preferences. It’s 2026 and there are still marketing teams and consultants telling clients Reels are “the only way to go” and “let’s post as many Reels as possible, it has to work because they are what people want to see” (just so you know, I have a very different approach).

The data now tells a different story. According to Buffer‘s 2026 report, carousels get roughly 109% more engagement per person reached than Reels, with a median engagement rate of 6.90% compared to 3.31% for Reels when measured against reach. Socialinsider‘s 2026 benchmarks confirm that carousels hold the highest engagement rate among all Instagram post types — 0.55% versus 0.50% for Reels and 0.35% for single images. Reels do reach more people (approximately 36% more than carousels), but reach and engagement are different things, and a piece of content that reaches fewer people but generates significantly more saves, shares, and link clicks is always going to be more useful for a brand.

According to Socialinsider’s 2026 benchmarks, based on 35 million posts, carousels lead in saves and views across every account size, and the data explains why. Instagram resurfaces carousels in the feed multiple times for users who scrolled past without interacting, giving them a built-in multiple-exposure advantage no other format has. Reels, interestingly, for some accounts and formats generate more comments than carousels across all account sizes — Instagram pushes Reels to non-followers who are more likely to leave a reactive comment (that is not always a genuinely interested or supportive one). But for saves, shares, and overall engagement rate, carousels consistently win. The 24% year-over-year decline in engagement rate happened despite Reels dominating time spent on the platform, which tells you something about the difference between passive consumption and active interest.

A third independent data set confirms the saturation problem directly. Metricool‘s January 2026 study found that Reels publishing increased 35% year over year, which led to a 35% drop in Reels reach across the board (more Reels competing for the same attention, with the algorithm unable to distribute them all). Reels still outperform single static images for interactions, but the days of posting a Reels to automatically get high views are over. Carousels, by contrast, generated nine times more saves than single-image posts according to Metricool‘s June 2026 Instagram-specific report, reinforcing why format strategy matters more now than it ever has.

I consistently see this pattern in my work with social media clients. A small account I work with averages 2.5k reach on carousels with link clicks, saves, shares and a few comments here and there, while Reels on the same account rarely go past 300-500 views and rarely have meaningful interactions. A single static image post for another small account reached 15.6k views with comments, link clicks, shares, and DM conversations following it, while Reels on the same account consistently struggled to pass 1k views. A client with a medium-sized account ran a Reel promoting a webinar and got close to 1k registrations from it (impressive!), but only about 6% showed up. On the other hand, their carousels, with more modest reach numbers, consistently generated direct enquiries, questions, saves and shares that led to actual conversations and conversions.

The Reels-versus-carousels comparison isn’t really about which format is better. The most important thing you should understand is what each format is for: Reels can sometimes improve your reach and put you in front of people who’ve never heard of you (non-followers). Carousels and static content tend to drive deeper engagement from people who are already paying attention (your existing followers). If I wanted to be even more accurate, I would also say that the story is more nuanced than that, but this is a good foundation to start from: a strategy that uses both with that distinction in mind will almost always outperform one that optimises for a single format — regardless of which format that is.

I still encounter marketing departments and social media managers pushing Reels-first strategies simply because the reach numbers look bigger and you have more potential to go viral. But let’s look at the data first, then decide. And what the data supports is a mixed-format strategy where each format is used for what it’s actually good at.

What to track instead

Likes and comment counts are no longer sufficient as the primary measure of whether Instagram is working for your business. The real picture is distributed across metrics that require you to look further.

Saves and shares are stronger signals of content value than likes. If people are saving your posts, they found them useful enough to come back to. If they’re sharing, they found them relevant enough to pass on. Both of these numbers tell you that the content resonated, regardless of what the public-facing numbers show.

Link in bio CTR (the percentage of profile visitors who click through to your website) is one of the most direct indicators available of whether Instagram is driving actual business interest. I’ve written about this in detail in another blog post: this post covers a wellness client whose link in bio CTR has consistently been between 25% and 57% for nearly two years while the account’s public engagement looks modest by most standard measures. The surface and the actual performance are two very different things.

DMs, enquiries, profile visits, and overall website traffic from Instagram complete the picture. The question to ask is not anymore “how many likes and comments did we get?” — forget about that and instead ask “are the people finding this account interested enough to take action?”.

If you can’t immediately answer questions like “what were my top performing posts in the last three months?”, “what’s been driving website clicks or DMs?”, or “how has my link in bio CTR looked recently?” — your approach to your analytics isn’t deep enough to know whether the strategy is working or not.

So… what to do?

The most important thing, before any tactical decision, is to have a strategy — and to check when you last updated it. A strategy from 2022 or 2023 might have worked wonders at the time, but if you are still using it now, you are making decisions based on assumptions that are no longer accurate. If you’re feeling called out by reading this, it’s time to update your strategy. If you don’t have one, that should be your starting point and number one priority, not another content calendar or a new batch of Reels.

An up-to-date strategy means knowing who you’re talking to and what you need them to do, which metrics reflect real progress toward that goal, and what kind of content serves that audience rather than just filling a posting schedule. But it also means choosing formats with intention (not just going with whatever appears to be trending) and having a definition of success that doesn’t depend on likes and comment counts.

Once you have a strategy, give it at least three months before making significant changes. Not three posts in three months — three months of consistent, deliberate execution with real content volume. The platform is busy and packed with new content every single day, and it’s perfectly normal for results to go up and down: a slow week or a quiet month is not evidence that the strategy isn’t working. Three months of data gives you something you can actually learn from and refine further.

A few things that are important for most accounts right now: responding to comments matters more than the number of comments you receive — Buffer‘s research found that posts where creators or brands reply to comments consistently earn more engagement than posts where they don’t. Use hashtags strategically or not at all: this is not the platform you used to know five years ago, and hashtags as most people still use them don’t really exist anymore. The decline happened gradually over the past few years, but became clearer when Instagram introduced a five-hashtag limit (a direct signal that the platform wants you to use them methodically to inform the algorithm about your content’s topic, not to throw in thirty random hashtags and hope for the best).

What I see across client accounts is that sometimes hashtags still help categorise content and reach the right people, and sometimes content without them performs better. The only way to know is to test. Think strategically about keywords when writing captions, and always write for the person reading it first (the same principle that applies to blog and website SEO applies here). Metricool‘s June 2026 data makes this concrete: posts using at least one hashtag saw 31.70% fewer views and 33.89% fewer interactions than the platform average. If your captions are still hashtag-heavy, that’s something you should reconsider in favour of natural-language captions focused on SEO.

Keep showing up consistently even through periods of low reach, because stopping makes things harder to recover from. And don’t put all your eggs in one basket (or all your hopes on your Instagram feed) — a website, a blog, a newsletter, something you own and control is not optional. This has always been true and it’s even more urgent now.

The biggest takeaway

The 2017-2019 era of Instagram, with its busy comment sections and lively community conversations, was a real thing and it was a great time to be active on the platform for a lot of brands. The instinct to try to recreate it (to keep commenting, to keep starting conversations, to try to get that old engagement going) is understandable and not entirely wrong. Connection and conversations still matter and they still work when they happen.

But that specific version of the platform isn’t coming back (trust me, I wish I could tell you it is). The brands doing well on Instagram now are the ones that have accepted that and adapted their measurement and strategy accordingly, not the ones waiting for the algorithm to return to something familiar.

Instagram still works for businesses, but what you measure and how you respond to it needs to change with the platform.

Working with someone who’s been through every version of this

A social media strategy that was built for the platform as it worked two or three years ago is not the same thing as a social media strategy built for the platform as it is now. The measurement, formats, signals that tell you something is working and users’ behaviour are all different — and a strategy that doesn’t account for that will keep producing results that feel like a lot of effort for very little return.

I work with food, drink, and wellness brands on social media strategy and management, building around what the data and the platform are actually telling us right now, and measuring success against metrics that connect to real business outcomes.

If you’re consistently showing up on Instagram and not seeing it translate into enquiries, website traffic, brand awareness, or any of the other things your business actually needs, get in touch here. And if you want to see what the right metrics can look like in practice, this post covers a wellness client whose link in bio CTR has never dropped below 25% in nearly two years (with the full data).

Why is my Instagram engagement so low in 2025 and 2026?
Instagram’s median engagement rate dropped 26% between 2024 and 2025, according to Buffer’s analysis of over 52 million posts — so lower engagement is a platform-wide reality, not a sign that your content isn’t working. What’s also changed is user behaviour: people increasingly watch (and occasionally save and share) without publicly liking or commenting. The visible engagement numbers have become a less reliable indicator of actual performance than they used to be, which means the more useful question is whether the right metrics (saves, shares, link clicks, DMs, and website traffic from Instagram) are moving in the right direction.

Do Instagram carousels really perform better than Reels?
For engagement, yes — consistently. According to Buffer’s 2026 research, carousels earn approximately 109% more engagement per person reached than Reels. Reels reach more people (roughly 36% more than carousels), but reach and engagement measure different things (and I have also seen firsthand accounts getting more reach on static posts than Reels). Reels tend to drive passive consumption — views and occasional shares and saves. Carousels tend to drive saves, shares, comments, and link clicks — the interactions that more often lead to actual business outcomes. A mixed-format strategy that uses both with that distinction in mind will almost always outperform a single-format approach.

What metrics should I be tracking on Instagram instead of likes?
The metrics that give a more accurate picture of performance: saves and shares (signals that content was genuinely useful or relevant), link in bio CTR (the percentage of profile visitors who click through to your website), DMs and enquiries, profile visits, and website traffic from Instagram. Taken together, these tell you whether the people finding your account are interested enough to take action, which is considerably more useful than a like count.

Why did my Instagram Stories reach suddenly drop?
A widely reported issue affecting accounts across the platform caused a significant drop in Stories reach when more than one Story was posted at a time or in close succession. Instagram acknowledged the issue and said it was fixed, but reach on Stories remains more unpredictable than it used to be. If you noticed a dramatic drop when posting multi-slide sequences (with the decline happening on the first slide rather than gradually across the sequence), that was almost certainly this issue rather than a problem with your content.

Is Instagram still worth it for small food and wellness brands in 2026?
Yes — but the strategy needs to reflect how the platform actually works now rather than how it worked two or three years ago. The engagement decline is real and platform-wide, but Instagram still has 3 billion monthly active users who spend more than 30 minutes a day on it. The brands getting results are the ones measuring the right things, using formats strategically, and not relying on likes and follower counts as their primary success metrics. The brands struggling are often the ones still optimising for data that no longer reflects actual performance.

I’m Chiara — a social media specialist, food photographer and stylist, short-form video creator, and recipe developer based in Dublin. I work with food, drink, and wellness brands across Ireland, the UK, and internationally, and I’ve been running A Matter of Nourishment since 2017. My background includes an MSc in chemistry, a diploma in digital marketing, and certifications in nutrition and social media marketing: a combination that shapes everything from how I approach a shoot to how I think about content strategy.

Get in touch

What is a social media strategy, and why does your food or wellness brand need one?

Ask most food or wellness brand owners (or their marketing teams) whether they have a social media strategy and the answer is usually yes. Ask them what it includes and you start to hear things like “we post three times a week”, “we try to stay consistent”, “we stay on top of trends”, or “we try to post at least three Reels per week”. Those are all tactics (and some of them are actually useful), but none of them is a strategy.

This distinction matters more than it might seem, because it explains why so many brands post consistently and still feel like social media isn’t working (or, as I always say, it feels like throwing content into a black hole). Consistency without direction produces content — like, a lot of content. But it doesn’t necessarily give you the results your business needs. And if you consider that Instagram’s engagement rate dropped 26% in 2025 and every platform is noisier than it’s ever been, the brands that are making social media work for them are almost always the ones with a clear strategic foundation (because showing up matters, but there needs to be a reason for that, too).

This post is about what a social media strategy is, what it includes in practice, and why having one changes what you can realistically expect from your social media presence.

What’s a social media strategy?

A social media strategy is a documented plan that defines what you’re trying to achieve on social media, who you’re trying to reach, how you’ll reach them, what success looks like, and how you’ll know if things need to change.

That sounds straightforward. In practice, it means answering some questions that are harder than they look: What is this business actually trying to do on social media right now — and is that the same thing it was trying to do eighteen months ago? Who specifically is the ideal customer, not in broad demographic terms but in terms of what they care about, what they’re struggling with, what their shopping habits look like, and what kind of content makes them stop scrolling? Which platforms are worth the investment of time and resources, and which are being used out of habit or obligation? What does the content need to do — build awareness, drive website traffic, generate direct enquiries, or something else? And how will you know whether any of it is working?

A strategy answers all of those questions (and more) before anyone thinks about what to post. It’s the foundation that every content decision starts from. Without it, you end up creating content based on what seems like a good idea, what’s trending, what a competitor is doing, or what’s easiest to make… none of which reliably produce results.

In my work, I’ve found myself building strategies for brands at very different starting points, and the biggest variable I’ve come across is how much foundational work needs to happen before we can even get to the social media specifics. A business that has never formally worked through the marketing basics (target audience personas, tone of voice, positioning) needs a strategy that covers all of that before getting to the social media specifics. It takes longer and goes deeper, but it’s also useful beyond social media because this information can be applied across every marketing channel. A brand that already has those things figured out and can answer “who is your target audience?” with something more specific than “everyone who cooks” (yes, I’ve heard that one) needs a strategy that takes those existing foundations and builds the social media layer on top of them, nailing down the details that are specific to showing up, creating content, and measuring results on the platforms themselves.

In both cases, the strategy covers the same essential areas. What changes is how much groundwork we lay first.

Something I hear occasionally from brands who already have their target personas defined: “if we have that sorted, do we still need to pay for a social media strategy?” The answer is yes — because a social media strategy includes the specific details that make daily content decisions possible, like platform choices, content mix, format strategy, up-to-date platform insights, measurement framework, and how success is defined and tracked. A general marketing overview doesn’t contain that, and without it you’re back to posting based on what you think might be a good idea.

Over nine years of working with clients (from solopreneurs and founders to brands with dedicated marketing teams, agencies, and businesses just starting out), I’ve built a structured onboarding process that makes this as clear and efficient as possible. My questionnaire is designed to guide people to the answers rather than assuming they already have them. And the questions aren’t technical and limited to marketing professionals: I’ve prepared them in a way that works smoothly for founders and brand owners, and they’re specific enough to be useful while also being accessible enough for everyone, no matter how much marketing experience they have. Two of the questions clients most often comment on are “when users interact with your social media pages, how would you like them to feel?” and “what are the most common questions you get from customers?” — both of which sound simple but consistently give us plenty of information that shapes the entire strategy.

What a strategy is not

The confusion between strategy and tactics is so common that it’s useful to be specific about what a social media strategy is not.

A content calendar is not a strategy. A content calendar is a scheduling tool that tells you what to post and when. It’s useful and necessary, but it’s downstream of strategy. A content calendar built without a strategic foundation is just a list of things to post.

A posting frequency is not a strategy. Posting every day, three times a week, or twice a month is a volume decision. Volume matters, but it’s one variable in a much larger picture. Posting frequently without knowing whether the content is reaching the right people or producing any meaningful result is a way to share a lot of content that doesn’t do much.

From experience, I can tell you there’s also a practical cost to treating posting frequency as the strategy — and it’s one I think more people should hear about. It tends to go like this: you decide you need to post X times a week, work backwards to figure out how much content that requires, and hire someone to produce it. Then you realise you don’t know what to say in each caption, the content gets fewer interactions than expected, the page feels like it’s going nowhere, and you end up micromanaging the person you hired because you feel like you need to take back control. You end up with a pile of content nobody ends up using, a strained working relationship, and the same strategic gap you started with. The problem was a foundational issue all along: you need a strategy before diving into all of this.

Following trends is not a strategy. Things like trending audio, viral formats, and popular content styles can be useful tools within a strategy, but they’re not a substitute for one. A brand that chases every trend without understanding whether those trends are relevant to their audience tends to produce content that performs inconsistently and doesn’t build anything coherent over time.

And a social media strategy is definitely not a fixed document that you write once and follow indefinitely. Platforms, user behaviour, and business priorities all change constantly. A strategy needs to be revisited and updated — ideally every few months, or whenever something significant shifts. Using a strategy from 2022 in 2026 means you are planning your social media presence based on assumptions about how platforms work that are no longer accurate, features that are either missing from your strategy or no longer available, and what your audience wanted four years ago, not now. No wonder you are incredibly frustrated by your results (or lack thereof).

What a strategy includes for a food, drink or wellness brand

In practice, building a social media strategy for a brand involves working through several interconnected elements.

Audience clarity is the foundation of everything. This means going beyond “our customers are middle-aged women who care about health” and getting specific about what those people want to feel, what problems they’re trying to solve, what content makes them stop and pay attention, and what kind of relationship they want to have with a brand in this space (and much more). The more specific and honest the audience picture is, the better every subsequent content decision becomes.

Clear goals that are connected to real business outcomes. Not “grow our following” or “increase engagement” — those are metrics, not goals. Goals sound like: generate a minimum of ten qualified enquiries per month from Instagram, increase website traffic from social media by 30% in the next quarter, build enough brand awareness to support the next product launch. Goals need to be measurable, specific, and tied to something that matters for the business. Just to give you an idea, the most recent goal I created for a client strategy was keeping the CTR for the link in bio over 15% for the next 6 months.

Platform choices made deliberately rather than by default. Not every food or wellness brand needs to be on every platform. Instagram remains the most important channel for most of the brands I work with, but the decision about whether to invest in Pinterest, LinkedIn, TikTok, or Threads should come from understanding where the specific audience is most active — you should never pick your platforms based on a general sense that those might be useful or those are the ones you use so they must be the right ones.

A content framework that defines the mix of content types, the topics and themes the brand will consistently address, the formats that serve different goals (awareness, engagement, conversion), and the brand voice that runs through all of it. This is basically the architecture that post ideas fit into.

A measurement framework that defines which metrics matter for the goals. Likes and follower counts tell you very little about whether social media is working for a food or wellness brand. The metrics that tend to matter more are saves and shares (signals of genuine content value), link in bio CTR, DMs and direct enquiries, profile visits, mentions and website traffic from social (and of course it’s important to understand how these numbers change month after month). You set the goals first, then give metrics their own priority system. This is also a point where you need to trust your social media strategist: I know you might be tempted to simply track followers and engagement rate based on likes and comments, even if they said otherwise. That would be a huge mistake because in that way, you cannot possibly have enough meaningful information to update and adjust your strategy and content, plus you would also plainly ignore the judgment and expertise of the person you hired for the job, which makes zero sense.

A review process: a regular commitment to looking at the data, identifying what’s working and what isn’t, and adjusting accordingly. This is what turns a strategy from a static document into an active tool, but I have seen firsthand that it’s a step that gets skipped more often than it should.

Who is responsible for it depends on how you work. I create strategies for clients who then implement everything on their own, and strategies for clients who continue working with me on implementation — which means the accountability for analytics and adjusting the strategy remains with me in some cases and with the client or their team in others. But there always needs to be someone who takes on this responsibility and will be there checking the numbers regularly, identifying what the data is actually saying, giving the strategy enough time to produce meaningful results before making changes, and knowing when it’s time to adjust something versus when it’s just a slow month. If that person isn’t you and isn’t someone on your team, it needs to be whoever you’ve brought in to manage your social media.

For brands handling implementation themselves, strategy consultations or training sessions (something I also offer) can help bridge that gap, giving you a clearer picture of what to look for, how to interpret what you’re seeing, and when to act on it.

Why consistency without strategy produces results that are just… meh

This is the part that most brands find frustrating, because consistency is the advice they hear most often and many of them are already doing it. They’re posting regularly and producing decent content, but the results feel disproportionately small for the effort.

The problem isn’t usually the content itself. It’s that the content isn’t connected to a clear purpose, aimed at a well-defined audience, or measured against metrics that reflect actual business outcomes. So the brand posts, things happen (or don’t happen) in the feed, and nobody is quite sure whether it’s working, which creates a situation that’s very hard to improve.

Format choices are a good example of where the absence of strategy shows up clearly. A small B2C account I work with averages 2.5k reach on carousels with consistent link clicks and saves, while Reels on the same account rarely go past 300–500 views and generate very little meaningful interaction (to give you an idea: carousels often get comments or replies in DMs from people who relate to that specific piece of content, while Reels gave us that result maybe twice in a year). Without a strategy that defines which formats serve which goals, a brand in that situation might conclude that their content isn’t working — when the more accurate conclusion is that the wrong format is being used for the wrong purpose.

I’ve written in detail about what Instagram engagement actually looks like right now and why the metrics most brands are tracking don’t tell them what they think they do (read that post here). The short version: visible engagement (likes, comments, follower growth) has declined significantly across the board and is no longer a reliable indicator of whether social media is producing results. The brands that know this are measuring different things. The brands that don’t know this are looking at their like and follower counts and wondering what they’re doing wrong.

The other important takeaway: people might not interact publicly, but they are still watching, and sometimes that silent watching leads directly to a purchase, booking, or recommendation. These two examples say it better than I can: one is about a Reel for which I had really high hopes and barely got 300 views, but booked a client who specifically said “I saw the video and I immediately knew I had to reach out” (no follow, like or comment). The second one is about a carousel post that explained the topic so well that my client got 6 bookings (all mentioning the post) for their highest ticket offer.

A strategy doesn’t fix the algorithm or reverse the broader shifts in how people use social media. What it does is ensure that you’re measuring the right things, producing content with a clear purpose, and making decisions based on data rather than guesswork. That’s the difference between treating social media as part of your business’ marketing plan and having a very time-consuming (and expensive) hobby.

What changes when strategy is in place

If I had to summarise what a strategy does for your business in a few words, it would be: removes the guesswork and saves you from an endless number of headaches. But let’s get to the details.

The most visible change is that content decisions become easier and faster (if you have ever tried to be consistent on social media, you know how much of a game-changer this is). When you know who you’re talking to, what you’re trying to achieve, and what kind of content serves those goals, you’re not starting from a blank page every time. You have a framework to work within, and the individual post ideas that used to feel like a weekly scramble start to flow more naturally from that framework.

The less visible but more important change is in what the numbers start to tell you. When you’re measuring the right metrics and you know what you’re trying to achieve, you can actually see if things are moving in the right direction and you can identify specifically what to adjust when they aren’t.

The clearest way I can illustrate this is with real results from client accounts I have managed.

A food brand I work with saw a 212% increase in profile activity in the month following a content strategy reset. This didn’t involve a fully new aesthetic or changing the posting frequency; I planned a strategic reset that drew from both platform and user behaviour changes, as well as from recent interactions with customers. I redefined the content mix, introduced a new style, and aligned everything around a clear set of business goals. One month later, the account was significantly more active in every metric that matters.

A food brand with an online shop saw a 383.9% increase in external link clicks in the month following strategic content alignment — meaning the content was rebuilt around driving traffic to the right places, but I did this while using all the information I had on their specific audience. The primary goal was online sales, and the strategy reflected that at every level.

A wellness client I’ve been managing for nearly two years has maintained a link in bio CTR (the percentage of profile visitors who click through to the website) consistently above 25%, with peaks above 50% (the industry average for that metric is 2–5%). That result comes directly from a strategy built around the metrics that matter for a service-based business, and content designed to move the right people from the platform to the website (for both brand awareness and enquiries). The full case study is here.

And for a small food brand’s Christmas campaign, a strategic shift from product-focused Stories to emotionally-led storytelling produced a 66% increase in link clicks compared to the previous year’s campaign (organic only, no paid advertising) and the seasonal product sold out. The full breakdown of that campaign is here.

None of these results came from posting more, scrambling for the most trendy post or crying over a follower count that’s not as big as you’d hoped. The work behind the scenes involved posting with a clearer purpose, having a better-defined audience, and focusing on the things that actually reflect business outcomes.

Done posting and hoping something changes?

The brands in this post didn’t get those results because they got lucky with the algorithm or happened to go viral (none of them, in fact, had a viral post). But everything we posted had a reason behind it and a strategy that made every content decision easier and every result measurable.

You can keep posting and hoping something works. Or you can build the foundation that makes every post count and gives you something to fall back on when things flop (because that’s part of the game, too). I work with food, drink, and wellness brands who are done guessing: get in touch here and we’ll figure out exactly what needs to change.

Can I create a social media strategy myself or do I need to hire someone?
You can put something together yourself, and starting with a basic plan is better than having no plan at all. But there’s only so far a self-built strategy can take you because the areas where many fall short are also the most important, like knowing which metrics matter right now, how platform behaviour has shifted recently, and connecting content to real business outcomes. Social media moves fast enough that information from even a year ago can be outdated, which is why direct, hands-on platform experience matters more than a general marketing background. As I always say: if you don’t want to throw your smartphone out the window at least three times a day, you probably don’t have enough firsthand experience to build a proper strategy. At minimum, a consultation with someone working on this daily will save you from building on assumptions that no longer work.

What is a content pillar in social media?
A content pillar is a broad theme your social media content consistently returns to. For a food brand, pillars might be recipes, behind-the-scenes production, ingredient sourcing, and customer stories. For a wellness brand: education, client results, lifestyle content, founder perspective. Pillars give your content a structure beyond filling a feed, and they’re one of the foundational things I define when building a strategy for a new client.

How long does it take to see results from a social media strategy?
Three months of consistent, intentional execution is the minimum before drawing any conclusions — not three posts in three months, but real content volume measured against the right metrics (to give you an idea, for most brands on Instagram, I would say at least three feed posts per week plus Stories). Some things move faster: link in bio CTR can change within weeks of a strategic reset. Others, like brand awareness, social proof and organic growth, take longer. The important thing is having defined goals before you start, so you know what you’re looking for.

What should a social media strategy include?
At minimum: a clear audience definition, specific measurable goals tied to real business outcomes, well-thought-out platform choices, a content framework covering your mix of topics and formats, a measurement framework defining which metrics matter, and a review process. It also needs to reflect how platforms work now, not two or three years ago.

Do I need a social media strategy if I’m a small brand or a solopreneur?
Yes — arguably more than a larger brand, because you have less time and resources to waste on content that isn’t working. Even a focused one-pager covering your audience, goals, platforms, and definition of success can make an enormous difference. The brands I work with range from solopreneurs to established names and the strategic foundation matters at every level.

Is it better to refresh an old strategy or create a brand new one?
If your business, audience, or goals have changed significantly (or if the strategy hasn’t been updated in years), starting fresh is usually more efficient than trying to fix something outdated. If the fundamentals are still there but tactics and measurement need updating, a refresh makes more sense.

How much does social media strategy cost?
It depends on the scope, the starting point, and who you work with. A brand that needs foundational marketing work done before the social media specifics will require more time than one that already has its audience and positioning defined. I offer social media strategy as a standalone service and as part of ongoing management — the details are here.

I’m Chiara — a social media specialist, food photographer and stylist, short-form video creator, and recipe developer based in Ireland. I work with food, drink, and wellness brands across Ireland and internationally, and I’ve been running A Matter of Nourishment since 2017. My background includes an MSc in chemistry, a diploma in digital marketing, and certifications in social media marketing and nutrition: a combination that shapes everything from how I approach a shoot to how I think about content strategy.

Get in touch

How to choose a food photographer for your brand

Most brands choose a food photographer the wrong way around. They open Instagram or Google, find someone whose work looks beautiful, check the price, and make the call. The portfolio looks good, the costs check out, and the shoot goes ahead.

And then the content arrives and sits in a forgotten folder for the foreseeable future (or a couple of photos get used immediately, but nobody knows what to do with the rest). The images are beautiful, technically right and match the brief, but they don’t quite feel like what the brand needs. The food looks good, but doesn’t seem to be saying anything. There’s no clear thread between one image and the next. The portfolio that convinced them to hire this person was full of interesting work (or maybe someone recommended this photographer to you), but what you needed was proof that they were able to bring the right expertise and experience to the project, be the creative director or suggest hiring one, and be able to create images with a specific audience and marketing goals in mind.

This is the most common mistake in the hiring process, and it happens almost entirely because people know how to evaluate whether they like an image, but not whether an image is doing its job. Those are very different skills, and the second one is what you actually need when you’re choosing a photographer for your brand.

Know what you need before you look at a single portfolio

Before you start looking at anyone’s work, it’s helpful to be clear on a few foundational points, as clarity makes the conversation more useful from the start. I always mention that you don’t need a full brief before reaching out to a photographer, as this is often a grey area nobody talks about: on one side, there are founders, agencies and marketing teams scrambling to gather all the details and make a document as comprehensive as possible so they can control every little thing. On the other side, there are inexperienced photographers or people with a limited process, who actually prefer to just be told what to do. After nearly a decade working with clients of all sizes (from well-known names like Cadbury to businesses just starting out), I have enough experience under my sleeve to be able to have a clear opinion on this matter: while it’s completely fine and common to have a photographer who isn’t also taking care of the creative direction part (I do it), hiring someone who just follows a brief blindly will 99% of the time result in images that will end up being forgotten after the first use. And it’s the same for clients who try to micromanage the project and the person they hired for the job. For great results, there needs to be a certain degree of trust and willingness to collaborate on both sides — this is non-negotiable. The right hire will help you finalise the details with the skills and point of view that only a person who does this job every week can provide. In this context, I feel incredibly lucky (even if lucky is not the right word… I worked hard for this) to be able to provide clients with a point of view that covers creative direction, photography, videography, styling and marketing.

But let’s get back to the main topic: the most important thing to know is how the images will actually be used. Packaging requires a completely different approach from social media. Website hero images need a different composition from a launch campaign content. Paid advertising has its own requirements. This single piece of information shapes how a shoot needs to be planned, what the photographer needs to prepare, and what the images need to do — so arriving at a first conversation with a clear answer to “where is this content going?” is way more valuable than arriving with a mood board.

Beyond that: do you need photography only, or photography and video? How many images are you thinking of? And do you have a rough sense of budget? None of these answers need to be fixed figures. They just give the photographer enough to have a proper conversation with you.

An experienced photographer will build the rest of the brief with you through the right questions, a structured planning process, and the kind of knowledge that turns a rough direction into a clear shoot plan. The mood board, for instance, is something I always create myself once we’ve worked through the brief together — it’s part of my process, not the client’s homework. But I know some photographers expect clients to bring a fully formed visual direction. Knowing which kind you’re dealing with before you book is itself a useful thing to establish early.

The full detail of what a food photography brief should cover (and what most brands consistently leave out) is in this post.

What to actually look for in a portfolio

The most honest answer is that you’re looking for a gut feeling — and it’s a good idea to trust it more than a checklist. When you look at a portfolio and think “this person could work with my brand”, what you’re usually responding to is a combination of two things, even if you can’t immediately name them.

The first is flexibility. Not in the sense of having covered every possible style, format, or food category, but rather that the work doesn’t feel locked into one mode. A photographer whose portfolio feels like it could only ever look one specific way, regardless of the subject, is a photographer who will likely bring their aesthetic to your brief rather than bring your brief to life. What you want to see (even in personal projects, editorial work, or images that have nothing to do with your product) is evidence that the work is in service of the subject, meaning it was made for a reason specific to that image, not just made to look like everything else in the portfolio. I know it’s a concept that’s difficult to grasp, but after all these years working in the industry, I know it’s an essential one.

Every photographer has their own visual language, and that’s part of what you’re choosing when you hire someone. The goal is to find someone whose style has enough range that it can flex in the direction your brand needs: a photographer who works almost exclusively in one very specific visual register (very polished/edited with bold colours, or very dark and editorial, or very lifestyle and natural) isn’t necessarily wrong for your project, but it’s a question to think about. Can their work move toward what you need, or would the brief require them to work against everything their portfolio shows? The answer to that question is more useful than asking whether their best work looks beautiful — which it probably does, regardless.

The second is intentionality. Every image should feel considered — the light, the composition, the styling, the mood. Not perfect, not technically flawless, but deliberately made. There’s a difference between a photograph that was set up with purpose and one that was taken because the food was there and looked good. That difference shows, and it matters for commercial work because intentionality on a personal project usually translates directly to intentionality on a client brief.

What the portfolio doesn’t need to contain is a specific mix of work types. Personal projects, editorial food photography, and commercial brand work can all demonstrate the same underlying skills. You should approach the portfolio with this question in mind: does the work show someone who thinks carefully about what an image needs to do before they pick up the camera?

Range is another important factor to take into account: a photographer who has worked across different types of food, aesthetics, and formats will generally adapt more readily to a new brief than one whose portfolio is all variations of the same thing. But range is a supporting piece, more than a specific requirement on its own.

The photographer and stylist question

One of the most practically important things to establish before hiring is whether the photographer you’re talking to also handles food styling, or whether styling is something you’d need to source separately.

Food photography and food styling are two distinct areas. The photographer handles the technical and creative aspects of capturing the image. The stylist prepares and arranges the food — choosing ingredients, plating, managing the appearance of everything in the frame throughout the shoot, handling the challenges that come with food on set (things wilting, separating, losing their surface, behaving differently than expected under certain conditions). A full breakdown of what each involves is in this post.

Some photographers also do styling. Some don’t and bring in a dedicated stylist. Some work exclusively as photographers and expect the client to handle the food preparation and presentation. These are three completely different setups, and they produce different results and require different planning from the brand.

If styling is included in the photographer’s scope, ask what that actually involves — whether they source their own props, cook and prepare the food, and have their own prop/backdrop collection or whether you’d need to supply everything. If styling is a separate hire, factor that into the budget and planning timeline from the start.

I do both photography and styling, which is not a universal thing. My prop and backdrop collection has grown significantly over the years (with plates, glasses, bowls, cutlery, cups, linens and over forty backgrounds and backdrop options), which means shoots can be planned and executed without the brand needing to source anything beyond their products and without the additional cost of renting or purchasing props (which also saves a lot of time). If we need to find new props for a specific project, that’s usually something I cover as well. That kind of setup changes the planning process and what a client needs to prepare.

Questions to ask and what good answers sound like

The questions a photographer asks you are often as revealing as the answers they give to your questions. A photographer with a serious, tried and tested process will ask about your brand, where the images will be used, what you need them to communicate, and what your timeline looks like — before they’ve even sent you a quote. And also send you more questions the minute you sign the contract. That’s not being nosy, trust me. This is simply what it looks like when someone is thinking about your project properly rather than just trying to fill a slot in their calendar. It honestly took me a while to have this kind of process in place with my clients, but it’s a game-changer — for both sides.

The questions you should ask in return:

How do you approach the planning stage? A photographer with a clear process will tell you exactly what happens between enquiry and shoot — brief, mood board, shot list, what they need from you and when, what they’ll prepare. Someone who doesn’t have a clear answer to this question probably doesn’t have a structured process, which tends to show up on the day or in the final images.

What’s included in your fee? This seems obvious but comes up repeatedly as a source of confusion. Does the fee include styling? Props? Props sourcing? Studio equipment? Studio hire? Post-production? How many final edited images? What turnaround time? Usage and licensing? Two quotes at similar price points can be covering very different scopes.

Who creates the mood board? In my process, I create the mood board — it’s part of my preparation, not something I hand off to the client to put together (though it’s true that clients sometimes arrive with a few ideas on their own, and that’s perfectly fine). Not every photographer works this way, and some expect clients to bring a fully formed visual direction (or hire a creative director for the shoot). Knowing this upfront changes what you need to prepare.

How do you handle usage rights and licensing? If you’re planning to use the images in paid advertising, on packaging, or across multiple channels over a long period, this needs to be established from the start. Usage rights significantly affect cost, and discovering this after the shoot is an expensive and avoidable surprise. A detailed post on this is in ” How much does food photography cost“, which covers what drives pricing and why usage is one of the most consistently misunderstood parts of the process. You should talk with the photographer about usage rights, licensing, timeframe (and renewal options), paid advertising, and copyright.

Can you walk me through how you’d approach a project like mine? This is more useful than asking for perfectly matching examples of previous work. A photographer who can speak specifically about how they’d think through your brief (mentioning things like setup, creative direction, styling direction, or challenges specific to your product type) is giving you far more useful information than a portfolio that happens to contain something similar. If they can’t engage with your brief at this stage, that tells you something, too.

Red flags to take seriously

The absence of a planning process is the biggest one. A photographer who takes a brief (or doesn’t even need one) and moves straight to the shoot without a structured preparation stage (no detailed brief, mood board, shot list, or conversation about the details) is creating the conditions for a shoot that produces technically good images that won’t be useful for the brand.

A price that seems significantly lower than everyone else without a clear explanation is another — I know an incredibly low rate makes you fall for the “shiny object syndrome” faster than you can even say the cost out loud, but this is a business investment and needs to be thought through thoroughly. Food photography involves time, preparation, equipment, and expertise, and a quote that doesn’t account for those things is often a sign that they’re not being provided. Occasionally, someone is simply building their portfolio and pricing accordingly — in which case they’ll usually say so. If they don’t, ask what’s included and why the price is structured the way it is.

No contract, no usage rights or vague licensing terms are a serious one, particularly if you’re planning to use the images commercially. A professional photographer will have a clear contract that specifies deliverables, timeline, usage rights, and what happens if either party needs to change the terms. Vague arrangements tend to produce vague outcomes.

Reluctance to share examples of brand work or to discuss the planning process in any detail before a booking is confirmed is also a red flag. Most professional photographers are happy to talk through how they work and what the process looks like — it’s all part of how they build trust with a new client.

Understanding pricing

Food photography pricing varies significantly based on experience, what’s included, scope, and intended usage. The range is wide enough that a single number is almost meaningless without context.

Rather than trying to quote a market rate here, the “How much does food photography cost” post covers this in detail — what drives the price up or down, why usage rights matter so much, what cheap photography tends to cost you in the long run, and what to factor into your budget before you start approaching people.

The short version: know your end use before you discuss pricing, ask explicitly what’s included in any quote, and be wary of comparing quotes without understanding what each one actually covers.

Local, remote, or somewhere in between

The assumption that a food photographer needs to be based in the same city (or even the same country) as their client deserves to be talked about because it rules out a lot of good working relationships for the wrong reasons.

For photography that involves a specific product, the practical question is simply: can the product get to the photographer? For most packaged food and drink, shipping is straightforward. I’ve worked with brands whose products were distributed internationally, with the product shipped directly to my studio and the entire project (recipe development, photography, and delivery of final images) handled remotely without the client ever setting foot on set. In one case, the client was a well-known international brand and the agency managing the project was based in the US. Everything was coordinated remotely and the process was smooth because the planning was thorough.

There are genuine limitations, though. Perishable products that can’t be shipped, shoots that require a specific location, or situations where international shipping costs or logistics make the whole thing impractical — those are situations in which working with someone local makes more sense. But those cases are fewer than most brands assume when they automatically search for a photographer in their own city.

For recipe content that doesn’t feature a specific product (think food content for nutritionists, wellness professionals, food bloggers, or brands that occasionally want recipe content without a product focus), location is essentially irrelevant. I can develop and photograph recipes using ingredients available locally, deliver the content, and the client never needs to send anything. This works for once-off projects and for ongoing monthly retainers equally well.

The client doesn’t need to be present during the shoot either. I work without real-time client approval on set: this doesn’t mean the client isn’t involved; it’s simply a sign that the planning process that happens beforehand covers everything that would otherwise need to be decided in the moment. By the time the shoot day arrives, the brief is complete, the mood board is approved, the shot list is confirmed, and there are no open questions left to answer. That’s what makes remote work function properly.

For shoots that benefit from proximity (location work, on-site photography, or projects where the product needs to be included but can’t be shipped), I work primarily in Dublin and occasionally across Ireland.

Read this before you start looking

The photographer you choose will shape how your brand looks for as long as you use that content, and potentially for much longer if the work gets repurposed, featured, or becomes part of your established visual identity.

If you only had to leave with one main takeaway from reading this blog post, let it be this one: you are not just looking for someone who takes pretty food photographs. You are planning an investment for your business and you are looking for someone who understands what you’re trying to do with those photographs and someone with the process, experience, and creative range to make that happen reliably.

If you want to understand more about what the process looks like in practice, the “How to brief a food photographer” post covers the planning stage in detail. And if you’re at the point where you are starting to think about a photoshoot, get in touch with me here — the first step is always a chat about what you need.

How much does a food photographer cost?
Food photography pricing varies significantly depending on experience, what’s included in the fee, the scope of the project, and how the images will be used. Usage rights in particular can affect cost considerably — images licensed for paid advertising or packaging are priced differently from images for organic social media use. A detailed breakdown of what drives food photography pricing is in this post.

Do I need to hire a food stylist separately from a food photographer?
Not always — it depends on the photographer and the project. Some food photographers also handle food styling as part of their service, which means they prepare and arrange the food, manage its appearance throughout the shoot, and bring their own props and surfaces. Others work purely as photographers and either expect the brand to handle the styling or work with a separate stylist whose fee comes on top. It’s one of the most important practical questions to clarify before booking, because the answer changes the cost, the logistics, and what you need to prepare. This post covers the difference between the two roles in detail.

What questions should I ask a food photographer before booking?
The most important ones: how do you approach the planning stage and what does your process look like before the shoot? What’s included in your fee — styling, props, post-production, how many final images? Who creates the mood board? How do you handle usage rights and licensing? Can you show examples of similar commercial work? How a photographer answers these questions tells you as much about whether they’re the right fit as anything in their portfolio.

How do I know if a food photographer is right for my brand?
Look for three things beyond the portfolio: a structured planning process that starts with questions about your brand and audience rather than jumping straight to the shoot, commercial experience with food brands rather than only personal projects, and transparency about what’s included in the fee, how usage rights work, and what happens if something changes. A photographer who asks the right questions before you’ve even booked is usually a stronger signal than one whose portfolio looks impressive but has a vague process.

How do I know if a food photographer is right for my brand?
For photography that involves a specific product, the practical question is whether the product can be shipped to the photographer. For most packaged food and drink, this is straightforward — I’ve worked with international brands and US-based agencies entirely remotely, with products shipped directly to my studio and the full project handled without the client ever needing to be on set. Perishable products, location-specific shoots, or situations where shipping isn’t practical are the exceptions. For recipe content that doesn’t feature a specific product, location is entirely irrelevant — I can develop and photograph recipes using locally available ingredients and deliver the content wherever the client is based. Social media strategy, consultations, and copywriting work the same way.

I’m Chiara — a food photographer and stylist, short-form video creator, recipe developer, and social media specialist based in Ireland, with an MSc in chemistry, a certification in nutrition, and a diploma in digital marketing. I work with food, drink, and wellness brands across Ireland, the UK, and internationally, and I’ve been running A Matter of Nourishment since 2017. My background includes years working in research laboratories and nearly a decade of brand work: a combination that shapes everything from how I approach a shoot to how I think about the content strategy behind it.

Get in touch

How storytelling in social media marketing sold out a Christmas campaign for a food brand

By the time the Wall Street Journal and Forbes both wrote about storytelling becoming the most in-demand skill in marketing (in December 2025, within days of each other), I’d already watched it play out across more than one campaign, with the numbers to back it up.

Posts and Stories that felt like they were talking to one specific person were outperforming posts that were talking at a general audience. Don’t get me wrong, this has always been a winning strategy on social media and in marketing; it’s the famous “if you try talking to everyone, you’ll end up talking to nobody” that you have probably heard multiple times. What was different here was the scale of the gap. The human-to-human connection combined with storytelling was way more effective, and the straight product content was working less well than usual (even when done properly).

I have a theory about why, and it’s not complicated: AI-generated content done badly is everywhere now, and it’s all generic and forgettable, and audiences have developed a finely tuned instinct for what’s been produced by a machine trying to sound human versus something written by a person who actually thought about what they were saying. Content fatigue is real, and the craving for human connection in a feed full of polished sameness is very much there. Whatever the exact cause, the fact is that, in the past few years, storytelling and people-centred content have been working better than they had in a while.

This post is about what storytelling in social media marketing actually means in practice (not the buzzword version) and about a specific campaign where it made a measurable difference.

What storytelling in social media marketing actually means

The word gets used so loosely in marketing that it’s important to be specific about what it actually involves, because storytelling doesn’t equal “tell your brand’s story” or “write with personality”.

The reality is that while your story should absolutely be part of your marketing, your customer isn’t specifically interested in hearing an essay about that. They’re interested in their own story, and specifically in whether you understand it well enough to reflect it back to them. They are interested in how your story helped you make a difference for them. The brands that get storytelling right are the ones that have studied their audience closely enough to know what their life actually looks like (what they’re stressed about, what they’re proud of, what they’re trying to do or feel or avoid) and create content that makes people think “oh wait, that’s me”.

You don’t sell olive oil. You sell a spoonful of antioxidants in every meal. You don’t sell a massage. You sell fifty minutes without anyone asking you anything. You don’t sell a flight to Lisbon. You sell pastéis de nata for breakfast, lunch, and dinner (every time I bring up this example, I want to book a flight to Lisbon!). The difference between those two ways of describing the same thing is the difference between telling someone what you sell and making them feel something. People have always bought feelings. And the product or service is just how the feeling gets delivered.

What makes this harder than it sounds is that it requires resisting the instinct to lead with the product or service and solely leaning into what I call the “sell, sell, sell” strategy (I get it, it’s difficult — you are trying to promote a business, and the ultimate goal is, of course, selling). Most brands, understandably, want to talk about what they make, how it’s made, why it’s good, and what makes them different. And repeat that as often as possible. None of that is wrong — it just isn’t enough on its own, because every other brand in the same space is saying almost the same things in almost the same words, and audiences have learned to scroll past it without really remembering any of it.

The other thing that makes it challenging is that it requires knowing your audience well enough to actually show them a version of their own life. That knowledge doesn’t come from a spreadsheet or a demographic breakdown. You really need to invest time and attention in getting to know that specific audience and ask the right questions. When a client works with me for the first time, that process starts on day one through onboarding, audience research, and building a clear picture of who you’re talking to and why. Over time, and across multiple seasons and campaigns, that understanding deepens, and every campaign is more informed and stronger than the last.

The campaign

The client was a small Irish food brand with an online shop. Every Q4, they launch a special Christmas product: it’s a seasonal offering that needs to be able to stand out at a time of year when every other food brand is suddenly more present than usual, everyone is running paid promotions, and audiences are simultaneously more receptive to buying and more overwhelmed by choice.

I had been managing their social media (strategy, content creation, copywriting, and day-to-day management) for a few years at this point, which meant I had been through the festive season with them and their audience before. I knew what had worked, what hadn’t, what the audience responded to, and what they scrolled past. And that accumulated knowledge (combined with current trends, user behaviour, and best practices on social media) mattered more than any single tactical decision.

The previous year’s Christmas campaign went well, and the goal for this one was to build on that using the same organic-only approach (no paid advertising), but with a sharper strategy.

The feed content stayed consistent with the brand’s established visual style. I created everything (photography, video, graphics, captions) and the client reviewed and approved it before anything went live, which is the standard workflow for feed content I use with my social media clients. That approval process exists to protect the brand and make sure everything is aligned before it’s published.

Stories were different. With a client I’d been working with long enough to have built real trust, Stories went out without an approval step. This reflects the kind of working relationship that develops over time, when a client trusts your understanding of their brand and their audience (but it’s also true that this is the approach most of my clients choose from day one). It also meant I could move quickly and take a creative risk without a sign-off cycle slowing things down, which turned out to matter.

The real change in this campaign happened on Stories. In previous campaigns, Stories had been used in a fairly conventional way (more product-focused, promotional, and sales-driven), while still keeping the audience at the centre of the strategy. This time I took a different approach entirely. Instead of pushing the product, the Stories focused on the experience of Christmas itself: the stress of hosting, the pressure of planning, scenarios they’d want to immediately forward to someone else and the moments people actually recognise from their own lives. Written storytelling (plainly laid out with sentences like “is this you?” and “does this sound familiar?”, but also included naturally in the content) with simple design, minimal imagery, and copy that felt human rather than salesy.

The idea was to make people feel seen before making them feel sold to.

The results

This is a relatively small account with a few content constraints I had to work around. Not exactly your black canvas where you can test out all the top-performing strategies and content formats. During November and part of December, the campaign delivered results I’m particularly proud of.

52,000 impressions on Instagram: consistent visibility across a competitive period, holding steady with regular monthly performance despite the noise of Q4.

+20% increase in Story impressions: a direct reflection of the storytelling shift. More people were watching Stories through to the end and engaging with them, which means the content was connecting.

419 clicks on the custom Christmas link, a 66% increase compared to the previous year. And the majority of those clicks came directly from Stories. This is the clearest indicator that the approach worked: more people engaged, more clicked through, and more bought.

251 clicks on the link in bio: consistent interest in both the Christmas product and the brand’s regular range throughout the campaign period.

The Christmas box sold out.

Could some of that be down to timing, a good season, or factors outside the content? Possibly — and that honesty is part of how I work. But the 66% jump in link clicks compared to the same campaign the previous year (I had to check it twice when I first saw it), and the clear correlation between the Stories shift and the engagement uptick, make a strong case that the strategy made the difference. The feed content hadn’t changed significantly, but Stories had. And the results followed.

What this campaign demonstrates

The results matter, but the more useful lesson to learn from this campaign is the underlying principle: audiences respond to content that makes them feel understood, and they tend to move past content that just describes a product, however good that product is.

This concept is probably as old as marketing itself, but it’s often forgotten. Here is coming back in full force because what’s changed is the context: we’re in a moment where AI is producing enormous volumes of surface-level content that allows you to hit post as many times as you want but connects with nobody. Against that backdrop, content that sounds like a person talking to a specific other person (i.e. your target audience) stands out more than it did when the competition was other humans writing in the same generic register. The Wall Street Journal and Forbes (and many others) both identified storytelling as one of the most sought-after and hardest-to-find marketing skills in December 2025. The campaign data above is a small but concrete example of why.

I recently shared a social media post on my page with a good example of how this thinking works in practice: everyone assumes there’s nothing new to say about sourdough, and that might be true if you’re thinking about it the way most brands think about it — as a product to describe and promote. But a bakery, a café, a health food shop, a nutritionist, and a food blogger all have completely different audiences with very different reasons to care about the same loaf of bread. The product doesn’t change, but the story changes every time, for every brand, and for every audience. That’s the whole job of good storytelling.

Working with someone who thinks this way

Social media strategy, management, photo and short-form video creation for food, drink, and wellness brands is the work I do every day. If your brand deserves this level of attention (or if you’re heading into a launch or seasonal campaign and want to approach it differently) and you haven’t found the right creative partner yet, I’d love to hear about what you’re working on — get in touch here.

You can also read about the link in bio CTR results from a wellness client I’ve been managing for nearly two years (a different metric, same principle) in this post.

I’m Chiara — a social media specialist, food photographer and stylist, short-form video creator, and recipe developer based in Ireland. I work with food, drink, and wellness brands across Ireland and internationally, and I’ve been running A Matter of Nourishment since 2017. My background includes an MSc in chemistry, a certification in nutrition, and a diploma in digital marketing: a combination that shapes everything from how I approach a shoot to how I think about content strategy.

Get in touch

Extra virgin olive oil and polyphenols: a chemist’s guide to what’s actually in the bottle

A few months ago, I fell down a rabbit hole I (happily) haven’t entirely climbed out of yet. It started with a combination of personal reasons and professional curiosity colliding at the same time.

My partner has Type 1 diabetes, so I’ve always paid close attention to what we eat — not in a restrictive way, but with a consistent focus on anti-inflammatory foods and antioxidant density. That’s always been part of how I cook and how I think about food for us. Recently, it became more of a priority and deliberate focus than a background one, and extra virgin olive oil (specifically high-polyphenol extra virgin olive oil) ended up at the centre of it (considering that, as Italians, we are not exactly stingy when it comes to olive oil). We’d been mainly using an Italian EVOO we loved for years, and when it became harder to find in shops, the search for an alternative turned into a full investigation into what we were actually looking for and why. One thing led to another, and here we are.

I want to be clear about what this post is and what it isn’t. It’s not a health and nutrition post — there are plenty of those, many written by experienced practitioners who know far more about the clinical side of this than I do, and if health outcomes are what you’re after, those are the posts to look for. This is my usual angle: food science and cooking, with a touch of the marketing world layered on top, because it’s hard to talk about olive oil right now without talking about how it’s being sold. For anyone reading as a brand in the olive oil space (or a brand that uses olive oil as an ingredient and wants to communicate better about it), there’s a section for you at the end.

Before starting to chat about all the details and the science behind high-polyphenol EVOO, there’s one distinction that needs to be mentioned, as I know it often creates some confusion: “olive oil” and “extra virgin olive oil” are not the same product. Standard olive oil (often labelled “pure”, “classic” or simply “olive oil”) is refined, meaning lower-grade oil has been processed through industrial refining (including alkali treatment, bleaching, and steam deodorisation) to remove defects and neutralise the flavour. That process strips away most of the polyphenols, vitamins, and aromatic compounds. A small amount of virgin or extra virgin olive oil is typically blended back in at the end to add some colour and taste, but the polyphenol levels cannot be compared to a real unrefined EVOO. If polyphenol content is part of what you’re looking for, the label needs to say extra virgin (and maybe even something more, as you will learn shortly).

What polyphenols actually are

Polyphenols are a large and diverse class of naturally occurring compounds found in plants. What they have in common structurally is that they contain multiple phenol units (ring-shaped molecular structures with a hydroxyl group attached — this is my bread and butter, by the way) and it’s this structure that gives them their antioxidant activity. Plants produce polyphenols as part of their defence system against UV radiation, insects, fungi, and environmental stress, which is thought to be part of why olive trees grown in difficult, high-stress conditions (rocky soil, temperature extremes, low rainfall) tend to produce olives with higher polyphenol concentrations than those grown in more comfortable conditions.

In extra virgin olive oil, the polyphenols that get the most attention are oleuropein, hydroxytyrosol, oleocanthal, and oleacein. Oleuropein is the most abundant polyphenol in unripe olives and is responsible for much of the bitterness in early harvest oils. As olives ripen, oleuropein breaks down via enzymatic hydrolysis into hydroxytyrosol and other compounds — which is why late harvest oils and most supermarket EVOOs have a milder, less bitter flavour profile. Hydroxytyrosol is one of the most potent antioxidants found in any food. Oleocanthal is responsible for the peppery, throat-catching sensation you get at the back of the throat when tasting a high-polyphenol oil neat. It inhibits the same cyclooxygenase enzymes (COX-1 and COX-2) as ibuprofen (a finding published in Nature in 2005), but the throat sensation itself is actually a separate mechanism: both oleocanthal and ibuprofen in solution activate the TRPA1 receptor, which is spatially localised to the back of the throat. The COX inhibition and the throat irritation are two distinct but related discoveries, and together they’re what makes oleocanthal one of the more chemically interesting compounds in food. Oleacein rounds out the group as another phenolic compound with strong antioxidant activity.

The EU has an authorised health claim under Regulation 432/2012 specifically for hydroxytyrosol and its derivatives (including oleuropein complex and tyrosol) — not for total phenolic content as a broad measure. The claim states that consuming 20g of a qualifying oil daily contributes to protecting blood lipids from oxidative stress, and it may only be used on oils containing at least 5mg of those specific compounds per 20g of oil. That works out to 250 mg/kg, which is the threshold you’ll most often see cited in marketing, but the regulation is measuring a defined subset of phenols, not everything a total polyphenol test would capture. It’s a meaningful distinction if you’re comparing lab certificates, since different analytical methods can give quite different numbers for the same oil. That 250 mg/kg threshold is the regulatory line that separates “high polyphenol” as a meaningful, verifiable claim from marketing language — and many standard supermarket extra virgin olive oils fall below it despite being perfectly legitimate extra virgin olive oil by grade.

Extra virgin olive oil as a legal category requires free acidity below 0.8%, no sensory defects, and production by mechanical means only — many standard supermarket EVOOs meet those criteria perfectly and still fall below 250 mg/kg polyphenol content. Some premium certified oils reach 500, 600, 700, or above 1000 mg/kg (the strongest I tried so far has 976 mg/kg).

Why early harvest matters

The polyphenol content of an olive oil is shaped by how the olives are grown, when they’re harvested, and how the oil is extracted. Of these, harvest timing is the most significant variable for most producers.

Olives harvested early (while still green, before full maturation) contain significantly higher polyphenol concentrations than those harvested at full ripeness. As the fruit matures on the tree, polyphenol content naturally declines while oil yield increases. An early harvest olive produces less oil per kilogram of fruit than a ripe one: this is a real, meaningful commercial trade-off, and producers who choose to harvest early are making a clear decision to sacrifice volume for polyphenol density and flavour complexity. The price difference once the product reaches the shelves is a direct reflection of that decision.

The early harvest choice has a pretty distinct effect on the flavour profile. Early harvest oils are typically grassy and herbaceous on the nose, sometimes with an artichoke or fresh-cut grass quality. On the palate, bitterness and pungency (and that unique sensation in your throat) are more pronounced. This is the work of polyphenols, not a sign that something is off with the oil. A flat, smooth, very mild oil with no bitterness and no clear finish is easier for most people to use on everyday dishes, but for someone specifically looking for polyphenol content, that absence also tells something about what isn’t there chemically.

What does cold pressing mean

EU regulation defines two specific official terms for this. “First cold pressing” is reserved for the traditional method using hydraulic presses. “Cold extraction” is the official term for the modern centrifugal method, which is how the vast majority of commercial EVOO is produced today. Both require the entire process to stay below 27°C. “Cold pressed” is a third phrase that appears widely on consumer labels as informal shorthand, but it isn’t one of the EU’s two specifically defined and regulated designations, which makes it less verifiable than the official terms.

The 27°C limit is what actually matters, regardless of which term appears on the bottle. It’s the threshold that protects polyphenols and aromatic compounds from heat degradation during extraction. Industrial methods that prioritise yield use higher temperatures, which increases the oil recovered from the fruit but progressively degrades the phenolic compounds in the process. Cold extraction, properly controlled and documented, preserves them.

Cold extraction alone doesn’t tell you the polyphenol content, the harvest date, or the olive variety: this means it’s one necessary condition for quality, not a complete picture. The most transparent producers combine cold extraction with published laboratory analysis showing actual phenolic levels per kilogram, which is increasingly the standard among premium producers and the most reliable thing to look for if you’re trying to evaluate a specific oil (and I absolutely love this trend).

Single estate versus blended

A single estate oil (sometimes labelled single origin) means the olives came from one specific farm or grove, with traceable growing conditions, a documented harvest date, and a flavour profile that reflects a specific place and variety. A blended oil combines fruit from multiple sources, often across different countries, to produce consistent flavour at scale.

Blended doesn’t automatically mean lower quality, and blending is partly how producers achieve stability in flavour across different harvests. But single estate oils offer something blended ones structurally can’t: full traceability and the kind of specificity that makes it possible to understand what you’re tasting and verify what you’re buying (and this means a lot, considering how high-quality EVOO can make a significant dent in your monthly grocery budget). Knowing the olive variety, the region, the harvest date, and the polyphenol certificate of a specific oil is only possible when production is contained and documented; large-scale industrial blending makes it impossible. For anyone specifically interested in polyphenol content and verifiable quality, single estate is generally where you’ll find that information presented clearly.

Are bitterness and pungency signals of quality?

This deserves its own section because it’s one of the things that, for anyone new to high-polyphenol oils, needs a little introduction.

The bitterness and throat pungency that are characteristic of early harvest, high-polyphenol extra virgin olive oil are not flaws that need to be removed or masked. They are direct sensory signals of polyphenol presence. The bitterness is primarily oleuropein, while the throat catch is oleocanthal. When you taste a high-quality oil and it almost makes you cough a little or leaves a sustained pepper-like sensation at the back of the throat, that’s the oil showing you its composition more directly than any label claim can.

Most people are accustomed to mild, neutral olive oils because those are the ones that dominate supermarket shelves and have shaped what most people expect olive oil to taste like. A good, high-polyphenol oil tasted for the first time can be quite the experience — more intense, bitter, and powerful than expected. Once you understand what you’re tasting and why, it’s difficult to go back to the mild version and not notice what’s missing.

The cooking question and the answer you have been looking for

The idea that you shouldn’t cook with extra virgin olive oil is one of those pieces of advice that gets repeated so confidently and so often that questioning it feels counterintuitive. The chemistry doesn’t support it as a black-or-white rule, and the details are far more intriguing than either “never cook with it” or “always cook with it”.

The smoke point of extra virgin olive oil is approximately 175–210°C depending on the oil’s free acidity, variety, and quality — oils with lower acidity generally have higher smoke points. Most home cooking happens well within that range. And when researchers at the University of Porto tested different olive oil categories under sustained deep-frying conditions, all of them significantly outlasted a commercial vegetable oil blend before reaching the maximum legal polar compound threshold (the breakdown products that form in oil when it degrades under heat). This suggests the oil doesn’t break down structurally at normal cooking temperatures in the way the “never cook with it” advice implies.

Research published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry found that the key compounds in high-polyphenol oils behave quite differently from each other under heat: hydroxytyrosol and its derivatives show the highest rate of degradation at frying temperatures, while tocopherols (vitamin E) degrade at a similar or somewhat lower rate. Tyrosol and its derivatives, along with lignans, showed considerably more stability, with lignans remaining largely intact even after extended heating. So “heat destroys polyphenols” is too blunt; the picture is compound-specific — and the compound most people associate with high-polyphenol EVOO is actually among the most heat-sensitive of the group.

The case for keeping a high-polyphenol oil out of the pan isn’t really that heat destroys everything catastrophically — it’s that you paid a significant premium for an oil specifically for its phenolic content, and raw or finishing use is simply the most direct way to get the full benefit of what you bought. Using a good quality but less expensive EVOO for cooking and keeping the high-polyphenol bottle for finishing, salads, and drizzling is a practical choice rather than a safety rule.

My own approach is exactly that — a different EVOO in the pan, the high-polyphenol bottle for everything raw and for finishing. I’m well aware that cooking with it wouldn’t be wrong, but this is the choice that makes more sense for what I’m trying to get from each oil.

What’s happening in the olive oil market right now

Something has shifted noticeably in how premium olive oil producers communicate their products, and it reflects a real change in what a segment of consumers is asking for (and I absolutely love seeing these patterns).

A few years ago, premium olive oil marketing was built primarily around provenance, tradition, and flavour. The leading brands now lead with data: published polyphenol certificates, lab-verified phenolic content per batch, QR codes linking directly to analysis reports, harvest date transparency, side-by-side comparisons of oleocanthal and oleacein levels across different harvests. The technical detail that used to be found in academic papers and specialist competitions has moved to social media, product pages, and bottle labels — because there is clearly a consumer audience that wants that kind of information.

From a brand perspective, this is interesting because it represents a different kind of trust-building than aesthetics or heritage can offer. A brand that can say “our 2025 harvest tested at 640 mg/kg, here is the certificate” is having a different conversation with its customers than one relying on beautiful packaging, Mediterranean imagery and a “made in the traditional way” claim. Both can coexist in the market, but thanks to the transparency-led approach, now certain brands can build a very specific kind of trust and loyalty, which is something any business in the food space can learn from, regardless of what they make.

The other shift I love seeing on social media: bringing a bottle of high-quality extra virgin olive oil to a dinner party instead of wine. It sounds niche, I know. But it’s becoming increasingly more popular, and it makes complete sense when you think about it: a well-chosen bottle (maybe even single estate and early harvest) is a more considered and interesting gift than another unremarkable wine, and it opens a conversation about food and cooking that most dinner guests are happy to have. I’m entirely behind this new trend.

Before you go looking for your new favourite EVOO

If this has made you curious about exploring high-polyphenol extra virgin olive oils, a few practical things: polyphenols degrade with light and oxygen, so dark glass bottles or tins are preferable to clear glass. Harvest date matters more than best before date — an oil from the current or most recent harvest, properly stored away from direct light and heat, will be in better condition than an older oil regardless of what the label says. And trust the flavour: the bitterness and throat catch that used to be dismissed as poor quality are the most direct sensory confirmation available that the polyphenols you’re looking for are actually present.

For more on the food science behind the compounds and reactions that shape flavour and cooking behaviour, the food and food science section of this blog covers the Maillard reaction, emulsification, acidity, and what happens at a molecular level when food is cooked.

What does “high polyphenol” mean on an olive oil label, and why doesn’t the nutrition label show it?

“High polyphenol” refers to oils containing at least 250 mg/kg of specific phenolic compounds — the threshold required under the EU regulation to carry an authorised health claim. This is the EU framework, and since most premium high-polyphenol oils come from EU-producing countries, it’s the most relevant reference point for most buyers. A published lab certificate is always more useful than any wording on the label. Producers who have good numbers almost always publish them, and you can usually find them on their website (or they might be available on request). On the nutrition label, you’ll often find only the amount of tocopherols (vitamin E), not polyphenols (and the two are different compounds).

Are tocopherols the same as polyphenols?

No, they’re both antioxidants found in extra virgin olive oil, but they’re chemically distinct compounds with different structures and different behaviour. Tocopherols are fat-soluble vitamins (vitamin E) and appear on the standard nutrition label as essential nutrients. Polyphenols (including hydroxytyrosol, oleocanthal, and oleuropein) are a separate class of compounds: they contain multiple phenolic ring structures and are found across a wide range of plant foods like olive oil, tea, vegetables, berries, and more.

What is the difference between cold-pressed and cold-extracted olive oil?

EU regulation defines two official terms: “first cold pressing” for the traditional hydraulic press method and “cold extraction” for the modern centrifugal method used by most producers today. Both require temperatures below 27°C. “Cold pressed” appears widely on labels as informal language, but isn’t one of the EU’s two specifically regulated designations. Cold extraction with a published polyphenol certificate is the most meaningful combination to look for.

What is the difference between extra virgin olive oil and olive oil?

Extra virgin olive oil is produced by mechanical means only, without industrial refining, and must meet strict standards for acidity and sensory quality. Standard olive oil is made from lower-grade oil that has been refined (through alkali treatment, bleaching, and steam deodorisation), which strips away most of the polyphenols, vitamins, and aromatic compounds. A small amount of virgin olive oil is blended back in at the end for colour and flavour. If polyphenol content matters to you, the label needs to say extra virgin.

How should I store extra virgin olive oil to preserve the polyphenols?

Polyphenols degrade with light, oxygen, and heat. Dark glass bottles or tins are preferable to clear glass. Store the oil in a cool, dark place — away from the hob (I see you wanting to keep that bottle on hand right next to the hob) and direct sunlight. Once opened, keep the bottle well sealed.

Does the country of origin determine the quality of an olive oil?

Not reliably. Excellent high-polyphenol oils are produced in Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Croatia, and beyond — and mediocre oil can come from all of those places, too. What matters more than geography is producer transparency: a single traceable estate, a published harvest date, a lab certificate showing actual polyphenol levels, and documented extraction methods.

I’m Chiara — an Italian food photographer and stylist, short-form video creator, recipe developer and social media specialist, based in Ireland. I launched A Matter of Nourishment in 2017 with a background that some might find a little unusual for this kind of work: an MSc and BSc in chemistry from the University of Bologna (plus almost a Ph.D), years spent in research laboratories across Italy, Spain, and Ireland, publications in peer-reviewed journals, and a deep interest towards the overlap between science, cooking, and the visual side of how food gets communicated. The more I worked with brands, the clearer the industry gaps became: pretty visuals with no strategy behind them, content that looked fine but said nothing, and a consistent mismatch between how good a product or service actually was and how it showed up online. This shaped everything that followed.

I now work with food, drink, and wellness brands, and some clients come for a single project, but most stay for years.

My qualifications include an MSc in chemistry, a BSc in chemistry, a professional diploma in digital marketing from UCD, a social media marketing certification, a nutrition certification, and a massage diploma.

Get in touch

The Instagram metric that actually predicts enquiries — and what nearly two years of real data looks like

There’s a number most service-based brands are not looking at, and it’s the one that would tell them almost everything they need to know about whether their Instagram is actually doing its job.

Instead, most brands are watching their follower count, checking how many likes their latest post had, or comparing their numbers to accounts with ten times their following (sometimes even influencers’ pages), and concluding that something must be wrong with their content, posting frequency, or luck. What they’re rarely doing is asking the question that actually matters for a service-based business: of the people who find this account, how many are interested enough to take the next step?

That question has a metric: it’s called bio link CTR (the percentage of people who visit your profile and go on to click the link in your bio) and for a business where the goal of Instagram is to move someone from “oh, that’s nice” to “I want to book,” it’s significantly more useful than any reach or follower figure you’ll find in your insights.

This post is built around nearly two years of real data from a wellness client I manage social media for. The numbers are unusual in the best possible way — it’s a relatively small account, but the content strategy is clearly doing what it was built for. I’m sharing them here because I think they illustrate something important about what social media can look like when it’s measured by the right things.

Why follower count is the wrong number for service-based businesses

The obsession with follower count on Instagram is understandable. It’s the most visible metric, the one that shows up on your profile for anyone to see, and it carries a social proof logic that feels intuitive: more followers means more people trust you, which means more clients.

In practice, for a service-based business, this is backwards. A large following can increase your reach (the number of people who might see a given piece of content), but more reach does not automatically mean more bookings, and in many cases a larger following actively dilutes the ratio of people who are interested in what you do versus people who followed you for an unrelated reason, engaged with a viral post, or haven’t interacted with your content in years.

What converts to bookings is intent: someone found your account, looked at what you do, decided they wanted to know more, and clicked through to your website. That’s what we usually call a warm lead. This means the content has done its job. And that is exactly what bio link CTR measures.

The industry average for organic bio link CTR (the percentage of profile visitors who click the link in bio) is around 2–5%, based on data from social media analytics platform Flick, which tracks performance across more than 50,000 Instagram accounts. Anything above that means your profile is converting visitors to website traffic at above-average rates. Significantly above that means the content is doing something most accounts aren’t.

What nearly two years of data actually looks like

The client in question is a wellness practitioner offering one-to-one services — an established business with a loyal client base that needed a complete social media strategy built from scratch, managed consistently, and measured against the metrics that mattered for their business model. The account is small by most definitions: well under the threshold most people associate with a “strong” brand presence on Instagram (under 5k followers). All results below are from organic content only, no paid advertising.

The single number that frames everything else: this account has never dropped below 25% CTR in any single month across nearly two years of data. Most months, it’s between 30–50%. For several months, it has been well above that. Held against an industry average of 2–5%, these numbers are in a different league.

A few moments from across the collaboration deserve their own mention:

Over 1,000 link in bio clicks in the first six months alone — including Q4, when organic reach is notoriously harder across the board. A CTR of 57% in one month, meaning more than half of everyone who visited the profile that month clicked through to the website. A CTR of approximately 103% in another (I’ll explain what it actually means in the next section). A recovery month of nearly 60% CTR after a natural seasonal dip, with website clicks more than doubling from the month before.

New bookings came in consistently throughout, with multiple new clients mentioning they found the business through Instagram.

What the monthly data shows across the full period (without going into it line by line) is that even when reach fluctuates, the CTR holds steady. The baseline is 25%. The ceiling has been well above 100%. And it has stayed in that range through algorithm changes, seasonal dips, slow months, challenging Q4 weeks, and everything else.

What these numbers mean — and what they don’t

There are a few things that need to be addressed before we start drawing conclusions.

During year two, there was a month (September) with a surprisingly high figure (approximately 103% CTR), which is, of course, something that needs to be mentioned. It’s real data from Instagram Insights, and while the exact reason the metric can exceed 100% isn’t fully documented by Instagram publicly, it’s not uncommon for link click counts and profile visit counts to diverge a little. The most important takeaway here is that this was a month of unusually high engagement with the bio link relative to profile traffic, which, in the context of this account’s overall performance, is consistent with everything else the data shows.

The month following that 103% CTR (October) showed a lower number, which is also an important part of the full picture — and not something to be alarmed by. Seasonal fluctuations are real and predictable for service businesses. What matters is the recovery: The next month came back strongly at 59.5% CTR, with link clicks up over 114% from October. The strategy helped the page work through a seasonal dip and return to the usual strong results the following month, which is exactly what a well-built strategy is supposed to do.

The other thing these numbers don’t show is follower growth, viral content, or impressive reach figures. The profile visit numbers throughout are modest because this is not a large account. What the data shows, consistently across nearly two years, is that the people who do find the account are converting to website traffic at a rate that is between six and twelve times the industry average — every single month, including the slow ones.

That’s not a lucky month or the effect of a viral post here and there: that’s a strategy working.

Why this kind of result is unusual

Most social media management is not built around this kind of outcome, because most social media management is not measured this way.

The default approach (post consistently, use trending audio, chase engagement, grow the following) is designed to produce visible metrics. It produces likes, reach, and follower counts. It can do all of those things without producing a single enquiry, and on a service-based account where the audience is small and the content isn’t designed to move people through to the next step, that’s exactly what happens. Busy-looking content, results that mean very little for the business. And now you might say “but that’s brand awareness, it’s good”: I agree with you, brand awareness is an essential part of any marketing strategy and it’s often the main goal behind organic social media content. But two things can be true at the same time: in this case, the importance of brand awareness and never losing sight of the fact that, at the end of the day, you run a business and need business results.

What produces a CTR like the one above is a content strategy that treats the profile as the beginning of a journey rather than the destination. The content needs to drive the profile visit, and the profile (the bio, the link, and what’s there when someone arrives) needs to drive the click. Both of those things need to be working. A strong feed with a weak bio converts poorly. A well-written bio on a feed full of content that doesn’t build trust or communicate what you do will struggle to convert. The whole thing has to be coherent.

There’s also something else that stands out when you look at the data: the strategy produces consistent months across nearly two years, including Q4 when organic content typically struggles to stand out (because most accounts focus on paid advertising) and summer months when enquiries for service businesses can be slower than usual. That consistency means the strategy has been created to work long-term and with the bigger picture in mind, rather than being optimised for individual posts.

What the follower count conversation is costing you

If you manage social media for a service-based business (or if you’re a founder doing it yourself) and your benchmark for success is whether the numbers look big enough, you’re likely underinvesting in the thing that would actually bring in clients and overinvesting in the thing that makes the account look active.

The brands that are best positioned to get results like the ones above are not necessarily the ones with the largest accounts. They’re the ones with a clear service, value to communicate, and a strategy that’s been built around moving the right people from discovery to enquiry (not around chasing an audience that was never going to book).

A small account with a 40% bio link CTR is sending more warm traffic to your website every month than a large account with a 2% CTR and ten times the following. The maths is not complicated once you’re looking at the right numbers.

Working with the right people on the right metrics

I work with food, drink, and wellness brands on social media strategy and management — building strategies around what the business actually needs to achieve, measuring what matters, and managing the whole process so it doesn’t sit on your plate.

The results above are from one client, but the approach is consistent: content built around intent, performance tracked against the metrics that reflect real business outcomes, and a strategy that’s designed to work over time, not give you a viral post here and there and be useless for the rest of the time.

If your social media page looks busy (or keeps you busy) but isn’t generating enquiries, the issue is rarely the posting frequency. Get in touch here if you want to talk through what a different approach might look like for your business.

And if you want to understand exactly what CTR is, how it’s calculated, and where it’s placed alongside other social media metrics worth tracking, that’s covered in full here.

I’m Chiara — a social media specialist, food photographer and stylist, short-form video creator, and recipe developer based in Dublin. I work with food, drink, and wellness brands across Ireland, the UK, and internationally, and I’ve been running A Matter of Nourishment since 2017. My background includes an MSc in chemistry, a diploma in digital marketing, and certifications in nutrition and social media marketing: a combination that shapes everything from how I approach a shoot to how I think about content strategy.

Get in touch

How my background in chemistry shapes the way I work as a food photographer, stylist and creative

When people find out I have an MSc in chemistry and spent years working in research laboratories before moving into food photography and creative work, the reaction is usually one of two things. Either they find it genuinely interesting (a different kind of background for this kind of work), or they assume it’s a marketing story — a nice detail for the bio that makes me sound unique but doesn’t really change anything about the photos.

I understand why. “Background in science” can mean a lot of things, including simply being interested in science. What it means in my case is a BSc and an MSc from the University of Bologna (with several publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals along the way, before I had even finished my MSc), and years of applied research across laboratories in Italy, Spain, and Ireland, which eventually took me to the point of almost completing a PhD before I chose a different path.

That’s a specific kind of training that builds a specific kind of thinking — and that thinking shows up in my work every single day, whether a client is aware of it or not.

What thinking like a chemist actually means on set

Science trains you to approach problems with a combination of curiosity and methodology. You ask what’s happening and why before you decide what to do about it. You don’t assume — you look for the cause, you consider the variables, and you work from evidence rather than instinct alone.

That approach transfers directly into food photography and styling in ways that aren’t always obvious from the outside. Before I think about a backdrop, a composition, or a colour palette, I need to understand the brand, the product or service, the audience, and the goals. Not as a checklist I need to get done before the end of the day, but as a foundation for every creative decision that follows. My science background is a significant part of why I work that way. In a lab, you don’t start an experiment without understanding what you’re trying to find out and why. On a shoot, I don’t start without understanding what the images need to do and for whom.

Most food photography projects start with a different assumption: that a good food photo is one that’s in focus, looks appealing, and features food that looks good for the general public (as in “it’s common knowledge this should look this way to look good, so if the photo does that, it’s good to go”). Those things matter, but they’re the starting point, not what will help a brand stand out. A photo that checks those boxes and nothing else is a photo that could belong to any brand. What makes content actually work for a specific brand is everything that goes into it before the camera is involved — and that’s where the scientific method, applied to creative work, makes a real difference.

The chemistry that shows up in the work

Food science is present on every shoot, in practical ways. Understanding why a sauce separates and what actually fixes it. Knowing which produce will start to discolour within the first ten minutes of being cut and planning the shoot around that. Understanding how fat composition affects whether a product holds under different temperature conditions. Knowing when moisture on a surface is helping the image and when it’s working against it — and understanding why, not just from experience but from understanding what’s happening at a physical and chemical level.

The Maillard reaction, emulsification, enzymatic browning, the behaviour of different fats under heat, how moisture affects browning and texture: these aren’t things I look up when they become a problem on set. They’re things I factor into the planning before a problem has a chance to occur. The science of food styling post covers six of these principles in detail if you want to understand more about what that looks like in practice.

A more specific example: a few years ago, I was styling and photographing a recipe that featured red cabbage. Red cabbage contains pigments called anthocyanins that are highly sensitive to pH — in acidic conditions they stay a vivid purple, but in alkaline conditions they shift toward blue. The recipe as written was pushing the cabbage toward blue, which doesn’t look great in photos and, more importantly, isn’t what most people expect to see on their plate. I identified the cause, found a solution to adjust the pH, proposed a change to the client, and the recipe ended up being updated. This option was better for the photos and for anyone cooking it at home, plus it required no confusing footnote about why their cabbage had turned an unexpected colour.

I tell this story not because it has some sort of “wow effect” (it doesn’t, it’s just a normal problem with a straightforward solution), but because it illustrates something I’ve had to make peace with: the moments where the science background makes a direct difference tend to feel routine to me, which means I’m often the last person to recognise them as unusual. I’ve heard enough times that “nobody needs chemistry to take food photos” or “nobody needs chemistry to cook” that I’ve internalised the doubt. But the red cabbage story is a good reminder that some problems have quick and effective solutions only if you understand why they’re happening in the first place.

How it shapes recipe development

The chemistry background changes recipe development most visibly. When I was asked by a brand to develop original recipes for a product launch (dishes that would make their product feel relevant and accessible in their customers’ everyday lives), I didn’t start from my cooking experience alone. I mapped the flavour compounds in the key ingredients, identified ingredients with complementary profiles, and built the recipes from there, while also accounting for the brand’s identity, their audience, current trends, and how each dish would photograph.

It’s not a standard approach. It produced recipes the client described as combinations they would have never thought about on their own and that worked scientifically, stylistically, and commercially at the same time. That’s what happens when chemistry, recipe development, food photography and brand thinking all come from the same person, rather than being spread across a team of specialists who may or may not be talking to each other (or respecting each other’s contributions).

The wider background and why all of it matters

The chemistry degrees and the lab years are the foundation. But I also have a certification as a nutritional advisor, a diploma in massage therapy, a professional diploma in digital marketing from UCD, two social media certifications, and nearly a decade of hands-on work with food, drink, and wellness brands. I mention all of these because the combination is what makes the difference: each one adds a layer of knowledge that shows up in the work.

The nutrition background means I understand ingredients and how they interact beyond what they look like. The marketing background means I ask targeted marketing questions even when a client comes to me only for photography, because a photo is always part of something bigger than itself, and understanding that changes the questions I ask before I even pick up a camera. The social media knowledge means I think about where the images will be used and who will see them, not just whether they look good.

This combination is difficult to find in one person. And I’m not just talking about the list of services (lots of people offer multiple services), but as someone who has truly done a deep dive into each of those areas through study, research, and years of real work. That’s what I mean when I say the background shapes everything: it’s not a marketing tactic or a simple brand story. It’s the actual reason the work looks and performs the way it does.

What this means for the brands I work with

The clients who notice this most clearly are usually the ones who have worked with other photographers or agencies before and found something was always slightly missing: the images looked fine but didn’t quite feel like theirs, or the content performed below expectations, or the process felt disconnected from the broader marketing picture.

As a food photographer based in Dublin and working internationally, what I offer isn’t just photography or styling or recipe development or social media strategy — it’s all of those things informed by the same underlying thinking, built on a foundation that comes from an unusual combination of scientific training, creative experience, and marketing knowledge.

I work with food, drink, and wellness brands across Ireland and internationally on food photography and styling, brand and lifestyle photography, short-form video including stop-motion and UGC-style content, recipe development, social media strategy and management, copywriting and digital marketing consultations. Most of my clients work with me across more than one of those areas, and most of them stay for years.

Over the years, I’ve worked with everything from small Irish family businesses and independent founders to globally recognised food brands — and the approach is the same regardless of scale: understand the brand properly before making a single creative decision.

If you want the full picture of what working together looks like, that’s here.

If this resonates

The brands I work best with have built something genuinely good and feel like their content doesn’t yet reflect that. They’re ready to work with someone who will think about their brand as carefully as they do and who brings a perspective that goes well beyond knowing how to take a good photo.

If that’s where you are, get in touch today using the button below. I am a food photographer based in Dublin, working with brands across Ireland, the UK and worldwide.

Fill out my enquiry form

The science of food styling: how chemistry shapes what food looks like on camera

Most conversations about food styling focus on the aesthetic decisions: the props, the composition, the light, the negative space. Those things matter, and they’re a significant part of what makes one image work well, while another doesn’t really hit the spot. But there’s a layer underneath all of it that rarely gets talked about — the food science. The way food behaves chemically and physically under heat, light, and time determines what it looks like on camera, often more directly than any styling choice made on the surface.

I came to food photography from a background in chemistry, which means I’ve always thought about what’s happening inside the food, not just on it. Over the years on set, that thinking has changed the way I approach everything — from how I plan a shot to what I do when something stops looking right. This post is about six of the food science principles I apply most regularly in styling and photography, and what each one actually means when the camera is in front of you.

Browning: the Maillard reaction and what it does to a surface

Browning from the Maillard reaction is obviously a flavour story, but it’s also a visual one, and understanding what it does to the surface of food changes how you think about capturing it.

When food browns (whether it’s a crust, a sear, a roasted vegetable, or a toasted slice of bread), the surface undergoes a chemical transformation that produces hundreds of new compounds. Those compounds absorb and reflect light differently from the pale, unreacted surface beneath them. The result is depth, texture, and dimensionality that a camera responds to in a way that raw or unbrowned food rarely achieves. Browning creates the visual contrast that makes food look properly cooked rather than just heated — and that contrast, between a deeply coloured surface and a lighter interior or background, is part of what stops someone mid-scroll.

From a styling perspective, this means browning is something to work with deliberately, not accidentally. Achieving it requires dry surfaces and sufficient heat (moisture keeps the temperature too low for the reaction to proceed), which is why pressing moisture out of food, patting surfaces dry before cooking, and not overcrowding a pan are all styling decisions as much as cooking ones. It also means knowing when not to go there: some food aesthetics are built on paleness (a pale crumb, a lightly baked pastry, a delicate dessert), and forcing browning into those contexts produces the wrong result entirely.

There’s a full breakdown of the chemistry behind the Maillard reaction (what it is, what conditions trigger it, and why it produces such different results in different foods) in this post.

Enzymatic browning — the kind that works against you

There’s another kind of browning that has nothing to do with heat, and it’s one of the more persistent challenges in food styling: enzymatic browning. This is what happens to a cut apple, a sliced avocado, a halved mushroom, or a peeled potato left exposed to air. Within minutes, the surface starts turning grey-brown. The food is still perfectly edible. It just doesn’t look it.

The mechanism is specific: when the cells of certain fruits and vegetables are cut or damaged, an enzyme called polyphenol oxidase (PPO) comes into contact with phenolic compounds inside the cell. In the presence of oxygen, PPO converts those phenols into quinones, which then polymerise into the brown-coloured compounds visible on the surface. The browner and duller it gets, the further the reaction has progressed.

On a shoot, this window between cutting and visible browning is one of the things I think about constantly with fresh produce. The practical responses are well known: a citric acid solution (lemon juice or a diluted citric acid wash) lowers the pH below the range where PPO works efficiently; ascorbic acid (vitamin C) reduces the quinone compounds back to phenols, effectively pausing the reaction. Cold water slows the enzyme’s activity. Blanching helps with it entirely, though at the cost of texture and colour in the vegetable itself.

What this means on set: cut produce as late as possible before the shot. Have your solution ready (usually a light lemon water) to brush or dip surfaces immediately. Know which foods brown fastest (avocado, banana, apple, potato, artichoke) and build the shoot plan around them accordingly. And if something has started to turn, know whether a fresh cut will reveal an unbrowning layer underneath, or whether the discolouration has gone too deep to salvage quickly.

Emulsification: why some sauces look alive and others don’t

A stable emulsion and a broken one are immediately distinguishable on camera, even before you analyse what went wrong. A sauce that’s holding (glossy, smooth, cohesive) has a surface that catches light evenly and reflects it back with that characteristic sheen. A broken sauce looks dull, separated, and oily around the edges. The difference isn’t subtle, and it’s not something you can easily fix in post-production.

This is because a stable emulsion is doing something optically that a broken one isn’t. The fine, evenly distributed droplets in a proper emulsion scatter light uniformly across the surface. When those droplets coalesce and the phases begin to separate, the surface becomes uneven — oil pools create their own reflections while the water-based liquid goes flat beneath them. The whole thing reads as wrong on camera in a way that’s difficult to articulate, but it’s easy to notice.

The practical implication is that maintaining an emulsion during a shoot (which might run for hours under lights that raise the ambient temperature) requires active management. Cooler temperatures help stability and studio lighting might work against you. Knowing which emulsifiers are in a given sauce tells you roughly how long it will hold before intervention is needed, and what to do when it starts to go: a small amount of lecithin (available as lecithin granules) can often re-emulsify a sauce that’s beginning to separate without visibly changing its appearance or flavour.

The full science of how emulsions form, what makes them stable, and why they break, is covered in depth here.

Moisture and steam: the science of timing

Steam rising from food is one of those visual details that makes a photograph feel alive and adds an extra layer of interest — it signals heat, freshness, the moment just after cooking. It’s also gone within seconds if you’re not ready for it.

What we see as steam rising from food is actually water droplets condensing as water vapour hits the cooler surrounding air. The visible “steam” appears almost immediately once hot food meets the ambient temperature difference, and dissipates as that temperature gap closes. On set, this means the window for capturing it is short and predictable: the food comes out of the oven or off the heat, and you have perhaps ten to thirty seconds of visible steam depending on the temperature differential and the environment. Knowing this, you plan the shot before the food arrives, not after.

Moisture has a separate and equally important role in how food surfaces look and behave. Wet surfaces don’t brown — they can’t reach the temperatures needed for browning reactions while moisture is evaporating. But wet surfaces do catch light in a specific way that’s useful for other purposes: the sheen on fresh herbs, the gloss on a freshly dressed salad, the visible moisture on a piece of chilled fish. Knowing when to add or remove moisture from a surface is a consistent part of how I style on set, because these surfaces create a kind of luminosity that dry surfaces don’t.

Condensation works as a real styling tool for cold subjects — a glass of iced water, a chilled bottle, a bowl of ice cream. Condensation forms when warm, humid air meets a surface cold enough to bring that air below its dew point. In practice: chill the vessel thoroughly, bring it into a warm environment, and give it a few minutes before shooting. A light mist of water can also produce the visual effect quickly if the real condensation isn’t forming fast enough, though it tends to look slightly different on camera.

Temperature and texture — working in windows

Temperature might be the variable I manage most actively on a shoot. Not just because of browning or steam, but because temperature controls texture — what food looks like, how it holds, whether it stays in the state you need it to be in long enough to capture.

Different fats melt at different temperatures, and this matters enormously for how food holds on set or under studio lights. Cocoa butter, the fat in chocolate, melts in the range of approximately 34–38°C, which is almost exactly body temperature, and low enough that in a warm room or under lights, chocolate decorations, chocolate bars, or anything with a chocolate component can start softening faster than you’d expect. The same logic applies to butter (which starts softening noticeably around 20°C and is fully melted by around 32–35°C), to any whipped cream stabilised without gelatin, and to fat-based sauces and glazes that hold beautifully at room temperature but soften quickly once conditions warm up.

Ice cream sits at one end of this spectrum: too cold and it’s hard and opaque, too warm and it loses its shape entirely. The window where it looks right for photography (softened enough to scoop cleanly, holding its form, showing texture rather than ice crystals) is narrow and requires knowing roughly what temperature you’re working with. Scooping and re-freezing briefly before shooting is standard practice (so is chilling the bowl it will sit in). Depending on the scope of the shoot and what the ice cream needs to communicate, a stand-in is sometimes the more practical choice — a purpose-made fake ice cream that holds its shape indefinitely under any conditions. This isn’t something that works for every brief: if the ice cream itself is the product being sold, or if the shoot requires the food to be real for legal or client reasons, stand-ins aren’t an option. But for a lifestyle shot where ice cream appears as a supporting element, or where the priority is the setting rather than the scoop itself, a stand-in can truly make the difference.

Gelatin-set dishes (like panna cotta, certain mousses and jellies) behave in the opposite direction: they need to stay cold to hold their shape, which means working fast and returning them to refrigeration between setups if the shoot is long.

Understanding these windows means planning the sequence of a shoot around them rather than fighting them. The items most sensitive to temperature come out last, get shot first, and go back as soon as the frame is captured.

Light and surfaces: chemistry, physics, and what the camera actually sees

This one is at the intersection of food science and physics, but it follows directly from everything above. The reason food looks the way it does under light (glossy or matte, dimensional or flat, luminous or dull) comes back to the physical properties of its surface, which are a direct result of its chemical composition and state.

A smooth emulsified sauce creates specular reflection: light hits the surface at an angle and bounces back in a concentrated, predictable way, creating the bright highlights that make a sauce look glossy and fresh. A broken or matte surface creates diffuse reflection: light scatters in multiple directions, producing a softer, flatter appearance. Neither is better in absolute terms (a matte surface on a rustic bread or a rough-textured crumble is exactly right in context), but knowing which you’re working with, and why, means you can set your lighting to work with the surface rather than against it.

Browning changes a food’s surface chemistry and therefore its optical behaviour. The compounds produced during browning create a rougher, more complex surface than the pale, relatively smooth one beneath them. That complexity is part of why browned food catches light so interestingly — the texture creates micro-shadows and highlights at the surface level that add visual depth that no amount of post-processing can fully replicate on a pale, unbrownt surface.

Moisture also changes optical behaviour, which is why I think about whether a surface should be dry or slightly wet before a shot rather than leaving it to chance. A dry herb looks different from a lightly misted one: both can be right, but they look completely different in an image. A dry, roasted surface communicates crispness, while a moist one communicates freshness or heat.

Understanding that what you’re seeing through the lens is always the outcome of something happening at the food’s surface means you can intervene earlier in the process (before the camera is up, while the food is still being prepared) rather than trying to fix things visually at the styling stage.

Why this matters on set

Food styling is both a visual discipline and a scientific one, and the two aren’t separable in practice. Every decision made about how food is prepared, timed, handled, and presented before the camera arrives has a chemical or physical basis. Working with that (rather than around it or despite it) is what makes the difference between images that look nice and images that do their job.

Working with a food photographer who thinks this way

I’m Chiara, a food photographer and stylist, videographer, recipe developer, and social media specialist based in Dublin, with an MSc in chemistry, a certification in nutrition, and a diploma in digital marketing. I work with food, drink, and wellness brands across Ireland and internationally.

If you want your product or recipe shot by someone who understands it from the inside out (the science, the ingredients, the nutrition, and its story), get in touch using the button below.

Get in touch

The Maillard reaction explained: the chemistry behind why browned food tastes so good

You know that moment in cooking when food stops being raw and starts being something else entirely? That’s the one we often end up taking for granted. Think about the surface of a piece of bread that goes from pale to golden, a steak placed into a hot pan that begins to char at the edges, or roasted vegetables that go from soft and steaming to fragrant and coloured at the corners. Even coffee beans, green and grassy when they go in, emerge dark, fragrant, and completely transformed.

What’s happening in all of those moments is the same reaction, even though the foods couldn’t be more different. It’s called the Maillard reaction, and it’s one of the most important chemical processes in cooking. It’s also one of the most misunderstood, and two things come up so consistently when people talk about it that I want to address them before anything else.

What the Maillard reaction is not

The first misunderstanding: that it’s just about sugar. It isn’t: the Maillard reaction does involve reducing sugars, but it requires something else too — amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins. Both have to be present for the reaction to occur. This is why vegetables brown during roasting (they contain both sugars and amino acids), why bread develops a crust (the flour contains proteins), and why a plain sugar syrup heated in a pan does something very different — that’s caramelisation, a separate reaction that only involves sugar breaking down under heat. The two are often confused, and while they can happen simultaneously in the same food, they are chemically distinct processes producing different compounds and different results.

The second misunderstanding: that it’s something only meat does. Meat is one of the most obvious examples because the transformation is so dramatic and the flavour change so significant that it’s impossible to miss, but the Maillard reaction happens in an enormous range of foods. Bread, biscuits, coffee, chocolate, beer, roasted nuts, soy sauce, and even some cheeses all owe part of their flavour and colour to some version of this reaction. If you’ve ever wondered why oven-roasted broccoli tastes completely different from steamed broccoli despite starting from the same ingredient, the Maillard reaction is a significant part of the answer.

What’s actually happening chemically

The reaction was first described in 1912 by a French chemist and physician named Louis-Camille Maillard, who noticed that amino acids and reducing sugars behaved in interesting ways when heated together. He wasn’t studying food science (he was working on understanding biological protein synthesis, trying to replicate how amino acids behave in living organisms), but his observations turned out to explain a lot of what happens in the kitchen.

Here’s the simplified version: when an amino acid and a reducing sugar are exposed to heat, they react with each other to form an unstable compound. That compound doesn’t stay as it is for long — it breaks down and rearranges itself into a cascade of new molecules, sometimes hundreds of them, depending on the specific amino acids and sugars involved, the temperature, the moisture content, and the time. It’s those new molecules that are responsible for the colour, the smell, and the flavours that make cooked food taste so different from raw.

The reason the Maillard reaction produces such a wide range of results across different foods is precisely because so many variables are involved. The specific amino acids and sugars present in meat are different from those in bread dough or coffee beans. In addition, temperature and moisture conditions are all different. Each combination produces its own unique set of compounds, which is why a seared steak and a toasted slice of bread are both the result of the Maillard reaction but taste and smell nothing alike.

Temperature, moisture, and timing: the conditions that matter

The Maillard reaction doesn’t happen at any temperature. It begins noticeably around 140–165°C and accelerates as temperature increases, which is why the surface of food needs to be hot enough (and dry enough) to brown properly.

Moisture is also where a lot of cooking frustration comes from, even when people don’t realise it. Water keeps food at or near 100°C as it evaporates, which is below the threshold the Maillard reaction needs to proceed significantly. This is why boiling or steaming doesn’t brown food — the temperature simply doesn’t get high enough at the surface while moisture is present. It’s also why patting meat or vegetables dry before cooking makes a meaningful difference: you’re removing surface moisture so that the temperature at the surface can rise quickly once it hits a hot pan or oven.

This is also why overcrowding a pan tends to produce disappointing results. Too much food in a pan at once drops the temperature and traps steam: the moisture released by the food can’t escape quickly enough, and instead of browning, everything ends up stewing in its own liquid. The temperature never climbs high enough for the reaction to happen properly, and you lose the crust, the colour, and the flavour development that comes with it.

pH also plays a role, which is something that comes up in professional baking and food production, even if it’s less intuitive at home. The Maillard reaction proceeds faster in alkaline conditions, which is why baked goods made with bicarbonate of soda (an alkali) often brown more deeply and quickly than those made with baking powder, which contains both an alkali and an acid and is formulated to largely neutralise itself when activated, producing a much milder effect on browning. The use of lye (a strongly alkaline solution) in traditional pretzel and bagel making is a deliberate application of exactly this principle: it accelerates the Maillard reaction at the surface and produces the characteristic deep, mahogany-coloured crust that’s almost impossible to achieve any other way. Bicarbonate of soda dissolved in water works on the same principle and is the more accessible alternative used by home bakers — it produces a less intense result than lye but still noticeably darker than untreated dough, for the same reason: it raises the pH at the surface and pushes the reaction along.

Why it matters for flavour and why it’s so complex

The Maillard reaction doesn’t just brown food. It creates flavour compounds that weren’t there before — many of which are found almost exclusively in cooked or heat-processed food and rarely or never in raw ingredients. Pyrazines, furans, thiophenes, and dozens of other compound classes are all produced during Maillard reactions in different foods, and each contributes differently to what we taste and smell.

This is why the flavour of a browned crust is so different from the inside of the same loaf. The inside has been heated too, but not to the same temperature — the crumb of a fully baked loaf typically reaches around 93–96°C and stays there while the structure sets, which is enough to cook the dough through but not enough to drive significant Maillard browning. The crust, exposed to higher temperatures, has undergone a completely different chemical transformation, which is why it tastes different, smells different, and has a different texture.

It’s also part of why slow-cooked or braised meat that hasn’t been seared first can taste rich and deeply flavoured from the collagen and fat, but still lacks the specific top notes that a browned surface produces. Many recipes call for browning meat before braising precisely to capture those flavour compounds before the liquid goes in. The braising liquid won’t reproduce them — it can’t, because the temperature never climbs high enough for the Maillard reaction to take place.

A simple thing to observe at home

If you want to see the difference the Maillard reaction makes in a way that’s truly hard to forget, try this: cook two batches of the same diced onion in the same pan with the same amount of oil. In the first, keep the heat low, add a splash of water, and cover the pan — the onions will soften and turn translucent but stay pale. In the second, use higher heat, keep the pan uncovered, and don’t stir too frequently — the onions will start to colour at the edges, deepen in flavour, and smell quite different. Both are cooked, but only the second one has undergone significant Maillard browning. The difference in flavour between them is the reaction made visible and edible.

What this looks like on camera

Browning is both a flavour story and a visual one. The compounds produced during the Maillard reaction absorb light differently from the pale surface of uncooked food, which is why browned food looks the way it does: deeper, more textured, more dimensional. It catches light in a way that a raw surface doesn’t, and that contrast is part of what makes certain food photographs so scroll-stopping and irresistible.

As someone who came to food photography from a chemistry background, I find this one of the more interesting overlaps between science and visual work. The golden crust on a loaf, the char on a grilled vegetable, and the deep colour on a properly seared piece of meat are the physical result of hundreds of new molecules forming at the surface of the food. Knowing what you’re actually looking at when you see that browning changes how you think about capturing it.

If you want to read more on how food science and food photography intersect, including why certain textures and reactions photograph better than others, I have the perfect post for you.

The bigger picture

The Maillard reaction is one of those things in food science that, once you understand it, you start seeing everywhere. In the base of a pan after searing. In the way a loaf smells different in the last ten minutes of baking. In the skin of a roast chicken, the surface of a cookie, or the crema in a cup of espresso.

Despite occasionally looking a bit like magic, it’s all just chemistry, happening fast in the time between raw and ready (or, if you prefer, raw and delicious). Understanding it doesn’t make cooking more mechanical and less creative. If anything, it makes the small decisions more intentional: why the heat matters, why surface moisture slows browning down, why the pan needs to be hot before the food goes in and so on.

Food science, photography, and the brands that take both seriously

I’m Chiara, a food photographer and stylist based in Dublin, with an MSc in chemistry, a certification in nutrition and a diploma in digital marketing. I work with food, drink, and wellness brands across Ireland and worldwide on photography, video, and social media strategy. The science of how food behaves (how it browns, how it changes under heat, how it looks on camera) is part of how I think about every shoot.

If you’re a food, drink, or wellness brand whose visuals don’t yet reflect the quality of what you’ve actually built, get in touch using the button below.

Fill out my enquiry form