Your guests can’t eat a prompt

There’s no denying it AI can create some extraordinary images.

Give it the right prompt and, within seconds, it can produce the perfect Sunday roast. Beef cooked perfectly pink, huge Yorkshire puddings, impossibly crisp roast potatoes and gravy cascading across the plate at exactly the right angle - just like the image of my fictitious ABC Arms below.

It looks fantastic. There’s just one problem. Your customer can’t eat a prompt.

Across hospitality, AI-generated food imagery is becoming increasingly common. Why? It’s quick, inexpensive and capable of producing remarkably polished content for websites and social platforms.

AI has its place in hospitality, I use it for clients most days, but actual food is different and your customers expect and deserve a level of authenticity. Plus your chef, whose trained for years deserves the integrity of his or her food maintained.

When a pub or restaurant publishes a photograph of a dish, there is an implicit promise being made – “this is what we serve”.

Customer expectation has been created and needs to be fulfilled. This kind of AI generated content is never going to bridge that gap. Ever. Authenticity is what should be at play here.

I’m Kent Laws former landlord at The Cricketers on The Green in Aldborough and founder of Saltmarsh. My previous career stretches back over 35 years in advertising and marketing, a great deal of which was working with some of the biggest hospitality brands in the world.

I get local hospitality, the margins are wafer thin, that VAT bill every quarter, business rates, staffing issues, food costs and TIME, your time or lack of it. At The Cricketers I already had all the tools and skills necessary to show off our Chefs’ dishes, and it worked. We transformed a village pub, three miles from the nearest main road into a multi-award-winning destination pub and restaurant.

I want to help you break the AI cycle by teaching you how to photograph your own food. Which is why I've created my Food Photography Masterclass for Hospitality.

It's a practical, hands-on session designed specifically for pubs, restaurants, cafés and hospitality businesses. We'll work with your real dishes and show you how to create professional-looking food photography yourself.

We'll look at lighting, composition, angles, backgrounds, styling and the relatively simple techniques that can transform an ordinary food photograph into something special.

Your restaurant already has something AI can never generate.

Your food.

Your Chef.

Your personality.

Your story.

Your customer can't eat a prompt.

Show them what they can eat instead.

For more information call 07900 888 116 or email info@saltmarsh.agency