Is this how you want your food shown?

If you don’t show customers your food, someone else will. Lately, that someone is a robot.

Just Eat has been filling the gaps on takeaway menus with AI generated photos. If a restaurant hadn’t uploaded its own image, the platform made one for it. Each one carries a small “AI generated” label. Most hungry people scrolling at 10pm won’t read it.

Some of the results are fine. Plenty aren’t. On 19 October Just Eat apologised, said it’s removing the inaccurate images and has paused the rollout while it works on the tool. Soda bread breakfasts came out as bacon and eggs floating in pints of fizzy drink. Salt and pepper chips came out as plain seasoned potatoes.

Paused isn’t gone. And the lesson stands whether they switch it back on or not.

What we found in one evening of scrolling

We had a look through a handful of local menus. A few highlights:

• “Hash Brown 5pcs”, shown as one single rösti.
• “Tub of Sauce”, shown as one pot with three sauces swirled together.
• “With cheese”, a £1.50 kebab add-on, shown as a plate of nothing but melted cheese.
• “Chicken and Mushroom”, a £5.01 pie, shown as a bowl of dark, oily curry with two mushrooms balanced on top.

Then there’s the “Americano” from £8, in sizes from 7 to 14 inches, topped with pepperoni, ham and mushroom. Pictured: a cup of black coffee.

That one isn’t even the AI’s fault. It’s a pizza set up under the wrong name, then illustrated literally. Which tells you everything. The machine only knows what your menu tells it.

For a lot of customers, the photo is the only bit of your marketing they ever see.

Two ways this costs you orders

1. The photo makes a promise your kitchen never agreed to. Someone orders five hash browns expecting a golden rösti. Five triangles turn up. The food’s fine, but they feel short changed. That’s the one star review, the refund request, the customer who doesn’t come back. You’re being judged against a picture nobody in your kitchen has ever seen.

2. The photo is so wrong nobody orders at all. This is the worse one, because you never find out. A plate of cheese for £1.50. A pie that’s somehow turned into a curry. A soup that looks like dishwater. Customers scroll straight past and order from the place down the road with real photos. No bad review, no complaint. Just fewer orders and no idea why.

Why this matters more now

Delivery apps are where a lot of people decide what to eat. You’re being compared with ten other places in the same scroll, on a phone, in a few seconds. For a lot of customers the photo is the only bit of your marketing they ever see.

If you don’t fill that space, someone else will. This time it was Just Eat’s AI. Next time it’s a stock image, a scraped photo, or a competitor whose listing simply looks better than yours.

The platforms aren’t going to look after your brand. That’s your job. Or ours.

What to do this week

1. Check every listing. Just Eat, Deliveroo, Uber Eats, your Google profile. Look at each dish the way a customer would. Anything labelled AI generated, replace it.
2. Photograph your bestsellers. Your top ten dishes probably make up most of your orders. Shoot those first, as you actually serve them. A decent phone and a window will get you further than you’d think.
3. Fix your menu text. Clear names, honest descriptions, the right categories. If the AI comes back, it’ll be working from whatever you wrote.
4. Use the photos everywhere. The same shots work on your website, Google profile and Instagram. One afternoon, months of use.

Want a second pair of eyes on your listings? Send us the link to your Just Eat, Deliveroo or Uber Eats page and we’ll come back with the three things we’d fix first. Write to hello@good-folks.co.uk.

GoodFolks is a marketing agency for independent restaurants, pubs and cafés. Photos, listings and quiet nights are a big part of what we do for hospitality. If delivery is a big part of your trade, read how to get more delivery orders before Christmas. If midweek is the bigger problem, start with how to fill a quiet Tuesday.