Food styling is an intriguing profession, blending the specialized skills of art direction, culinary arts and in-the-moment problem solving. They’re a key cog in the food marketing machine, essential for getting food to look its very best in video and photo for advertisements, cookbooks, restaurant websites and menus, television commercials, social media, and even in TV and film.
Before I became a chef, I worked in food marketing for almost a decade, and directed plenty of food photo and video shoots, working with various food stylists and brands. In this article, I’ll reveal 10 things that most people don’t know about the life and work of a food stylist. I’ve drawn on my own experiences in the food industry, and also enlisted the help of my food stylist contacts who have shared their expert insights on the subject.
Although food stylists are a regular feature of the food marketing world, the role of a food stylist is often misunderstood outside of this niche. UK-based food stylist and recipe writer Katie Marshall summarizes some of these misconceptions: “Three questions I get asked all the time — do you take the pictures? Is the food edible? Oh, what, you actually cook it yourself? They don’t expect that my job entails being a trained chef!” Take a closer look at the food styling profession and you’ll discover more than meets the eye; food styling requires a broad set of skills across multiple disciplines.
Food stylists don’t always fake it
Food stylists don’t exclusively make delicious-looking fake or inedible food. While it’s undeniably true that inedible items are sometimes used on some shoots, the industry is full of different clients and different stylists, and no one shoot is the same. Historically, it was more common to ‘fake it’ with food styling, but the culture has changed. Food stylist Adam Ziska sums the new perspective up, saying “Nothing looks more real than the real thing,” while Barcelona-based food stylist and chef Yorinde Sleegers adds: “Nowadays, food looks realistic, with small imperfections to make it more relatable.”
Although drops of glycerin might make a salad look more fresh, there’s no replacement for the real thing. Even if we can’t explain the difference between beautiful fake food and beautiful edible food, we can feel if something looks too good to be true. Katie Marshall explains that timing is critical to keeping things genuine: “The biggest hack to editorial food styling is working quickly. If decisions have been made already about backgrounds and props, then as soon as the food comes out the oven or off the hob I can plate it up and it looks fresh and appealing … Once it starts to go dry or hard, you can tell in a picture.” Sleegers echoes this, preferring, “to re-do a dish or do more touch ups as we go, rather than spraying it with something chemical that will make it hold up for longer, but that makes it inedible.”
They have an arsenal of unexpected tricks
Although modern food stylists aren’t dependent on faking it, part of their talent is being able to find a solution for every food styling problem. Often, this leads to some creative thinking and ingredient swapping. I’ve been on a shoot where a vape pen was used to replicate a cloud of steam rising from some hot dumplings. Adam Ziska has used a similar trick: “In order to create steam, I once used a puff from a vape blown through a long tube. Looks pretty good, too.” Other tricks are intended to keep food looking fresh for as long as possible, such as Yorinde Sleegers’ hack for burgers: “I suppose what surprises people most is that Bovril thinned with a bit of water is what makes my burgers look their juiciest.”
Taking things a step further, some stylists will use household items or tools from non-food professions like paintbrushes to keep food looking vibrant. Katie Marshall shares an example: “I have a mini heat gun that sounds like a Barbie’s hair dryer, but it’s actually for jewelry making. It has come in very handy for many things — giving chocolate a light gloss, waking up meat where the fat has solidified and gone dull, even making pizza on set (where we had no access to an oven). Mozzarella responds very well to jewellery tools — who knew!”
Some foods are a nightmare to work with
Styling often takes place under studio lights, which can lead to structural changes in some foods, such as wilted salad greens or dry-looking proteins. Even without studio lights, changes in some food’s temperature and the time needed to get the perfect shot is often to make them lose their visual appeal, turning a once beautiful dish into a depressing mess on a plate. To solve this, Adam Ziska asserts that speed is key: “Anything with an emulsion is going to break down under hot lights, so you have to work fast.” However, not everything is a race against time (and temperature). “My guess would be that people think [the hardest food to style is] ice cream,” explains Yorinde Sleegers, “but that’s actually not that hard. Given you’re allowed by the client to make a fake version. It is the only thing I make ‘fake’, but even so I use ingredients that result in something edible.”
However, some foods are just plain difficult to style. For Katie Marshall, this is burgers: “Burgers are tricky, despite theoretically being such an easy thing to cook and slap together. A hot burger makes delicate lettuce wilt quickly, and tomatoes and sauces cause bun lids to slip. It can all become a bit of an avalanche if not managed correctly!” Meanwhile, vegan cheese and meat alternatives are Ziska’s kryptonite, as “Tofu bacon is never going to look exactly like real crispy bacon.”
Making food look good without ruining it is an art
There are some occasions when the food a stylist is working on must remain edible, such as if it’s being eaten by actors in film, television or commercials. In these instances, the challenge to make food look beautiful is even more difficult: Scenes can take a long time to be shot (and reshot), and since the food needs to be eaten, creative solutions to styling challenges are more limited.
Adam Ziska has a solution to keeping food fresh and edible on camera: “Just make more! If an actor or model is going to consume the food on camera, it’s good practice to have a large amount of beautiful food prepped and ready to bring onto set. That way, if something gets old or past its prime, just swap it out with a new one!”
However, producing lots of food and having it ready at the drop of a hat puts pressure on a food stylist to be not just artists, but chefs, too. For this reason, food stylists often have plenty of culinary experience. Ziska was a chef for 15 years before turning to food styling, Yorinde Sleegers is both a food stylist and a chef, and Katie Marshall trained at the prestigious Leiths School of Food and Wine. Culinary experience also helps when it comes to natural food styling, as it means you’ve had plenty of practice cooking and plating real food for customers.
Shoots can be challenging in many different ways
Food stylists need to be ready to solve a wide range of challenges on a shoot. Often, these extend beyond food styling; cooking and prop sourcing could be needed with little notice, so a food stylist needs to be a sort of jack of all trades. For Katie Marshall, the most challenging shoots are where cooking resources are limited: “Sometimes if you’re working in a location house, the cooking facilities aren’t ideal. There isn’t enough countertop space or saucepans, or the ovens don’t actually work. You have to be adaptable.” She’s learned to expect the unexpected — a good motto for food styling — so comes to shoots with plenty of extra kit: “An air fryer has sometimes come as a godsend. I have bowls, chopping boards and pans in my car boot, so I can normally patch things together.”
Another styling challenge is managing pressure. Timings are critical, and detailed styling increases the potential for stress, as does something unexpected happening, like when a chef didn’t show up for a KFC shoot in Beirut with Yorinde Sleegers: “KFC is extremely specific about the size, color and feel of the crunch, the flakes, everything, so they get a chef to come and prepare the chicken … However, the chef didn’t show up that day, so we had to figure out how to make the chicken.” Accordingly, the shoot was on pause while Sleegers and team had to recipe test to specifications. Talk about a stressful situation!
Not everyone can be a food stylist — here’s why
Food styling requires a mix of functional skills, from cooking to art direction, alongside industry-specific knowledge about styling techniques and tricks to get the best results. However, to help get the best results from every shoot, food stylists are also equipped with plenty of soft-skills, and these can be just as — if not more — important than the technical know-how. Katie Marshall notes that, “Organization and flexibility are very helpful skills! My life is made of lists and memos—telling me to pop to a butcher at 8 am on a Tuesday morning in three weeks’ time, amongst other exciting things.”
Food stylists need to have the knowledge and organizational skills to enter a shoot with as little as possible left to chance. However, unexpected problems arise frequently. Marshall points out level-headedness is crucial: “The main key to overcoming adversity on a styling job, as with many other areas of life, is to stay calm. Then you can think straight.”
The right attitude can help you adapt to unexpected situations, as long as you approach challenges with a problem-solving mindset. Yorinde Sleegers explains this: “Sometimes something will work in my mind, but when it comes to it, it doesn’t look or work as I thought it would, so then the challenge is to think quickly and outside the box.” That said, Sleegers did follow up by saying, sometimes food styling is what you make it, requiring on the spot trial, error, and testing of things you may never have tried to style before.
Food stylists are team players
It’s rare for a food stylist to work in isolation. The majority of food shoots take place with a team made up of anything from two to twenty people, of which the food stylist is just one person. This is undoubtedly a perk of the job at times, as you get to meet lots of new people and build a network of contacts, while enjoying the collaborative process of creating great food content. However, it also requires excellent communication, and an understanding that clients, art directors, chefs and photographers may all have different expectations and priorities.
For Katie Marshall, the most important thing when it comes to working in a team is to ensure a positive environment, even when the going gets tough: “Calm breeds calm, so you want everyone to stay happy on set.” However, in order to achieve this compromise is sometimes needed, as stylists try to balance their own artistic instincts with the needs of a brand or publication. Ultimately, the client is the one with the chequebook, and making sure they’re satisfied with the results of a shoot should be paramount.
There’s an ethical side to the job
One of the major challenges in food styling is food waste. Heat and time cause substantial changes to the structure and appearance of food: Fresh salad leaves will wilt rapidly under the heat of studio lights, and a burger patty will release moisture, creating a soggy bun. The easy way to combat this is to have plenty of food available, so you can ensure a fresh plate is ready to swap in as soon as one begins to look anything other than pristine. The downside to this is copious food waste — after all, there’s only so much leftover food a small photoshoot team can eat or take home themselves.
However, some stylists are taking measures to reduce their food waste, including Yorinde Sleegers: “The food waste in this industry is outrageous, and I always try to order, buy and cook just enough so we don’t have waste, plus I tell people to bring bags and tupperware on shoots so they can take the leftovers home. Sometimes I make sandwiches with leftovers and hand them out to the homeless people in my neighborhood.” Sleegers prefers to ‘keep it real’ on food shoots, an approach which goes hand-in-hand with her efforts to reduce waste: “I don’t use any chemicals, and prefer to re-do a dish or do more touch ups as we go, rather than spraying it with something chemical that will make it hold up for longer, but that makes it inedible.
The job has changed dramatically in recent years
Societal changes, particularly the rise of social media, has had a big impact on how food stylists operate. Often, more content is expected from a single shoot, with the pay per asset reducing as brands try to build banks of video and images to fill their social media and marketing requirements. “10 years ago, when I just started, we would do 10 photos in a day,” explains Yorinde Sleegers, “Nowadays we have sessions in which we have to produce 30-35 assets in a day. To be in a shoot like that is like being in a hurricane…but I prefer those days, because there is no time to even think, it’s go go go!”
It’s not just the volume of content that has changed. Katie Marshall believes the aesthetic is evolving, with brands trying to be authentic and relatable, rather than showcase an idealized plate of food you could never recreate at home: “People are getting accustomed to a looser style. Styled food now needs to convey the idea that it’s been slapped into a bowl while chatting to your mates.” The trend towards informality impacts food photography too, adds Marshall: “I’ve seen quite high-end brands shoot social media content on iPhones because they want to create that really informal vibe.” However, every shoot is different; the level of formality and volume of content when styling food for Instagram will be very different to styling a burger for a McDonald’s billboard advert.
The future of food styling is full of surprises
Looking to the years ahead, more change is expected. While the trend towards authentic food styling seems set to continue in social media and other specific areas, Adam Ziska also notes that he’s recently noticed a return to quality over quantity with some clients: ” I am just this year, seeing a shift back to the artistry of creating content. Once a good producer sees the value of the drop-dead-gorgeous food on screen, that value speaks louder as a brand identity.” It’s clear that the industry evolves rapidly, responding to consumer habits and behavioural trends. Katie Marshall embraces this uncertainty: “It’s interesting being along for the ride—I’m happy to be led by the trends, if we’re responding to what people want to see.”
However, Major improvements in editing software, computer-generated imagery and artificial intelligence could also be threatening the established way of working for food stylists. Yorinde Sleegers has concerns about the future viability of food styling as a career: “I’m suspecting my job will disappear in the next 2-3 years with the taking over of AI.” Thankfully, her background as a chef provides her with career flexibility for the future: “I don’t mind so much, I want to go back to cooking for people anyway, and that will never disappear.”
