SIDE HUSTLE: Cocktail Photography for Restaurant/Bar

If you are new to the photography game and you want to start making a side hustle right away, consider creating social media photos for a Restaurant or Bar!

I have been studying photography for a few years now, and have recently started to level up by offering my services to local businesses. Am I a professional? Absolutely not! But am I creative? Sure!

To build my portfolio before reaching out to these small businesses, I practiced by placing my work onto my Instagram account. To reach engagement, I asked my friends and followers to share or to comment to help support my efforts! At first, I was nervous I wasn’t going to get the likes that I usually do, so in order to make it work, I tried to find a way to make it fit my “Instagram Feed”.

How to Incorporate your Photography

Let me lay it, all out for you! So my personal Instagram account has always been about my travels and sharing the places I visited! So I tweaked my niche to become more food and cocktail specific, with an emphasis on cocktails. This means, that in almost every photo or every other photo, I had a cocktail in hand. And then in my stories, I would talk about the said cocktail. I would describe it to my audience, or have a description of what was in the drink. And of course, tagged the business. This, of course, gave my audience the idea that I loved sharing my drinks. And I would get engagement with my followers with responses like, “I love that bar, I always get that drink” or “Next time, try the _______, it’s to die for!”

Reaching Out to the Business

After a while, about 10 posts or so or high quality food or cocktail foods, start reaching out to some of your favorite brands. Ask if they. would be interested in working with you to create engaging photos or videos to add to their social media. A way to really get drive this, is to ask if they have any features or seasonal specials coming up that they’d like to promote.

When you do hear a response, ask for their contact information to discuss rates. Depending on your skill set, the number you set for your pricing will vary for your work.

To increase the pricing, I offer dynamic and interesting posts to really elevate the promo that will reflects their brand.

You can create these simply from Photoshop, Canva, Unfold, or other various apps. This will take time and skill as well but still easy if you utilize templates. There are many ways to make the templates work well for the brand by using their color schemes, logos, or other theming that is unique to the restaurant. For instance, if a beach bar has a flamingo logo, use the color oink, use beachy colors, and of course, your fun cocktail photo.

Additionally, you could model or offer influencer marketing. You can let them know that you’ll share the photo to your feed as well. Another option is to bring some friends to create a vibe or a mood! So that their potential audience and picture themselves drinking mimosas on a beautiful sunday at their establishment!

And that’s it! Start from there, and continue to increase your portfolio to add more clients and businesses! This is one of my favorite ways to network and meet with small and local brands in my community. Not only do you get to be a creative, but you can create an easy side hustle too!

Hope this inspires you to get out there and start shooting some photos!

Here’s some of my past work for Mcqueens Social Lounge in Orlando, FL