The short answer: mostly people, barely any plates. The five formats that reliably fill venues are faces and banter, process and craft, the signature thing only you have, the vibe of the room at its best, and a thin layer of announcements on top. Three videos a week in that order of priority will outperform daily food photos every single time. Here's each format with real examples, and the shot list to film a month of it in one afternoon.
This is the follow-up to why your venue's Instagram isn't bringing people in. That post diagnoses. This one is the prescription, the same thinking that goes into every shot list I write for clients.
Format one: faces and banter
Your staff are your best content and most venues never film them. The bartender's dry one-liners, the chef who narrates everything, the barista with opinions about oat milk. At The Butcher Club, apprentices explaining cuts outperformed actual celebrities we'd partnered with. People choose venues the way they choose mates: familiarity first. Someone who "knows" your bartender from Instagram walks in feeling like a regular on their first visit.
Format two: process and craft
The 4am bread, the sauce that takes three days, the coffee roaster doing its thing, the keg change, the pasta sheet going through the roller. Hospitality is full of processes you've stopped noticing because you do them daily, and they're hypnotic to everyone who doesn't. These videos need zero personality on camera, which makes them the easy win for camera-shy owners.
Format three: the signature thing
The one item, night or ritual that's genuinely yours. If you don't have one, build one, that's what we did with the ćevapi night at St Andrews Hotel, which took Wednesday from 5 bookings to 65 on the first night. The signature thing gives people a specific reason to visit and gives your account a recurring main character. A parma exists everywhere. What's the thing someone would cross town for?
Format four: the vibe at its best moment
Film the room at the exact moment you'd want a stranger to walk in: Friday at 7pm when it hums, the Sunday arvo sun hitting the beer garden, the live music mid-set. People don't book a menu, they book a feeling, and a 15-second vibe video is the closest thing to standing in the doorway. These are also the videos people send to the group chat with "here Saturday?", which is the entire marketing funnel in one message.
Format five: announcements, sparingly
New menu, live music Friday, Christmas bookings. These matter, but they only reach people who already follow you, so they're the seasoning and never the meal. If more than a quarter of your posts are announcements, you're talking to the converted and reaching nobody new. The first four formats earn the audience; this one cashes it in.
The one-afternoon shot list
A month of the above, roughly twelve videos at three a week, films in a single two-to-three-hour session plus a couple of grabbed moments during service:
- Two staff moments: one introduction, one bit of natural banter during prep
- Three process videos: your most visual prep, your slowest craft, your morning open
- Two signature-thing videos: one making it, one of the room full of people having it
- Two vibe videos: peak service, and your best natural-light moment
- Two education or opinion pieces: answer the question customers always ask
- One announcement, filmed properly instead of a text tile
Write the list before anyone picks up a phone. The list is the difference between venues that post consistently and venues with three months of unused footage in a camera roll.
And if influencers keep sliding into your DMs offering content for a free meal, here's when a food influencer is actually worth it.
Want the list written for you every month?
That's literally what Plan + Edit is: I write your venue's custom shot list each month, you film it on your phone, I edit it into up to 10 videos ready to post. $1,800 a month, anywhere in Australia. Or book a free 20-minute call and I'll tell you what I'd film at your venue first.
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