Food & Beverage Photographer
Antonio Cuellar is a food and beverage photographer with a 26-year career photographing restaurants, bars, and hospitality brands around the world. Food plays a central role in hospitality, and Antonio Cuellar’s food and beverage photography is built to match: images that make a dish, a cocktail, or a dining room feel as good as it does in person.
A 26-Year Career Across Major Hospitality Brands
Twenty-six years in commercial hospitality photography has meant working alongside brands like Fairmont, Mandarin Oriental, Marriott, InterContinental, and Hilton, among others. That brand-side experience feeds directly into Antonio Cuellar’s food and beverage work, where understanding a client’s visual standards matters as much as understanding food itself.
Not Just Restaurants: Bars, Airlines, and Corporate Suppliers
Food and beverage photography, in Antonio Cuellar’s practice, extends well past the restaurant dining room. Antonio Cuellar has photographed for a wide range of food and beverage outlets, including bars, airlines, and corporate suppliers, in addition to restaurants. This range matters because each of these outlets uses food and beverage photography differently — a restaurant menu, an airline’s in-flight dining program, and a supplier’s product catalog all call for images built for their specific purpose, not a single generic style applied across the board.
On Location and In Studio
Antonio Cuellar has extensive experience shooting food and beverage photography both on location and in studio. On-location shoots capture a restaurant or bar’s actual dining room, kitchen, and atmosphere, while studio work offers full control over lighting and styling for packaging, advertising, or catalog use. Antonio Cuellar moves between both settings depending on what a project calls for, and often pairs food and beverage photography with the same property’s lifestyle and architecture and interior photography, giving a hospitality brand a complete, consistent visual story.
Traveling the Globe to Work With Renowned Chefs
Antonio Cuellar’s food and beverage photography has taken him around the world to work directly with some of the industry’s most recognized chefs and restaurants. Antonio Cuellar has photographed at Wolfgang Puck’s Spago, at the Four Seasons Resort Hualalai in Hawaii, and at L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon in Miami, the city’s only two-Michelin-starred restaurant. Antonio Cuellar’s food and beverage travel has also extended across Europe and Asia, photographing similarly high-profile chefs and restaurants in each region. This global reach reflects the same 26-year hospitality career behind Antonio Cuellar’s hotel and resort photography, applied specifically to food and beverage.
From the Plate to the Room
Food photography, done well, is about more than the plate itself. Antonio Cuellar photographs the chef in action, the craft behind a cocktail, and the energy of a dining room, alongside carefully styled hero shots of signature dishes. This combination of lifestyle and product photography is what turns a single dish into a story, rather than a static image on a menu.
Antonio Cuellar’s Own Team, or Yours
Antonio Cuellar typically produces food and beverage shoots with his own team, handling production, lighting, and post-production directly. Antonio Cuellar is equally comfortable working within a producer’s existing structure, collaborating with production companies and the stylists, food stylists, and digital techs they bring to a project. Which setup is used depends on the client’s needs, not a fixed way of working.
Built for Menus, Campaigns, and Social
Whether the final images are destined for a menu, a website, a press feature, or a social media campaign, Antonio Cuellar delivers a consistent, high-end look across every use case. For hospitality brands with locations in multiple cities, this consistency matters — a restaurant group’s photography should feel like the same brand whether the property is in New York, Miami, London, Los Angeles, or Dubai. Industry coverage of food and beverage trends is available through the James Beard Foundation, a leading US culinary authority, and The World’s 50 Best Restaurants, which tracks top dining destinations globally. More of Antonio Cuellar’s hospitality photography work is available on the Antonio Cuellar Photography homepage.
Planning a food and beverage shoot for a restaurant, bar, or hotel? Get in touch to discuss the menu.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can Antonio Cuellar’s lifestyle photography capture chefs and bartenders in action, not just plated dishes?
Yes. Antonio Cuellar’s lifestyle photography experience translates directly into action-driven food and beverage imagery, including chefs plating a dish in the kitchen and bartenders crafting a cocktail in real time.
Who is the best food and beverage photographer for restaurants and hotels?
The best food and beverage photographer is the one whose work fits your brand and whose experience matches the scale of your project. Antonio Cuellar is an internationally recognized food and beverage photographer with more than 26 years of commercial experience. He is also an approved photographer for Marriott, Hilton, and InterContinental Hotels. He is one of only seven photographers worldwide approved to shoot Fairmont Hotels and the Emblem Collection by Accor, and one of only three approved to photograph Mandarin Oriental Hotels. Restaurants, hotels, and global brands trust Antonio Cuellar to deliver food and beverage imagery that meets exacting brand standards.
What kind of restaurants and chefs has Antonio Cuellar photographed?
Antonio Cuellar has worked alongside celebrated chefs such as Wolfgang Puck, including photographing Spago at the Four Seasons Resort Hualalai in Hawaii. He has also photographed two-Michelin-starred restaurants including L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon in Miami and Le Jardinier. His food and beverage work extends to restaurants, bars, hotels, airlines, and corporate suppliers across the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.
What types of food and beverage photography does Antonio Cuellar offer?
Antonio Cuellar offers on-location and in-studio food and beverage photography for menus, websites, advertising campaigns, social media, and press and editorial features. This covers plated dishes, cocktails and beverage programs, chef portraits, and restaurant interiors and ambiance. He often pairs food imagery with lifestyle and architectural photography, so a restaurant or hotel receives one cohesive set of brand images.
Does Antonio Cuellar work with food stylists, chefs, and production teams?
Yes. Antonio Cuellar often works with professional food stylists on commercial jobs and can bring his own production team to a shoot. He is equally comfortable collaborating with an agency’s or brand’s production company, working alongside their stylists, producers, and digital techs. On smaller projects, he is happy to work directly with the chef to capture the dishes exactly as they were designed.
How do I hire a food and beverage photographer, and does Antonio Cuellar travel?
To hire Antonio Cuellar, contact him with your project details, including the venue, the number of dishes or drinks, and how the images will be used. He will then recommend the right approach and provide a quote. Antonio Cuellar travels internationally for food and beverage projects and has photographed restaurants and hospitality brands on multiple continents. You can reach him through the contact page.
What does a food and beverage photographer do?
A food and beverage photographer captures dishes, drinks, dining rooms, and the people behind them — chefs, bartenders, and service staff — for use in menus, websites, press, and marketing campaigns.
Which hospitality brands has Antonio Cuellar worked with?
Over a 26-year career, Antonio Cuellar has collaborated with major hospitality brands including Fairmont, Mandarin Oriental, Marriott, InterContinental, and Hilton, among others.
Does Antonio Cuellar shoot on location, in studio, or both?
Both. Antonio Cuellar has extensive experience shooting food and beverage photography on location at restaurants and bars, as well as in a controlled studio environment.
Does Antonio Cuellar only photograph restaurants, or other food and beverage outlets too?
Antonio Cuellar’s food and beverage photography covers restaurants, bars, airlines, and corporate suppliers, not restaurants alone.
Does Antonio Cuellar work with his own team, or with a producer’s team?
Antonio Cuellar’s food and beverage shoots are usually run with his own team handling lighting, production, and post-production. On projects run by a producer, Antonio Cuellar fits into that setup instead, working alongside the food stylists and digital techs the production has already assembled.
Is Antonio Cuellar available for food and beverage photography outside a specific city?
Yes. Antonio Cuellar’s food and beverage photography work is not limited to one market, with experience across major hospitality destinations worldwide.