Guide
Restaurant video marketing: what to film, what to say, how often to post
You do not need a videographer or an ad budget to market a restaurant with video. You need a phone, 20 minutes a week and a plan for what to say. This guide gives you the five videos that work, the filming rhythm and the scripts. The editing question comes at the end, with three honest routes past it.
- Video formats that work for restaurants
- 5
- Posts a week, the floor that holds
- 3
- One weekly filming session covers it
- 20 min
The five videos that work for restaurants
Restaurant video marketing is not one format. It is five, and they rotate.
- The dish video. 15 to 30 seconds. One dish, filmed close, from pan to plate. No talking needed, one line of text on screen.
- The person video. 30 to 60 seconds. The chef or owner talks about one dish: where the fish comes from, why the sauce takes two days.
- The answer video. About 30 seconds. Answer the question guests ask every week. Do you take walk-ins. Is there parking. What is gluten-free.
- The behind-the-line video. 15 to 45 seconds. What 7am prep looks like. Bread going in. The delivery carried through the rain.
- The announcement. Under 20 seconds. New menu, new hours, a Tuesday special. Say the date twice.
How long each format should run
Seconds of finished video. Shorter than feels natural is the rule.
- Announcement20s
- Dish video30s
- Answer video30s
- Behind the line45s
- Person video60s
The person video does the heavy lifting
Food looks similar across accounts. Close shots of pasta are interchangeable.
The person behind the food is not interchangeable, and guests choose restaurants the way they choose people.
A chef explaining why the short rib braises for six hours gives a stranger a reason to pick your short rib over the identical-looking one two streets away.
It also builds the thing no ad can buy: a guest walks in, sees the person from the video at the pass, and feels like a regular on their first visit.
One person video a week is enough. The other posts can be food and prep.
This is the whole editor
Highlight a phrase and a clip lands on those exact words. No timeline, no keyframes, no layers.
What to say on camera: scripts that take one minute
The camera makes people write speeches. Do not write a speech. Answer one question.
Open with the subject in the first sentence. Not the restaurant name, the subject. 'This short rib braises for six hours' beats 'Hi, welcome to our kitchen.'
Keep it under a minute. Say the dish name and your city out loud. Sound-off viewers read the captions, and both names belong in them.
Do not read from paper. Say it three times and keep the take where you laughed.
- 'This is the dish people order twice.' Then say why, in two sentences.
- 'The question we get every day is...' Then answer it, completely.
- 'We changed the menu this week. Here is the one to try first.'
The 20 minute weekly filming session
Batch the filming or it will not happen. Pick the slowest 20 minutes of the week, usually between prep and first covers.
Film one talking take of 1 to 3 minutes: this week's person video or answer video, said three times over.
Then film five b-roll clips of about 10 seconds each. The pour. The plate landing. The pan. The room. The door.
That is the raw material for three posts, and the same b-roll re-cuts against new talking takes for weeks.
Put the phone at eye height, near a window or under the pass lights. Wipe the lens first. Kitchen phones carry a film of grease that softens every shot.
One session, one week of posts
One talking take
1 to 3 minutes, said three times
Five b-roll clips
About 10 seconds each
Cut into three posts
The editing route you chose
Post Mon, Wed, Fri
Same file to TikTok, Reels, Shorts
The editing is where restaurants stop. Three routes past it.
Filming takes 20 minutes. Editing is what eats the evening, and it is the step where most restaurant accounts go quiet.
Route one: edit it yourself in a timeline app. Free, and roughly 90 minutes per finished video once the cuts, captions and footage are in. It survives until your first busy season.
Route two: pay an editor. The work is consistent, and the turnaround is measured in days. That suits a campaign. It does not suit a Tuesday special.
Route three: an AI editor. Cutroom takes one talking-head take of up to 3 minutes. It returns a finished 9:16 video with captions and b-roll in about a minute. You direct it by highlighting words in the transcript, and a finished 30 second video is about 110 credits.
The first 3 finished videos are free in your first 7 days, with no card, so the route can be tested against a real post before it costs anything.
Whichever route you pick, pick one that survives December. The plan above only works if the editing step costs less than the filming step.
Your minutes per finished video
Filming is 20 minutes a week either way. The editing route is the variable.
- Timeline app, by hand~90 min
- Cutroom, directed on the transcript~4 min
Questions people ask
- How long should a restaurant video be?
- 15 to 30 seconds for a dish video, up to a minute when a person is talking, under 20 seconds for an announcement. Past a minute you are asking for loyalty the account has not earned yet.
- Do I need a videographer?
- No. A phone at eye height near a window covers the weekly feed, which rewards frequency and recognition over gloss. Book a videographer for the website shoot, not for Tuesday.
- Which platform should a restaurant post on first?
- Film 9:16 once and post the same file to TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. Which one delivers your guests differs by city and crowd. Posting to all three costs nothing extra.
- What if the restaurant is empty when I film?
- Frame the food and the person, not the room. Prep hours film better than service anyway: steadier light, no guests to ask permission of, and the kitchen sounds carry the atmosphere.
- How much does restaurant video marketing cost?
- Filming on a phone is free. The cost is editing. By hand it is about 90 minutes a video. With Cutroom a finished 30 second video is about 110 credits, and Basic at $39.99 a month covers about 20 of them.
- How fast should I expect results?
- Nobody honest will promise numbers. If it is working, the first sign is usually a guest mentioning a video at the table, not the view counter. Judge the plan at eight weeks of three posts a week, not at two.
Twenty minutes of filming a week, three posts, and an editing route that costs less than the filming. That is the whole system.