Case Study: Mayyil Lebanese Street Food

Brief.

Created by the family owners of Beit el Zaytoun - a Lebanese restaurant client of mine, Mayyil is their newest off-shoot. They create Lebanese Street Food at from their flagship Knightsbridge and recently opened Notting Hill stores

They offer quick Lebanese street food from wraps, burgers, salads, fries and sandwiches - from the shopfront or via delivery apps like Deliveroo.

When initially launching, the team briefed me to produce a food photography content library. This ranged from traditional street food restaurant photography - covering food heroes, and reportage content of the kitchen team creating. This also included shooting all of the menu items in a separate session and editing them as assets for the ordering screens and partner ordering apps.

Approach.

From looking at what worked for the parent restaurant, we were able to start with an almost blank canvas for their visual identity and food photography.

This was pulled together via a round quick briefing, and a short treatment was put together that broke each follow-up session into 3/4 restaurant photography of hero food items (for cutting into assets) and 1/4 kitchen reportage - capturing the kitchen team doing their thing.

Their in-brand order touch screen food photography was captured across a separate one-day session, to be as efficient as possible whilst maintaining a higher standard on the outputs.

Using a collection of custom rolled backgrounds and some traditional fast food ones - the aesthetic is moulded together with these, and through the use of low-pitched lighting, to create texture and form on the textured and gooey food.

It’s always a fun one to team up with the Mayyil team, and great to try new ideas out with them too.