Turning a catering menu into a Saturday with friends

COVID had flattened Barrio Queen's dine-in traffic, and like a lot of restaurants the brand was leaning hard into catering to keep revenue moving. The summer menu was a chance to push the new catering model and introduce it to a younger audience that lives on social media. The work couldn't look like a menu photo; it had to look like a reason to gather.

THE DIRECTION

The concept moved the camera off the food and onto the people eating it. A group of friends pick up catering from Barrio Queen, pile into a '70s convertible, and end up at a backyard pool — food out, drinks in hand, the good times rolling.

I art directed the shoot around that narrative. Casting, wardrobe, and the convertible itself were chosen to feel natural, not staged. The color palette stayed vibrant to match the energy of the food. The food styling stayed tactile: chips, guac topped with pomegranate, brightly-plated entrées, sweating glasses of agua fresca, all shot in the scene rather than studio. Branded catering bags and boxes stayed in frame so the commercial hook never got lost in the story.

Tight turnarounds meant every setup had to do multiple jobs: a hero image, a social crop, and at least one detail shot that could stand on its own.

THE REACH

The campaign drove sales on the new catering model and pushed the summer menu items it was built to introduce. More than that, it gave Barrio Queen a way of showing up on social feeds that wasn't a food photo — it was a weekend, and the food happened to be in it. The shoot became a creative template for the brand: in a category where everyone is shooting plates, the fastest way to stand out is to shoot the people around the table.