Why AI-Generated Restaurant Ads All Look the Same and How to Make Yours Better
- 4 hours ago
- 5 min read
Paula Andrade is the founder of El Brand, a cross-border marketing agency in Singapore. A marketing strategist and storyteller, she is known for connecting brands, building meaningful collaborations, and starting The Curious Circle, a curated event series for founders, creatives, curious minds, and decision-makers.
There is a certain look spreading across restaurant and café marketing. Glossy food. Golden lighting. Floating ingredients. Suspiciously perfect people. Brush script fonts. Artificial Intelligence (AI) helps restaurants produce marketing faster and with smaller budgets. The problem starts when every restaurant gives AI similar instructions and ends up looking strangely similar.
Why do AI restaurant ads all look the same?
You have seen them. An impossibly glossy burger. Pasta surrounded by herbs floating in mid-air. Coffee beans dramatically scattered around a latte.
Then there are the people. Perfectly symmetrical faces. Glossy, almost wood-like skin. Eyes that seem fine until you look at them for a few seconds longer. Somewhere, there is often a brush script font saying: “Indulge.” “Cravings.” “Made with love.”
This is no longer limited to social media. I see the same style on menus, posters, table displays, and full-sized standees outside restaurants. My issue is not AI. My issue is what happens when AI’s defaults become your brand.
The problem is not AI, it is the prompt
I understand why restaurants use AI. Owners are dealing with staff, suppliers, rent, food costs, reservations, deliveries, and customers. Then someone remembers the lunch promotion starts tomorrow.
Not every business has the budget for a photographer, designer, and copywriter for every campaign. So yes, use AI. But do not type: “Create a promotional poster for our restaurant.” and accept the first result. AI knows almost nothing about your business from that instruction. So it fills the gaps with familiar patterns.
Glossy food. Dramatic lighting. Generic copy. Perfect faces. Brush fonts. The less context you provide, the more AI’s defaults shape the work.
Give AI your brand before giving it a task
Instead of: “Create an ad for our new pasta.” Try: “We are a casual neighbourhood Italian restaurant. Our brand feels warm, contemporary, and unpretentious. We are promoting our handmade truffle mushroom tagliatelle. Focus on comfort and craftsmanship, not luxury.”
Then tell AI what to avoid: “Avoid brush script fonts, floating ingredients, dramatic golden lighting, overly symmetrical faces, plastic-looking skin, and generic restaurant imagery.”
Do the same with copy: “Avoid words such as ‘indulge’, ‘irresistible’, ‘mouthwatering’, and ‘culinary journey’. Keep the language simple and conversational.”
AI needs a brief. Think of it like a new person joining your marketing team. You would not say “make a poster” and expect them to understand your entire brand.
Ask for ideas before asking for a poster
This is one of the easiest ways to get better AI content. Do not start with: “Make the poster.” Ask: “Give me five campaign ideas for this dish. Each should have a different concept, not simply a different headline.”
Perhaps one focuses on handmade pasta. Another on rainy-day comfort food. Another on date night. Another on the chef. Another on an after-work dinner ritual.
Pick the idea first. Then develop the visual. AI should help you explore options. It should not make every decision for you.
Use your real food whenever possible
Your slightly uneven croissant matters. So does the old wooden table beside the window, the plate your chef chose, and the condensation running down an iced coffee.
The way your restaurant looks when dinner service starts is also part of your brand. Instead of generating an entirely fictional dish, start with real photography where possible.
Use AI to explore campaign directions, layouts, backgrounds, headlines, or ways to extend existing content. A slightly imperfect photo of something real often says more about a brand than a flawless image of something that never existed.
Make AI critique its own work
Once you have something decent, do not stop there. Ask: “Review this as a Food and Beverage (F&B) brand strategist. What feels generic, clichéd, or inconsistent with our brand? What makes this look like typical AI-generated restaurant advertising?”
Then try: “You are a customer walking past this poster. You have three seconds. What do you notice first? What do you think we are selling? What feels believable, and what feels generic?” AI does not only need to generate. It is also useful for critique.
Create one AI brand brief for your team
If you use AI regularly, create a reusable brand brief. Include:
Who you are.
Who your customers are.
How your brand sounds.
Words you use and avoid.
Your visual style.
Visual clichés you do not want.
What makes your products different.
Examples of content that feels like your brand.
Use this as context before asking AI to create marketing material. Your team now starts from the same brand direction instead of prompting from scratch every time.
Before you print it, remove the logo
Here is my favourite test. Remove your logo from the ad. Then ask: “Would someone who knows our restaurant still recognise this as ours?”
Look at the photography, the typography, the words, the mood, and the idea. If the only recognisable part was the logo in the corner, you do not have a strong brand ad yet. You have a generic AI ad with your logo on it.
AI gives smaller businesses access to creative resources they might not have had before. That is useful. But access to the same tools does not mean we all need to produce the same work. AI brings speed.
Your team still needs to bring context, judgment, personality, and taste. So yes, use AI. But please. We have enough brush script fonts.
Is your brand starting to look like everyone else?
At El Brand, we help businesses turn what makes them distinct into clearer branding, content, and marketing, including practical ways to work with AI without losing the human character of the brand.
If your marketing is starting to feel generic, look beyond the tool. Look at the direction you are giving it.
Read more from Paula Andrade
Paula Andrade, Founder & Marketing Director of El Brand
Paula Andrade is a marketing strategist, storyteller, and founder of El Brand, a cross-border marketing agency in Singapore. She writes about brand stories, marketing trends, cross-border marketing experiences, collaboration, and the people behind brands. Through her work, she explores how businesses grow with clearer narratives, stronger market understanding, and more meaningful connections. She is also the founder of The Curious Circle, a curated event series gathering founders, creatives, curious minds, and decision-makers.
