Restaurants, cafés and bakeries post the same kinds of images every day: today's special, this week's menu, the lunch price list, opening hours for the holidays, free tables tonight. A designer is rarely around at 9 a.m. when the special is decided, so these posts end up as phone photos of a chalkboard. With Shareglint each format is a template in your colours, and the menu itself — a spreadsheet or your POS export — fills it.
The templates
| Template | Use | Fields |
|---|---|---|
menu-special |
Today's special or the dish of the week | dish, label, restaurant, description, price, day, site, photo |
price-list |
A lunch menu, a drinks list, a price list | title, business, items, note, contact, image, logo |
weekly-schedule |
Opening hours, a week's menu, events by day | title, days, highlight, week of, time zone, logo |
booking-slots |
Tables or slots still free tonight | title, slots, period, business, booking URL, photo |
nutrition-facts |
Calories and macros for a dish or a bowl | title, calories, serving, macros, image, site |
All of them render in every size preset (og 1200×630, square 1080×1080, portrait 1080×1350, story 1080×1920, pinterest 1000×1500, youtube 1280×720): the 4:5 feed post, the 9:16 story, the square post and the link preview from one request. The local business category shows them rendered.
Today's special in one request
curl -X POST "https://shareglint.com/v1/images?wait=true" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer sk_live_..." \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"template": "menu-special",
"sizes": ["portrait", "story"],
"format": "jpeg",
"modifications": {
"label": "Special of the day",
"dish": "Wild mushroom risotto",
"description": "Parmesan, thyme, a squeeze of lemon",
"price": "$18",
"day": "Tuesday",
"restaurant": "Northwind Kitchen",
"photo": "https://cdn.example.com/dishes/risotto.jpg"
}
}'
The 4:5 goes to the Instagram and Facebook feed, the 9:16 to stories. JPEG is the format for posts a tool will publish to Instagram, because its publishing API accepts only JPEG (Meta for Developers). Prices are text, so write them the way your guests read them (18 zł, €18, $18).
A week of specials from a spreadsheet
Most kitchens plan the week in a spreadsheet. Give each row a date, the dish, a short description, the price and a photo URL, then:
- Every morning: an automation reads today's row and renders the card (Google Sheets, Zapier, n8n), then hands the image to your scheduler.
- Or once a week: send the whole week as a batch, get seven cards and a ZIP, and schedule them in one sitting. Rows per batch by plan: Free 50, Starter 500, Pro 1,000, Scale 2,000, Business 5,000.
A photo of the actual dish beats a stock photo; a phone photo works if the template crops and frames it consistently every day.
Menus, hours and free tables
- Price lists (
price-list) for lunch menus and drinks change with the season: re-render after each change and the image always matches the menu. - Opening hours (
weekly-schedule) for holidays and special weeks, in the story size for the days before. - Free tables (
booking-slots) on a quiet evening, with your booking link. - QR table cards for the menu or ordering page:
qr-cardwith a QR code you generate, as printable PDFs (QR code images).
Allergens, calories and accuracy
Social images are marketing, but they must not contradict your menu. Where food law requires allergen or calorie information — for example, US chain restaurants with 20 or more locations must list calories on menus and menu boards (FDA menu labeling), and UK food businesses must provide allergen information (Food Standards Agency) — the menu and your staff are the source of truth. Generate the cards from the same data as the menu, and do not leave out allergens on an image if they are part of the dish's description elsewhere.
Photos that work
The photo carries a food post. A few rules that hold for any template: shoot the dish in daylight from the same angle every day, leave room around the plate so the template's crop does not cut it, and keep a library of good photos for dishes that return. Send the photo's public URL with the row; the renderer fetches it when the card renders.
Several locations
A group with more than one restaurant can keep one spreadsheet per location, or one sheet with a location column, and pass each location's name, address and booking link with every card. The same templates then produce each location's specials in the group's design, and each location's social account gets its own images. Prices and dishes differ by location; the layout does not, which is what keeps the brand recognisable across feeds.
Consistent branding
Set your accent colour and logo once in the automation and every post follows: the special, the price list, the hours. If the built-in layouts are not quite your style — a chalkboard look, a hand-drawn font from the installed families — copy a template into your account and change its HTML and CSS; the fields stay the same, so the automation does not change.
Cost
One render per image and size; repeats are free. A daily special in two sizes is about 60 renders a month; a weekly price list and hours add a handful. The Free plan's 100 renders carry a watermark; Starter is $9 a month for 2,000 renders (pricing).
What it does not do
- No POS, booking or delivery platform integration; menu data comes from your spreadsheet, export or automation.
- No posting to social networks or Google Business Profile; your scheduler or you post the image.
- No food photography or AI-generated dishes — the template frames the photo you send.
