A 12-post monthly content plan for a restaurant or local shop

This is a month of content for a restaurant, cafe or small shop, built around what you can film in two short sessions. It is deliberately simple: twelve posts, a spreadsheet, and a free scheduler. The advice about how often to post and how much to sell comes from vendor blogs, so read it as a starting suggestion and not a benchmark. Change it after you see which posts your own customers respond to.

If you only need one promo clip and want the honesty rule for AI food video, read my restaurant promo video page first. It covers cheap clip options and the rule that guests must get what they see. This page is the recurring plan around it, and I will not repeat that rule here beyond one line.

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What a month looks like: 12 posts

Three posts a week is too many for some owners and too few for others. Twelve posts a month, about three a week, is a number you can hold for a year. Vendors suggest more: ChowNow, an online ordering company, suggests two to four Instagram feed posts a week with about four posts in five being community and not sales. Another planner suggests promotions are about one post in five. A reasonable middle is the mix below.

#	Post	Real or generated
1 to 4	Four dish (or product) clips: steam, pour, slice, a close-up of one item	Real
5 to 6	Two people clips: the cook at work, a staff member's favourite item	Real
7	One supplier or maker story: the farm, bakery, roaster or workshop you buy from	Real
8	One customer review as text over a real photo (ask permission first)	Real photo, text added
9 to 10	Two offer or event posts (about one in five): happy hour, new arrivals, a sale	Real item, AI optional for the card
11	One seasonal hook (a holiday, a local event)	AI background or card is fine
12	One community post: a local team you support, a charity night, a thank you	Real

Nine of the twelve posts need no AI at all. That is on purpose. People follow a restaurant to see the place, the people and the food.

Real footage only for items people can buy

Any dish or product a customer can order should be shown with a real photo or clip. In October 2026 The Star (a Malaysian news site) reported that diners were calling AI food images "AI slop", that one restaurant went back to handwritten signs after complaints about AI flyers, and that one chef wants only real images for food marketing and uses AI for concept renderings of his new restaurant. I also saw search summaries of cafes drawing a public backlash over AI food images and of delivery apps limiting them, but I could not open those articles or the apps' policy pages, so check each platform's rules before relying on them. My simple rule is the same one my cheap promo video page explains: if a guest will be served it, they should be able to see it as it is.

For a shop the rule is the same. Show the real coat, mug or candle you sell, in your light, with your hand for scale.

Where AI helps: backgrounds, captions and seasonal cards

AI earns its place on the parts of a post that do not promise anything to the customer.

• Seasonal backgrounds and cards: a soft autumn background behind a real photo, a title card for "Thanksgiving hours", a looping motion graphic for an event post.
• Intro and outro cards: a three second branded opener you reuse on every video.
• Caption drafts: ask any writing assistant for three versions of a caption and edit them to sound like you. Read for wrong prices, hours and spelling of dish names.
• Event posters: let AI make the artwork, but type the text yourself or check it letter by letter. Generated text often contains small errors.
• Concept art: a rendering of a planned patio or remodel, labelled "concept" in the caption.

Higgsfield can make the background clips and cards. As of November 2026 its paid plans start at $19 a month for 270 credits (credits are the points it spends on each result), but prices change, so check the pricing page. Free-plan output carries a watermark, and its pricing table lists commercial use as not included for the free plan, while its help center says commercial use is not limited to paid plans. Because the two disagree, use a paid plan for anything you post as a business and read the terms yourself. Pages like Higgsfield pricing, effects for reels and Higgsfield versus Canva and CapCut help you compare. For plain editing and templates, Canva and CapCut are free to start and may be all you need.

The shop version

A shop has no steam and no kitchen, so swap the pillars:

1. New arrivals (4 posts): one item per post, shot on a table by a window.
2. Maker story (1 post): who made it, how, where.
3. How to use or style it (2 posts): a hand showing the product in use.
4. Customer pickup or favourite (2 posts): with permission, a short clip of a happy customer or a staff pick.
5. One offer (1 post): a sale, a bundle, or a local event.
6. Seasonal hook (1 post) and one community post (1 post).

The same two shoot days work for a shop. If you sell online as well, the video rules differ by marketplace: see Amazon and marketplace listing video rules and TikTok Shop product videos.

Batch shoot and scheduling

Do not make a post a day. Do two sessions.

• Session one (90 minutes, early in the month): dishes or products, close-ups, the supplier or maker visit if you can combine it with a delivery.
• Session two (90 minutes, mid-month): people clips, a quiet-hour video of the room, and anything seasonal.

Film extra, since not every clip will make the cut. Shoot sideways for stills and upright for reels, and keep each reel to 10 to 20 seconds. Edit the same day while you remember what you filmed.

For scheduling, Meta Business Suite is free and can schedule Facebook and Instagram posts. Other schedulers exist (Buffer and Later are named in the vendor guides I read), but I have not compared their current free limits, so check them. Keep one shared sheet with the columns date, pillar, real or generated, caption, status. The "real or generated" column makes it easy to spot a month that is drifting toward too much AI. For a longer walkthrough of scheduling, see scheduling AI content. If you want a heavier cadence, how to make 10 short videos a week and daily short video content argue the case, but I would earn the habit with twelve first.

Weekend events are best promoted early in the week, and one planner suggests a reservation prompt about once in seven posts. Treat both as ideas to test.

Seasonal hooks

Pick dates ahead, and schedule posts a week or more before. One content calendar I read (Aibrify, dates checked by the author against official sources on 5 October 2026) lists Thanksgiving on 26 November 2026 and Valentine's Day on 14 February 2027, with lead times of one to five weeks for planning. For your own area, add local dates: school terms, festivals, market days, big games, a local holiday, your anniversary. Mark them on the sheet at the start of the quarter.

A seasonal post is the best place to use AI. A warm background or a short animated card costs little, and nobody is misled by it. Keep the item itself real. For a bigger seasonal push, see seasonal promo videos built in one day.

Checking a generated clip before posting

If you do post an AI-made clip, run this check. It takes five minutes and has clear pass and fail rules.

1. Watch it at full size with a second person. They should watch every frame, not skim.
2. Fail if any food, drink, product, price, sign or text is wrong, changed or invented.
3. Fail if a person looks warped, a hand has extra fingers, or a face is clearly not a real person and the post implies it is.
4. Fail if it shows something a guest cannot get. For dishes, the kitchen team confirms plating. Follow the rule on the cheap promo video page.
5. Pass if it is a background, card or mood clip and every word on it is correct.
6. Read the platform's current label rules for AI content and use them if they apply. For the broader quality steps see the AI video quality check.

A 30-day test you can run

Run the plan for one month with a simple scoreboard.

• Pass: you posted at least 10 of the 12, and total prep time stayed under about 4 hours.
• Pass: no post needed deleting for an error.
• Look at: which three posts drew the most saves or comments, and which pillar they came from. Do more of those next month.
• Fail: if you only posted four, cut the plan to eight and keep the two shoot days.

Who should skip AI video

• Owners who have never posted. Start with phone clips and the free tools. Add AI later if a gap remains.
• Anyone who would use AI for the food or product itself. Skip that use, full stop.
• Owners whose customers dislike AI images. The Star article suggests this is a real group. Ask your regulars.
• Businesses with no time to check the clips. Unchecked output is how errors reach customers. See when not to use AI video and AI for restaurants.

How I'd approach this

I would film for two mornings, keep the sheet honest, and give AI only the backgrounds, cards and caption drafts. I would build a small library of approved intros, brand colours and seasonal cards so each month starts faster. If you would like that library, the approvals step and the schedule set up for you, Blur Studio builds the repeatable workflow for small businesses. You can start on the business page. If you want to try the AI parts yourself, a paid Higgsfield plan is one place to do it, and a phone with daylight is the rest.