Food videography in Dubai where the film is going, and who has to approve it
Food videography in Dubai gets booked as one thing. A crew, a kitchen, a morning before service. What comes out of it goes to a delivery app, a search profile and a social feed the same afternoon, and those three do not want the same frame.
The one line to hold onto
Five destinations publish five specifications for the same dish and they do not reconcile, so the crop is decided when the shot is composed. Four authorities reach the shoot, and the Food Code that governs the room never mentions a camera. The hero plate runs two hours hot or four hours cold including its own plating, and the finished film needs a prior approval from an authority the instrument does not name.
Food videography in Dubai starts with where the film is going
One dish does not have one frame, and every figure below is what that company published on 23 August 2026.
Careem's UAE Food Partner FAQ requires a menu item image of at least 1MB at 1200 by 1200 pixels in JPG, square, and a hero image of at least 1MB at 1125 by 780. It states that menu changes take seven working days.
Deliveroo's Menu Manager help article requires a menu item image of at least 1200 by 675, landscape, JPEG only, and crops item images to a 1:1 ratio. Its hero has to be at least 1920 by 1080 and work across the current 16:9 layout and a new 3:2 store page. Its developer documentation publishes a second and non-identical specification for the item image, at 1920 by 1080 and 16:9. One company, two item specifications, and the difference is the upload route.
Google Business Profile takes JPG or PNG between 10KB and 5MB, recommends 720 by 720 with a minimum of 250 by 250, and accepts video up to 30 seconds. Instagram publishes Reels between 1.91 to 1 and 9:16, at a minimum of 30 frames per second and 720 pixels, with a cover photo that cannot be edited after upload.
Those five do not agree, and nothing here averages them into a house specification. The crop is decided when the shot is composed rather than in the edit, so a shot list not split by destination produces assets one of them rejects.
We have established no image or video specification for Talabat, since the only page its UAE partner site publishes in its sitemap carries none, and no UAE-specific version of Deliveroo's requirement, since the article read sits on its global help centre.
The frame that carries a reel is the frame a delivery platform rejects
Content matters more than pixels. Deliveroo's item-image article tells partners not to send images with hands, faces, text, watermarks or raw ingredients placed around the dishes, and allows raw ingredients only where they are clearly not part of the dish. The reasons it names for an image coming back include:
- Cluttered background
- Blurry image
- Poor colour saturation
- Ingredients shown instead of the dish itself
- A person visible in the image
- Obvious signs of image editing
- Poor lighting
- Text or imagery overlaid
A fifteen-second craft clip with hands in the frame is one of those reasons. The frame a reel wants and the frame the platform accepts are both correct where they are pointed, and neither is general advice about food video. Split the shot list by destination before the kitchen plates anything, and shoot the two frames separately.
Rights sit on the same page. Deliveroo requires the partner to own the images used on the platform and to indemnify it against any third-party claim connected with them, which puts the licence agreed with the production company on the critical path.
Four authorities reach a kitchen shoot, and the Food Code never mentions a camera
A term search over the full extracted text of the 2013 Dubai Municipality Food Code, all 74 pages, returns zero hits for photograph, photography, filming, camera and video. Film appears once, at printed page 51, in the phrase bacterial film. Across the 27 URLs the Dubai Film and TV Commission's sitemap published on 22 August 2026, and all 252 rows of its Local Production Houses register, the words kitchen, restaurant and food do not appear. Both negatives are scoped to those documents.
Four bodies still own a piece of the day, and which one issues the permit depends on where the venue sits. Dubai Municipality owns the room and the food in it. The Dubai Media Council owns the permit as the competent authority for Media Activities across the Emirate, with the Film and TV Commission moved into it, and Decree No. (66) of 2024 preserves a parallel permitting power for the Dubai Development Authority inside the zones within its jurisdiction. The federal media regime owns the finished advertisement, and the federal food regime the description of food inside it.
The silence about cameras is not an absence of rules. It means the rules reach a crew through the category the crew happens to be in.
The Food Code puts a visiting crew in one category, and the category is visitor
Watch out
5.5, 5.3(b) and 3.4.1 read should, which section 1.3(b) defines as a provision to comply with, allowing deviation under exceptional circumstances for a valid reason where the food safety objective is not compromised. The hand-washing clause reads shall, an absolute requirement in the same key. We have established no published requirement that a visiting film crew hold food safety training or a health card, scoped to the 2013 Code, the Food Code 2.0 draft and guideline DM-FSD-GU64.
The clause to read first is not the one headed Visitors. Section 5.3(b) is written about the room: in the course of handling food, and for any person entering a food preparation or storage area, hair should be covered with a clean hat or hair net.
Section 5.5, headed Visitors, asks any visitor to a food preparation area to be appropriately dressed, to observe the same hygiene as food handlers including hand washing and hair restraint, and to keep away from food and food equipment.
Both reach a crew on this article's reading, and that reading is ours rather than the Code's. Section 1.6 defines a food handler as anyone handling food directly or indirectly, including equipment, utensils or food contact surfaces, and a team touching none of those sits outside it. Section 3.4.1(a) restricts access to food preparation areas, as much as practically possible, to designated people, and 3.4.1(b) requires all practicable measures for visitors, its worked example being management and maintenance staff. Hand washing arrives through 5.5, and behind it sits 5.3(e)(ii), which opens Food handlers shall wash their hands. On footwear the Code specifies nothing.
The hero plate runs on a clock, and the four hours in circulation is the wrong number
Section 3.3 of the 2013 Code is headed Time as a Safety Control. Clause (a): high risk hot foods intended for immediate consumption shall not be held for service between 5C and 60C for more than two hours, and shall be discarded after that time. Clause (b): high risk cold foods shall not be held in that band for more than four hours including the time of preparation.
Both read shall not, which section 1.3(b) defines as absolutely prohibited, and they are the only clauses cited here that do. Including the time of preparation is the Code's own phrase, and it is the part that reaches a shoot, because the styling and the plating sit inside those four hours. Takes are cumulative, since the rationale at 3.3 makes the total the sum of the time the food spends in the band after cooking. Clause (c) asks for the plate to be labelled with its expiry time.
There is a second four hours in the Code and it is not a safety limit. Section 3.2.10 carries a Note recommending that food be kept at or above 60C for not more than four hours, and gives its reason in the same sentence, to minimise the loss of the organoleptic properties and nutritional quality of the food. Its rationale adds that no pathogenic bacteria multiply at 60C or above. There is no four-hour hot-hold safety ceiling in the Code, and 3.2.10(a) carries a floor instead: cooked foods to be served hot shall be held at least at 60C.
On Grolez Films shoots a plated dish holds up on camera for fifteen to twenty minutes before the kitchen sends a fresh one. That is a production figure about how the dish looks rather than whether it is safe, and it measures something the clauses above do not.
Who is allowed to touch the plate, and which authority issues the card
Watch out
Two questions go to Dubai Municipality in one written ask, before the shoot. Whether a person plating for camera is engaged in Dealing in Foodstuffs, and which body issues the card in 2026. We have established no Municipality position on the first, and on the second we have established what a card costs on the schedule in force rather than what a person is charged at a counter.
The Code cannot settle this one, and says so. Section 1.3(a) describes it as an interpretative guideline explaining how to meet the objectives of the Administrative and Local Orders passed by the Government of Dubai, not a rigid and inflexible document. The binding instrument under it is Local Order No. (11) of 2003.
Article 13 is flat. No Person may be engaged in Dealing in Foodstuffs unless he is medically fit, confirmed by a valid occupational health card issued by the Competent Department. The Order defines Dealing in as the preparation, processing, manufacturing, storage, packaging, retailing, transporting, display and sale of products or commodities. Preparation is on that list and so is display, and the Article is keyed to the Person and the activity rather than to premises.
Then the card itself, which three instruments answer three ways. The 2003 Order puts it on the Competent Department, defined as departments of Dubai Municipality, and the Food Code's Annex A names Dubai Municipality too. Law No. (5) of 2025 gives the Dubai Health Authority supervision of the issuance of occupational health cards at Article 13(a)(2), and the Dubai Academic Health Institution the duty to issue them at Article 13(b)(3). Article 59 repeals other provisions only where they contradict the Law, so all three stand and none is picked. Item 19 of Schedule (5) prices an annual card at AED 100, kept operative to 31 December 2026 by later resolutions.
The finished film is a regulated advertisement before it is anything else
Watch out
The Resolution requires that approval and does not name which authority gives it, for food or for any of its other five cases. Dubai Municipality's own advertising service, ServiceCode 3836, covers cosmetics, fragrances, supplements, detergents and biocides and does not name food, and nor does any of the five services in its Advertising category, both scoped to those listings as read on 23 August 2026. Establish in writing who signs, before the shoot is booked.
The chain runs federal. Federal Decree by Law No. (55) of 2023 lists photography activities as a media activity at Article 8(1)(G), has the Competent Authority issue permits for land, aerial or marine photography at Article 13(1) including approval of texts and content, and defines that Authority as the local body licensing media activities. In Dubai that is the Media Council, or the Dubai Development Authority inside the zones within its jurisdiction.
Then the clause that names food. Article 33(10) of Cabinet Resolution No. (68) of 2024, the Executive Regulation of that Decree-Law, requires approval from the concerned authority, while abiding by the requirements it imposes, in six listed cases. Item (e) is advertisements relating to food, alongside real estate, medical, financial and educational advertising. Across the whole instrument the word food appears exactly once, and this is it. The instrument governing the finished food film says one thing about food, and that one thing is a prior approval rather than a penalty afterwards.
The same Article prices the styling. Article 33(2) bars incorrect or misleading claims, exaggeration and anything carrying a suspicion of fraud, Article 33(4) requires an advertisement to be truthful and not exaggerated, and Article 33(1) requires it not to be vague.
A food film is also a description of food, and a false description is priced
Federal Law No. 10 of 2015 on Food Safety has twenty-two articles and no Article 33, which is why the clause number is worth giving.
The clause is Article 14(3). Whoever trades, promotes, contributes or publishes a false description of any food in order to deceive the consumer shall be punished by a fine of not less than ten thousand Dirhams and not exceeding one hundred thousand Dirhams. It has four conduct verbs, one object in a false description of any food, and one express purpose in order to deceive the consumer. An accurate description does not engage it.
The Executive Regulations reach the plate rather than the caption. Cabinet Resolution No. (26) of 2017 defines Misleading Food as food untruly prescribed for commercial promotion, and its Article 15(1) catches food that is misleadingly packaged or prepared, or falsely descripted. Prepared is the word that reaches how the dish was built.
The kitchen's clock and the camera's clock are not the same clock.
What the permission chain costs, and the two lead times that are not one number
Good to know
One more published window reaches an outdoor call sheet rather than an application form. The Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation publishes a midday break from 12:30 to 15:00 between 15 June and 15 September, for work carried out under the sun and in open places.
The Commission charges a non-refundable AED 520 per application, which may cover multiple days and locations. Private location fees run from 0 to a maximum of AED 25,000 per day and are subject to the location owner's decision. A restaurant or a hotel is a private location, so the Commission's line on a kitchen shoot is AED 520 plus whatever the venue decides.
Then the dates, two of them from two instruments. The Commission's FAQ publishes one working day to approve a permit, subject to location owners' approval, and two working days for registration. Article 21 of Cabinet Resolution No. (68) of 2024 requires the application before fifteen working days before the date specified for the commencement of filming, with the purpose stated from a list that expressly includes advertisement. One is emirate-level, one is federal, neither supersedes the other on what was retrieved, and averaging them would produce a date in no instrument.
Where the penalty lands, on two separate tracks
Two tracks run at once.
Which regime bites which conduct is a legal conclusion this article does not draw. The interim position is settled by resolution: the schedules of fees, violations and fines that preceded the 2025 Law keep applying to 31 December 2026, so the schedule under Article 49(b) does not exist yet.
Who files matters too. The general rule in Dubai Municipality's catalogue of food permits is that an application is filed by the primary Person in Charge of a food establishment or a Technical Expert, through FoodWatch. The Code puts the same role in charge of food handler training at section 6.1. It is a defined term rather than a job title.
Track one, the venue
Article 86 of the 2003 Order fines a Person AED 100 to AED 500,000, doubled on repetition within a year, with licence suspension for up to a month and utility disconnection for up to three. Article 49 of Law No. (5) of 2025 fines a Person AED 500 to AED 1,000,000, doubled within a year to a AED 2,000,000 cap, with activity suspension and closure of facilities.
Track two, the production
The Commission publishes AED 25,000 for filming without permission, AED 15,000 for filming without location permission, AED 25,000 for filming activities other than those in the permit and AED 20,000 for any other violation, whose published examples include a member of the production house not being present on set, damage to property and littering. Article 23(1) of Federal Decree by Law No. (55) of 2023 sits above it, at AED 1,000 to AED 1,000,000.
Common questions
Can one set of photos work for the app, Google and Instagram?
Not on the published figures. Careem asks for a square 1200 by 1200, Deliveroo's Menu Manager for landscape at 1200 by 675 which it then crops to 1:1, its developer route for 1920 by 1080, Google for 720 by 720, and Instagram Reels for 1.91 to 1 through 9:16.
Why did the app reject our photo?
Deliveroo publishes a list of rejection reasons, among them cluttered background, blurry image, poor colour saturation, ingredients shown instead of the dish, a person visible in the image, obvious signs of editing, poor lighting, and text or imagery overlaid. Its content rule also excludes hands, faces and watermarks.
Can we film in the kitchen while service is running, and what does the crew wear?
The Code sets no filming rule either way. What it sets is section 3.4.1(a) of the 2013 text, restricting access to food preparation areas as much as practically possible to designated people, and section 5.5, which asks a visitor to keep away from food and food equipment. Section 5.3(b) covers the hat or hair net on entry, 5.5 adds appropriately dressed and the same hygiene as food handlers, and on footwear the Code specifies nothing.
How long can the hero dish sit under the lights?
Two hours for high risk hot food and four hours for high risk cold food, both between 5C and 60C, and the cold four hours includes the time of preparation. The Code writes both as shall not, and time across takes is summed rather than restarted. Fifteen to twenty minutes is our own production figure for a plate on camera, and it measures something different.
What does the AED 520 permit fee actually cover?
It is a non-refundable application fee charged by the Dubai Film and TV Commission, and one application may cover multiple days and locations. A restaurant or a hotel is a private location, and private location fees run from nothing to a maximum of AED 25,000 per day, subject to the location owner's decision. So the line on a kitchen shoot is AED 520 plus whatever the venue decides.
What to hold onto, in one pass
One dish does not have one frame. Five destinations publish five specifications that do not reconcile, so the crop is decided when the shot is composed and the shot list is split before the kitchen plates anything. The frame that carries a reel is the frame a delivery platform rejects, and both are correct where they are pointed. Four authorities reach the shoot, and the Food Code that governs the room never uses the word camera, so the rules arrive through the category a crew walks in as: hair covered on entry, access restricted, hands washed, no proximity to food or equipment. The hero plate runs two hours hot or four hours cold including its own plating, and the Code's separate four hours at 60C is an eating-quality Note. The finished film needs a prior approval from an authority the instrument does not name, and the consequences run on two tracks.
Grolez Films: the kitchen's constraints are the schedule
A food shoot is planned around where the film is going and the window the kitchen sets, rather than around a treatment. Grolez Films has filmed inside a restaurant kitchen during service. The look is chosen from a named menu of five before the shoot, and the choice does not change the price. Regulated work does not cost the client more. Grolez Films works across the categories its own showreel page lists, and Food Video is one of them. Clients include KFC, McDonald's MENA and ROOH. Luis Grolez, the founder, pitches every job personally.
See the work. Then get in touch about a venue and a date.
Sources and methodology
Every regulatory sentence was read from primary text rather than commentary, and every platform requirement from that platform's own published document, named below and read on 23 August 2026. The platforms do not agree and one publishes two non-identical specifications, reported rather than reconciled, because a platform is authority for its own uploads and nothing else. The Food Code calls itself an interpretative guideline rather than law, its modal verbs used as its section 1.3(b) defines them, every chapter 3 citation naming its edition, and the four hours at 60C corrected against the Code's Note. The occupational health card is named to three issuers and none is picked, AED 100 is the Schedule (5) figure kept operative by later resolutions rather than a counter price, and the two lead times are never merged. Both federal media instruments were re-retrieved independently on 23 August 2026 from the National Media Authority's own host, in the Arabic that prevails, after the legislation portal returned a Cloudflare block at every rung. That reading confirmed the article counts, Article 21 and Article 33, and corrected Article 33(10) to six cases rather than five. It records what that Authority publishes rather than what is in force today. No production-company blog, agency listicle or law-firm alert is cited anywhere, and questions are left open in both directions and named in the text. This article is informational and is not legal advice. Confirm your position with the relevant authority or with counsel. Prepared 23 August 2026.
- Careem, UAE Food Partner FAQs, for the item and hero image specification and the seven-working-day menu change: careem.com
- Deliveroo, Menu Manager help centre article, for the item and hero specification, the 1:1 crop, the content rules, the rejection reasons and the Rights and Legal Ownership section: help.deliveroo.com
- Deliveroo, developer documentation, for the second and non-identical specification: api-docs.deliveroo.com
- Google Business Profile Help, for the photo and video specification: support.google.com
- Instagram Help Centre, for the Reels specification: help.instagram.com
- Dubai Municipality, Food Code document page and the 2013 Food Code it links, for the visitor and entry clauses, the hand-washing clause, the temperature clauses, the 3.2.10 correction, the modal-verb definitions, section 6.1 and the interpretative-guideline status: dm.gov.ae
- Dubai Municipality, Food and Food Related Permits and Approvals Services catalogue and External Circular (6), for the fourteen permits, the Person in Charge rule and the FoodWatch channel: dmpmedia.dm.gov.ae
- Dubai Municipality service hub, ServiceCode 3836, for the consumer products advertising permit and the scoped negative that it does not name food: hub.dm.gov.ae
- Dubai Legal Portal, Local Order No. (11) of 2003 Concerning Public Health, for Article 13, the definition of Dealing in, Schedule (5) item 19 and Article 86: dlp.dubai.gov.ae
- Dubai Legal Portal, Law No. (5) of 2025 Concerning Public Health, for Articles 13, 49 and 59: dlp.dubai.gov.ae
- Dubai Legal Portal, Resolution No. (35) of 2025, Resolution No. (15) of 2026 and Executive Council Resolution No. (5) of 2026, for which schedules apply in the interim and for item 19 standing: dlp.dubai.gov.ae
- Ministry of Climate Change and Environment, Federal Law No. 10 of 2015 on Food Safety, for the article count and Article 14(3): moccae.gov.ae
- UAE Legislation Platform, Cabinet Resolution No. (26) of 2017, for the definition of Misleading Food and Article 15(1): uaelegislation.gov.ae
- National Media Authority, its own legislation page and the Arabic texts it serves, for Federal Decree by Law No. (55) of 2023 Articles 1, 8, 13 and 23 and Cabinet Resolution No. (68) of 2024 Articles 21 and 33, re-retrieved 23 August 2026: nma.gov.ae
- Dubai Film and TV Commission, its published fee and fine pages, its FAQ, its sitemap and its Local Production Houses register, for the AED 520 fee, the location fees, the fines table, the timelines and the term count: www.filmdubai.gov.ae
- Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation, the midday break, for the published window only: mohre.gov.ae