Seven stations and twenty-seven popups: a restaurant tour that explains the menu
Restorant Menca in Vlorë is seven stations and fifty overlays, and twenty-seven of those overlays are information popups rather than navigation arrows. That ratio is the whole point of a small restaurant tour: the interest is in what is on the counter, not in the distance covered. Anyone selling a restaurant of this size forty stations is selling it a hotel.
What seven stations covered
In front of the restaurant, the main entrance, the small entrance, the counter, the counter and till together, the seating and dining area, and the outdoor area. That is the whole premises. The tour labels its stations in Albanian and the project page publishes them translated, with a note saying so rather than leaving an English reader to follow the link and find none of the names.
Two entrances get two stations because a self-service restaurant has a queue and the queue has a direction. Somebody arriving through the small entrance needs to know where the counter is relative to them. That is navigation doing an actual job rather than padding a count.
Fifty overlays, and only twenty-three of them are arrows
| Tour | Stations | Navigation arrows | Information popups | Distinct connections |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Restorant Menca, Vlorë | 7 | 23 | 27 | 17 |
| Delibros, Komuna e Parisit, Tirana | 7 | 25 | 12 | 14 |
| Delibros, Rruga e Kavajës, Tirana | 4 | 13 | 0 | 8 |
Menca is the only tour in our archive where information popups outnumber navigation arrows. All three are live and public on [projects](/projects), so every count here can be checked rather than taken on trust.
Two food rooms of exactly the same station count, and one carries more than twice the popup layer of the other — 27 against 12. That is not a quality difference. It is a decision about what the tour is for: one client wanted the room understood, the other wanted the counter read.
Why the popups are most of the job
Navigation arrows are free. Every price we publish includes unlimited navigation hotspots, because the arrows that let people walk the tour are the tour rather than an extra. What is not free is the information layer, and not because we meter it — because somebody has to write it, place it, and keep it true when the menu changes.
On most small jobs the owner writes the text and we build it in, which is right: the description of a dish belongs to the kitchen. Where we are asked to write it, that is quoted per job rather than sitting on the rate card, because the scope is whatever the room needs said about it. Either way, decide before the capture day who is producing those words. It is the item that slips.
When to shoot a food room
There is a real tension here and it is worth stating rather than pretending it away. A restaurant photographed completely empty looks closed. A restaurant photographed full is a room full of people who did not agree to be in a 360° photograph, and a panorama has no crop — everything in every direction is in the frame, including every face and every screen. The workable answer is around service rather than during it, with staff who know they are being captured, and it is a scheduling conversation before it is a photographic one.
We deliberately do not publish capture dates on our project pages. An undated production log does not age, and the month a room was shot tells a reader nothing useful about their own building.
What it costs
€40 for each of the first ten 360° photographs, €30 for each one after, a €160 minimum because four stations is the smallest tour we build, and VAT on top. Tirana and its surroundings sit inside our 25 km free travel radius; Vlorë does not, and travel beyond it is billed at cost with no markup, itemised and agreed in writing before anything is booked.
A seven-station restaurant is three stations above our floor. You can price yours from the rate card in less time than it takes to read this paragraph. What we do not publish is what any of these restaurants paid — that is between us and them — and the same rule applies to every figure on this site.
What to send us
- How many positions you think the room needs. Most small restaurants are four to seven, and we will tell you if we disagree.
- Whether you want an information layer, and who is writing it.
- The hours the room is presentable and quiet enough to shoot.
- Whether the outdoor area is seasonal, because that decides when the capture day should be.
Send it to contact and you get a station count, a scope and a fixed price back — not a discovery call.
Questions people ask
- How many 360° photographs does a restaurant need?
- Usually four to seven. A delivered self-service restaurant came to seven stations: the street in front of it, both entrances, the counter, the counter and till together, the seating and dining area, and the outdoor area. A bakery and coffee house of the same size also came to seven — the street view, the entrance, the front desk, the coffee lounge, the dining area and the hall to the back — and its second branch came to four. Four is our floor, because below that it is a set of 360 photographs rather than a tour, which is a different product. A room of this size does not need forty stations and we will not sell you forty.
- What is an information popup, and do I need one on every dish?
- A marker inside a panorama that opens text, a photograph or a link over the view — a dish, a price, an opening time, a link to your menu. You do not need one per dish, and there is a good argument for not having them: a popup describing a seasonal dish goes out of date and somebody has to remember to update it. One delivered tour carries twenty-seven popups and another of the same station count carries twelve. Both were the right call for their owner.
- Do you have to close the restaurant to shoot it?
- No, but the room has to be quiet enough that we are not capturing customers. A 360° photograph has no crop — everything in every direction is in the frame — so anybody in the room is in the tour, which is a consent question rather than a photographic one. The practical answer is around service rather than during it: before opening, between sittings, or a closed day. A seven-station room is a short visit.
- Can the tour be in Albanian?
- Yes, and several of our delivered tours are. The tour language decides the labels, the menu and the popup text, and it is set at build time. A second language is a layer over the same capture at €100 per language rather than another shoot, so an Albanian tour with an English layer over it costs one capture and one extra language.
