10: Food styling & designing with Payal Gupta

Payal Gupta is a chef, food stylist and floral stylist working out of Mumbai. Payal started a company called chefpayalgupta to nurture her love for food and art. This company is jointly run by her and her husband Hitesh along with a talent pool of staff. She has studies in more than 8 institutes in and outside India. Chef Payal has styled food for acclaimed global brands like Hindustan Unilever, General Mills, Britannia, McDonalds, ITC to name a few. And today we are here to understand food design or food styling 1\. What is food styling all about? What do you mean when we say he or she is a food stylist? 2\. "A food-stylist needs to have an expertise in cooking and an aesthetic sense to develop an interesting image for the brand.” Does this mean, an artist who is a chef or a chef who has a artistic bend? 3\. What are the big challenges while styling food, especially when you are designing campaigns for Fast Food chains like McDonalds or Subway? This is mainly to understand because when it comes to food chains like these, food is not cooked but manufactured. How do you bring in the drool worthy feeling while working on brands like these? 4\. What has been your experience while styling food which has Indian origin? What are the learnings you can share? 5\. In one of your interviews online you mentioned, “Each year you set goals to upgrade your skill sets as a chef and do not stagnate your learnings” What makes you say that explicitly where as each professional these days have to keep pace with whats happening in the market. This question also illustrates that what would be your 2 cents to people who wish to venture into this profession.