“Focus, marks, lights, roll camera…and flip” A chicken tikka skewer flips on an open flame grill. Directing food for the camera came as a natural progression for food stylist Swati Desai.

Swati works out of her Mumbai-based studio producing marketing assets for clients like McDonald’s, Burger King, Cadbury, Nestlé and many more. Her day can be filled with perfecting an ooze of cheese, chocolate or curry but she deals with every subject with finesse.

Being a film and design graduate she loves collaborating with prop stylists to bring in cultural subtext into any work she styles. Her 14 years of experience in advertising has helped her refine her craft to not just a good-looking frame but an effective piece of communication.

She celebrates all things Indian and hopes to produce global content to revive interest in seasonal-local vegetarian recipes of West India.

Swati Desai is a Mumbai-based food stylist and food director.

It’s been an exciting year for Swati amid the pandemic with recent campaigns styled for Burger King and Cadbury. 

Centred on the idea of "good food brings the best out of people", she garners her inspiration by constantly engaging creative minds into conversations, great food and drool-worthy shots. She loves accepting challenges with her bold style and brings creative solutions with still photographs, TV commercials, videos, GIFs to help brands tell their story. Hence brands like Baskin Robbins, Pillsbury, Subway, KFC, Amul, Starbucks, ITC Limited, Maggi, Nestle put faith in her work.

From early on, she realised that it takes a fabulous team to seamlessly execute ideas around food and hence works with a team of chefs, prop stylist and kitchen assistants. Her studio is well equipped with a modern backend kitchen and a prop shop.

See more of her work on her website, Instagram, Behance and YouTube.