Downtown Vancouver café NaMì and a No Frills in Burnaby have turned to Sharpie-drawn ads as customers and designers react to AI-generated restaurant imagery.
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Kevin Thach, owner of NaMì Vietnamese café in downtown Vancouver, says his business is deliberately using pen-and-paper advertising to stand out as more restaurants use AI images to cut costs.
Thach described posting simple, black-marker drawings of NaMì menu items, including a banh mi sandwich and a frozen coffee drink, alongside handwritten text that says: “We will NOT use AI to promote our business ... we’re going old school and using a Sharpie and paper!”
According to Thach, the hand-drawn approach is meant to remind customers that the food comes from people working behind the counter. He said the effort behind the food is part of what customers are looking for when they interact with a local business.
The shift comes amid wider online backlash against AI-generated imagery, with some businesses accused of “AI slop.” Thach said he also finds it unappealing when restaurants present their own food using images that appear perfectly manicured or incorrectly rendered by AI.
Jarrett Vaughan, an adjunct professor at the University of British Columbia business school, said customers are gravitating toward authenticity as AI makes it easier to produce flawless content.
Vaughan said when imperfection is easy to eliminate, human and imperfect material can stand out, and small businesses may be able to compete through what he called “out-humanize” efforts that build relationships with customers. He noted, however, that producing high volumes of content efficiently can be difficult for smaller businesses with limited resources.
Pen-and-paper advertising has also appeared beyond restaurants. The report cites a No Frills supermarket in Burnaby that used Sharpie-drawn sheets of paper to advertise weekly deals.
Meghan D’Mello, president of the Association of Registered Graphic Designers, said advertising traditionally draws on work done by professional graphics designers. She said job descriptions are increasingly focusing on prompting AI image-generating services, and she argued that this devalues designers’ attention to detail and training.
D’Mello said she wants customers to respond to the use of AI-generated images by “voting with their wallets” and not patronizing businesses that rely on them, adding that AI can streamline parts of work but is not the same as designers’ creativity or ingenuity.
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