It’s 7.40pm on a Tuesday in Margate. Friends are due at eight, there are no dips in the fridge and nobody fancies a trip out in the drizzle. So out comes the phone, open goes Deliveroo, and a thumb-sized picture of a tub of houmous decides which brand gets invited to the party.
Microsoft Advertising recently ran a webinar on agentic commerce: AI assistants that don’t just recommend products but buy them on a shopper’s behalf. We listened, so you don’t have to. Below are the five points we think matter most for food and drink brands, and what we’d do about them.
Walk into ExCeL for Technology for Marketing 2026 and you could play a simple game – count the stands that didn’t mention AI. You’d be finished before you reached the coffee queue.
For years, food and drink marketers have had a blind spot. You could see exactly how your website ranked on Google. You had no idea how a viral TikTok or a scroll stopping Reel showed up in someone’s search results. That gap has just started to close.
Right now, someone is asking an AI tool which food brand to buy. Which sauce, which drink, which supplier to call. And the answer they get won’t come from a Google search. It won’t link to your website. It will be a single, confident recommendation from ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or Perplexity and more. If it doesn’t include your brand, you simply don’t exist in that moment.
Something interesting is happening in design right now. After years of ever-cleaner interfaces, flatter logos and AI-generated everything, brands are reaching for rough edges. Handmade textures. Ink on paper. Typefaces that look like they were cut out of a magazine.
When you think of bootcamps, you’d be forgiven for thinking of a screaming sergeant major and a lot of mud, sweat and tears. But the bean team, have a different kind of bootcamp in mind – more seminars and talks from those leading in the world of social than burpees. On a sunny September morning, we headed up to Mayfair for a day with Brandwatch. From the world of disinformation, and LinkedIn trends, to a key trend of – the importance of narratives, whether they’re true or not.
For years, the goal of digital marketing has been simple: get to the top of Google’s search results, earn the click, and drive traffic to your website. This model, built on the foundation of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), has been the undisputed king of digital strategy. But the kingdom is changing.
The search game is no longer about a list of ten blue links. It’s about one, single, definitive answer.
As a leading integrated food and drink marketing agency, social media management is one of many services we offer our clients. From paid and organic social, to content creation, influencer collabs and strategy, we’re on hand to help your food and drink brand grow and maximise on the opportunities provided through social media platforms.
As social media and YouTube continue to skyrocket, it’s clear that brands can’t afford to ignore the power of video. With 90% of businesses integrating video into their marketing strategies, and audiences spending an average of 17 hours a week watching content online1, video is where brands need to focus in order to generate leads, attract new audiences and raise awareness.
In the fast-evolving digital landscape, B2B food and drink brands are leveraging social media to build stronger networks, drive sales, and boost brand visibility.
LinkedIn, as the world’s largest professional networking platform and the oldest (21 years this year and counting), has become an important tool in these efforts, offering unique opportunities to connect with the right audiences.
As a foodservice digital agency we are always looking at the best ways and techniques to improve our clients’ websites and the rankings they achieve within search engine results – both via the search engine optimisation of their websites on-page and off-page.
