Social media marketing is often treated as a numbers game. The bigger the figure, the better you’re doing, but we understand that when it comes to effective marketing, quality always trumps quantity.
Valentine’s day is a popular holiday to celebrate with our loved ones – whether this is a partner, family or even a pet (27% of people would buy a present for their pet and one third would rather spend the day with their pet than their partner (National Retail Federation) – Whisky, will you be my valentine next year?
TikTok is dominating consumer social media and continues to grow, with 1 billion users internationally, up from 54 million in 2018. With such an impressive reach, TikTok viral food products and recipes have the power to monumentally influence business and consumer purchasing.
An international experience even the pandemic can’t get in the way of
Brazil is a vast and diverse country, with strong regional characteristics, looks and tastes. But if you are planning a visit – or just curious and can’t wait until the pandemic is over to try the South American flavours – you can easily find Brazilian restaurants in England. These are a few dishes you must not leave without trying.
It’s a truism that if the roast is the king of dinners, then the Christmas dinner is the irrefutable king of the roasts. Turkey is traditional but can be bland and polarising. It’s also notoriously easy to ruin by overcooking, especially if you have ‘self-medicated’ with a pre 8am libation. Though many plump for tradition, the choice of Christmas roast centrepiece is uniquely individual to each household. Can we do better? Dare we? Here, I weigh up the festive proteinoid centrepiece alternatives so you don’t have to.
Whether you’re embarking on your own health journey or jumping on the back of a new health craze, the past decade has seen increased media attention on healthy living.
Back in 2019 I wrote about dog friendly dining (a subject close to my own heart, as Mum to our ‘office dog’ Whisky). Since then, we have seen dog ownership explode. With Covid lockdowns and more working from home, those who had always wanted a dog but felt they couldn’t, took the plunge and got a furry friend. Whether it was for company, for the kids, or just because, UK citizens opened their homes to man’s best friend. Indeed, the BBC reported back in March that UK households had bought 3.2million pets in lockdown (a large proportion of them dogs)! Whilst according to the Pet Food Manufacturers Association (PFMA) a third of households now have a dog. That’s 12.5 million dogs. Great news for the members of PFMA, but also a huge opportunity for hospitality businesses.
Gone are the days of complex baking cookbooks and inaccessible recipes. The past five years have seen a massive increase in the self-made baking blogger, releasing easy, contemporary, and innovative recipes for all online. They now occupy a space that used to be inhabited only by top pastry chefs and the formally trained. Not only do we look to baking bloggers to review and recommend the best baking ingredients, but we also turn to them for recipes on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and now buy their published cookbooks.
The hospitality and retail sector continue to be plagued with problems, from staff shortages to supply chain chaos. However, pop open the (English) bubbly! As there is hope to be had where British booze is concerned!
As London Cocktail week is now all of October (nice!) we thought we’d share some of the Beans’ favourites. According to international research from Brandwatch, Margaritas are the most popular cocktail followed by Martini, Mimosa, Bloody Mary, and Manhattan. But closer to home it is safe to say, us Beans have found solace in a wide range of cocktails over the past 18 months (of course, all drunk responsibly!). We are after all a leading food and drink agency so really, it’s research. Isn’t it?
Long ago if you wanted to make sure your promotions didn’t fall foul of the law you simply had to turn to ISP (Institute of Sales Promotion), check the CAP code and ASA guidelines. Of course, these days it’s not ISP it’s IPM (Institute of Promotional Marketing)and often times it’s not an on-pack promo or ad, but a social media promotion.
The Latest from Lumina Intelligence’s Food Strategy Forum
As a leading food and drink agency we make it our business to keep up to date with the latest eating out market trends. Each of the Lumina briefings is hotly awaited to see what they have to share with us as we use these key market insights to inform our planning and strategy for clients in foodservice and the hospitality market. This session looked at the current status of the market and predictions up until 2024 with a focus on the pub and bar sector pulling on findings from their latest report.
The lowest hanging fruit in all SEO is in the hands of the least tech savvy people. Writers.
Text on the web is perhaps Google’s favourite content as it is so easily ‘machine readable’.
With some sound advice it’s possible to take your simple blogs, articles, case studies and press releases, and super-charge them into top SEO content that will get you noticed online.
The popularity of Veganuary, Meatless Mondays and even National Vegetarian day is well known, with much of the media covering it and becoming trends on social media. However, Organic September has nowhere near as much cover (I also wish the name was a bit catchier, why they don’t use alliteration and go for ‘Organic October’ – ‘Orgtober’ – or ‘Natural November’ is beyond me).
People watch an average of 16 hours of online video per week, which is a 52% increase in the last two years.
Social video generates 1200% more shares than text and image content combined.
Viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video compared to 10% when reading it in text.
96% of people have watched an explainer video to learn more about a product or service.
86% of people would like to see more video from brands.
68% of consumers prefer watching videos to learn about new products or services, as compared to articles, infographics, ebooks, and presentations.
82% would rather watch live video than read social media posts.
Note: This doesn’t mean blogging or social media posts are dead! Both of these forms of content are a crucial part of any digital marketing strategy, especially for SEO and reputation.
Consumers who end up on an e-commerce site through a user-generated video are 184% more likely to purchase, and spend 45% more.
64% of consumers make a purchase after watching branded social videos.
Half the joy of travelling is all the food you get to eat, from tapas to ramen, the world is full of flavours that are ready to be explored. However, with foreign travel being fraught with problems this summer, I have instead decided to explore a few cookbooks that champion foreign flavours so to con my body into thinking I’m abroad.
If you see yourself as a culinary fan who has tasted foods from all over the world but has not yet explored Caribbean dishes, are you really a true culinary fan? In Caribbean culture, food is an integral aspect of life with many people spending days upon days preparing their food.
Henry Dimbleby, co-founder of the Leon restaurant chain and chair of the National Food Strategy, was commissioned by government to execute an independent review on how to achieve a sustainable and fair food system. The terrible health crisis that took over the world in 2020 has shown with alarming clarity the damage being done to our health by the modern food system. Diet related illness is one of the top three risk factors for dying of Covid-19 and has cemented the need for the UK government and businesses to take bold action and revamp its National Food Strategy Plan.
Along with the disaster of the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us – including myself – have had our own disasters in the kitchen (Let’s not talk about the time I tried to make mozzarella sticks with Babybels). With all the free time we’ve had, many of us have turned out attention to the kitchen and thought…’let’s try and learn some new cooking skills.’
It’s a fact that more and more people are choosing to reduce their meat consumption when eating out. There is a fundamental shift in consumers’ diets, and it isn’t only vegetarians and vegans seeking out plant-based menu options within hospitality. 65% of Europeans are looking to reduce their meat intake, which means there is a real need for operators to increase their meat-free options.
