Market & Consumer Trends – Lumina Food Strategy Forum – June 2025
On the hottest day of the year so far, myself and jellybean Account Director, Clare Freeman headed to London for the Lumina Q2 Food Strategy Forum. Hosted at the Everyman Cinema – Kings Cross, the fully packed session provided an insightful look into the eating out market, as well as what consumers want, the pub market and ingredient innovation. The Lumina panel walked us through the ongoing challenges, as well as the significant opportunities, for growth in 2025 and beyond.

Lumina Food Strategy Forum – June 2025 [Full Edition]
On the hottest day of the year so far, myself and jellybean Account Director, Clare Freeman headed to London for the Lumina Q2 Food Strategy Forum. Hosted at the Everyman Cinema – Kings Cross, the fully packed session provided an insightful look into the eating out market, as well as what consumers want, the pub market and ingredient innovation. The Lumina panel walked us through the ongoing challenges, as well as the significant opportunities, for growth in 2025 and beyond.

We’ve Bean Celebrating This Award Season!
jellybean is thrilled to celebrate an award season like no other!
We have been recognised by not one, but three award bodies in recent months, including the prestigious Drum Awards for Marketing (finalist), World Food Innovation Awards 2025 (winner) and Foodservice Packaging Association Awards (winner). These global and UK programmes acknowledge excellence and innovation in marketing, the food & drink industry, as well as the packaging sector.

Top B2B Marketing Agency 2025
At a recent Alliance of Independent Agencies event, I heard a staggering statistic that there are now around 30,000 agencies in the UK, with 16,000 of those set up in the last 10 years! With so much competition and increased pressure on marketing budgets it’s never been more important to have a clear specialism as an agency. Thankfully, jellybean has always been all about food and drink, from our foodservice roots to our natural evolution into retail and consumer. For over 37 years we have been laser focused on food and drink be it foodservice, retail, convenience or consumer. Of course, the downside to being a sector specialist is that you can limit your potential growth into other areas and on occasion come up against client conflict. We believe the upside far outweighs these factors as we have created a clear vision for our business and team, attract other likeminded food-obsessed colleagues and build a depth of knowledge that can help clients’ brands and businesses grow.

jellybean Takes on Dry January
As we covered in our previous blog post – ‘Wellbeing, Connection and Growth, we’ve bean embracing January!’ the first month of the year presents the perfect opportunity for us to take it easy and detox, with challenges like Dry January. This initiative has been around for 12 years now and has stuck for good reason, with over 200,000 people signing up last year. For some, it provides motivation to try cutting alcohol out of their lives for a month, and for others, it’s the chance to reflect and be mindful of how much alcohol we actually drink and see if we can cut down at all (if we want to, of course).

The jellybean Great Christmas Sandwich Off
Every year, at Christmas, jellybean embarks on a mission to support charities close to our heart and spread festive joy.
This year, we ran a competition like no other! jellybean’s Great Christmas Sandwich Off saw six bean teams battle it out to compose a Christmas-themed sandwich that honoured their nominated charity.

The Power of Breath: How We Enhanced our Work Wellbeing
“When you own your breath, nobody can steal your peace” Anon
Working in a fast paced communications agency has its challenges and requires energy, dedication and resilience, which is why we take the mental health* and wellbeing of our team very seriously at jellybean. We regularly carry out internal surveys to check-in and see how our team are feeling and identify where the professional pinch points are.

‘Make it Mutti’ Reaches New Heights with an Immersive Tomato Dining Experience at Saatchi Gallery
This month, we have brought our latest client campaign platform Make it Mutti to life in an extraordinary way, staging a 3-night immersive dining experience at the Saatchi Gallery, London (17-19 September 2024). This unique event, took invited guests on a culinary journey through the life cycle of the tomato, combining incredible food, technology, and multi-sensory storytelling in a celebration of the tomato and Mutti’s heritage and values.

jellybean – building a future ready legacy
As the founder of jellybean 37 years ago I am proud to announce that as of September 2024 we are an employee-owned business through an EOT (Employee Ownership Trust).

MCA Food to Go Conference 2024
As a leading food and drink marketing agency with a passion for foodservice and eating out, we make it our business to keep on top of all the latest trends in the food and drink arena. The world of food to go, or quick service restaurants as it’s sometimes referred to, is a hotbed of innovation and has proved to be one of the most resilient sectors of the eating out market, both during Covid more recently the cost-of-living crisis. So, we hot-footed it along to The Ham Yard Hotel last week to hear from some of the key players in the food to go market at MCA’s Food to Go Conference.

Leap Year Foodie Traditions
As a leading food and drink agency, it is fair to say we think about food 365 days a year, but this year we’ll be adding an extra day as it is a leap year. Every four years, February boasts an extra day, a curious anomaly in our calendars known as ‘leap day’. While some see it merely as an additional date on the calendar and possibly the chance for women to propose (more of this later!), others view it as an opportunity to create customs, including those surrounding food and feasting. From Greek feasts to Chinese banquets, we take a look at how leap day is marked across the world…

jellybean values….
If you are an avid follower of our socials, you may have noticed recent posts featuring an animation of care, expertise & collaboration. These are the values which underpin jellybean as a brand and that we live by and do business by.

Dining in Darkness at Dans le Noir
London is a notorious hot bed for swanky restaurants and cutting-edge dining experiences, and Dans le Noir, settled in the heart of the city, only serves to bolster this reputation. Exactly what is says on the French tin, this now rather well-known restaurant offers guests the unique culinary experience of eating your meal completely shrouded in darkness.

Parma’s Dinner of the Thousand 2023
On Tuesday it was a delight to see the historic city centre of Parma transformed into a gourmet spectacle under the stars for the fourth annual Dinner of the Thousand (La Cena dei Mille). A thousand lucky guests embarked on a culinary journey like nothing I have seen or witnessed before.

Jersey Girls
It is fair to say that I had never thought about taking a trip the Channel Islands until, that was, it was suggested to me by two fabulous friends as a girls’ bank holiday get-away. As one had come all the way from Australia and all three of us love our food and drink, we were keen to make the most of our three days in Jersey and of course restaurants came top of our priority list. So here are some of our highlights, bearing in mind we only really managed to explore Gorey Point, Grouville and a tiny bit of St Helier.

All Rhodes Lead to… (sorry)
Having just returned from the very beautiful, and very hot, island of Rhodes, I thought I’d share with you some of my foodie favourites from this trip.
Landing at noon, thanks to a very early 6am flight (delightful), we sat down at our hotel’s bar to enjoy a delicious lunch of frozen margaritas and for myself, a Feta sandwich. As a self-proclaimed Feta cheese fan, I was not left disappointed when what appeared to be a whole packet appeared on my plate. This was the start of what I can imagine were a great few days for my sister, as I would exclaim with excitement ‘oooh Feta’ every time I saw a Greek salad on a menu.

Brunch, Boats and Barcelona
Last week, I was fortunate enough to visit Barcelona for my oldest friend’s hen do. What ensued, was a three-day trip jam PACKED with sangria, beautiful sights and great food. To say we tapped into the tapas trend is an understatement – if we weren’t out ordering tapas, we were recreating our own spread on the beach – what a dream.
Join me as I take you through our culinary journey…

We’re Celebrating Being Shortlisted!
We’re thrilled that jellybean has been shortlisted for the third consecutive year for ‘Best B2B Campaign’ in the Alliance of Independent Agencies’, Wing Awards.
With jellybean having won both previous years, we’re hoping for a hattrick!
‘Pep Up Your Menu!’ was a route to market foodservice campaign for PEPPADEW® UK – and we’re delighted that it has been shortlisted as one of the outstanding campaigns in the B2B category.
This integrated campaign was developed to help PEPPADEW® UK achieve national listings for its latest innovation, PEPPADEW® Bites. Our talented team pulled out all the stops combining strong strategy, bespoke insight, as well as impactful creative, to engage wholesale buyers and help our amazing client secure national listings for the PEPPADEW® Bites.
We’re incredibly proud the bean’s hard work has been recognised amongst the best B2B campaigns of the year. Having won in 2021 and 2022 with our campaigns for Sarson’s and Philadelphia, here’s hoping for a hattrick as we celebrate ‘independents day’ at MAD//Fest, 4th July 2023.
To read the Pep Up Your Menu case study click here.

Jellybean Goes Green: Our Eco-Friendly Week of Fun and Action
At jellybean, we didn’t let Earth Day (April 22nd) and Jellybean Day (also April 22nd!) pass without a celebration. We organised an entire week filled with eco-friendly activities, and not only did we have fun we also took the time to recognise our eco accomplishments as an agency.
But we didn’t stop there! As part of our commitment to the environment, we raised funds for EarthDay.org, an organisation that drives meaningful action for our planet through various programs and campaigns.
To encourage everyone to do their bit for the environment, we asked our beans to take part in initiatives aligned with the 5 topics of Earth Day – Meat-Free, Plastic, Conservation, Art & Fashion, and Climate Change. We believe that even small actions can have a big impact, and we hope that our efforts will inspire others to join in as well.
