Become the Taste of the Town with “Good for You” Food PR and NRPR’s Recipe for Success

Food connects us. Family gatherings, holidays, weddings, celebrations — all commemorated with the breaking of bread with those we care about. From farmers, grocery stores, and restaurateurs to food bloggers and Instagrammers, the food ecosystem is continually evolving. If you grow, create, deliver, market and sell sustenance, or are involved in education and nutrition, Food PR can help create a recipe for success.   

What is Food PR?

As with any product, building a brand presence based on the optimal mix of public relations and marketing is critical for success. Food and beverage now includes more healthy choices and immunity-boosting ingredients. NRPR works with “good for you” food brands. 

Consumers are also looking beyond the food itself to social, environmental, and ethical responsibility and impact. And in the COVID era, people have been looking to support local restaurants and shops more than ever. Consequently, brands need to find ways to rise above the competition. A strategic, integrated public relations and marketing program can lead the way and boost media exposure, sales, and market share for a product or business. 

Food and beverage PR uses the same tools as other industries including media relations and press coverage to increase visibility and build a positive brand association. Food and beverage PR and marketing also need to include a heavy social media presence complete with visuals to be sent to media and consumers. 

Food and beverage choices are extremely personal. Trust in and connection to the brand and like-minded consumers are also critical to maintaining positive brand associations.

PR Strategies for Food Companies

A PR agency with expertise in the food and beverage space knows the importance of building relationships with the top relevant media targets and influencers to garner coverage, reviews, and timely inclusion. 

It is also important for your Food PR firm to remember that you are a business and to place stories about the organization’s growth strategy, executives, and culture, as appropriate. As with all accounts across industries, NRPR Group begins with learning the story behind the product and brand, what does it represent? What does it mean to current and potential customers? 

We would then research media outlets and develop targeted media outreach. This could include local press, trade publications, broadcast outlets, food journalists, bloggers, influencers, and more. Food journalists are experts in the field with a high level of knowledge, curiosity, and love for the food and beverage topics they cover. They are on top of food trends and may have worked in the industry or as chefs or restaurateurs.

NRPR Group personalizes every outbound email sent to the press to ensure that we think like executives and media. We work with executives who will be speaking with the press to make sure that they are comfortable and on message. NRPR Group knows that PR professionals are here to act as liaisons between clients and media. Our team supplies the media with everything needed such as images, samples, and detailed information to develop a factual, accurate story.

In addition to the usual public relations tactics, good for you food and beverage brands have specific needs such as fact sheets, nutritional information, and inclusion in dining guides, gift guides, and reviews. Holidays and seasonal events such as summer barbecues, graduations, and major sporting events are important hooks to which to tie clients’ brands.

How to Leverage PR for Food and Beverage

The primary elements of a PR campaign for food and beverage companies include: 

  • Ongoing Coverage: While it can be exciting to see your company featured in the media, one story is not enough. Audiences need 10-to-15 touchpoints to build awareness. Through careful planning, appropriate targeting and ongoing interaction with media, NRPR raises clients’ media presence to boost sales and market attention.
  • Social media: Social media content must be coordinated across a company’s website, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram, et al. The content must be appropriate for each platform. Posting content and walking away is not an effective strategy. Your PR or social media team needs to post engaging content, monitor that content, and interact with followers and influencers.
  • Influencer campaigns: One of the prime differences between PR and advertising is that with advertising, a company pays to tell the appropriate audience how great its product is. Conversely, PR works with the media to have someone else talk about the benefits of the product. Influencers share what they like about a product to their social media audiences that respect or value their opinion. NRPR Group has experience evaluating and working with influencers to ensure a successful business relationship for everyone involved.
  • Events: An event is a great way to showcase a product, a restaurant or store or opening, or even a website launch. Investors, media, customers, and influencers would have the opportunity to try the product, service, or location personally. The focus should be on key differentiators. As your PR team, NRPR Group would work to make sure the relevant media attend the event and cover the appropriate elements.
  • Bloggers: Bloggers love to try new products and review them. Although not as well-known as celebrity influencers, bloggers also have committed and dedicated audiences who value their opinions. Bloggers may also be willing to use a specific product in a recipe and then share their impressions.
  • TV: Food publicity needs to be visual so that the audience can see the product in use, the completed dish, the restaurant, or the store. When viewers see someone enjoying a product or location, they can imagine the taste or the experience and how it can make any occasion more enjoyable.
  • Podcasts: Having an executive or spokesperson appear on a podcast allows the audience to hear about the product or location in the company’s own words. The host is generally an expert in food and beverage or is a gourmet and will conduct an informative conversation about the company and/or the product(s) being discussed.

Why Your Food and Beverage Company Needs a PR firm

CEOs, product managers, and other executives are experts on the food and beverage products they are selling, or the location they manage. However, due to the complexity of running a business on a daily basis, they may not have time to build necessary relationships with the media or influencers. 

An expert PR team, such as Team NRPR, cultivates and reinforces relationships with media on an ongoing basis to foster trust. NRPR ensures that the media have what they need to write or produce accurate, credible stories. We can help recommend kits that include samples of the food and beverage product, or invite them to try a product before including it in dining guides, product roundups, or holiday gift guides, or visit a restaurant or store for a tour or demonstration.

PR can help build credibility for the company by creating messaging that aligns with the story your company wants to share publicly. Your PR agency can also increase the visibility of media coverage by elevating the coverage through social media and website posting. 

The PR team can also build visibility for executives through thought leadership opportunities, including applying for awards and speaking opportunities. Your PR team will also help prepare executives for interviews by working with them on sample questions, messaging, sound bites, and keeping the conversation on track.

Examples of NRPR Group’s work with food and beverage companies:

  • Legendary Foods: Legendary Foods engaged NRPR in anticipation of the launch of a new nutritious, keto-friendly snack. When the product launch was delayed, NRPR pivoted its pitching strategy to create buzz and media attention around the company’s tasty legacy products. 

The team successfully converted press who were originally interested in the new product into covering their legacy products, which included flavored almonds and nut butters, and also gathered interest from fresh media contacts for the greater part of Q1 2020. 

In three months, NRPR secured 89 total pieces of press. This coverage represented a greater quantity and higher quality of positive coverage than Legendary Foods received previously. The majority of content focused entirely on Legendary Foods products and featured recipes including Legendary products as key ingredients. Check out the case study.

  • i won! organics: NRPR Group engaged with i won! organics, producers of high protein, organic, plant-based, functional snack foods, to secure media coverage and reviews of launch and re-launch of the five flavors of their popular protein chips. 

Our relationship with the founding team spanned back to when they owned and ran FitMark, another NRPR Group client in the health and wellness space. Through strategic, targeted pitching efforts, NRPR secured more than 30 product requests for the launch and a dozen product requests for review from interested media outlets, including Pop Sugar and Oprah.com.    

  • Dorian Yates Nutrition (DY Nutrition): NRPR worked with the Dorian Yates Nutrition (DY Nutrition) team who were seeking creative direction and a strategic plan for social growth to bring their products to the forefront with personality, to build community. 

Working closely with DY Nutrition’s executive team, NRPR developed social media best practices for the brand and launched contests and giveaways to grow their channels, while also promoting website sales. NRPR Group helped bring the brand’s ideas to life in a way that represents the spirit and personality of Six-Time Mr. Olympia, Dorian Yates. Check out the case study.

Next Steps

Ready to learn more? The next step is to reach out to discuss how NRPR Group’s team of experts can increase visibility for your brand, please give us a call at (424) 421-9610 or use the Contact Us page. 

We will set up a session with you to learn about your company, your challenges, and goals to determine how NRPR can best help you to increase visibility and revenues.