With more than 31,000 food and beverage businesses and one million restaurants in the U.S., competition is incredibly high. It gets harder and harder to make and retain foodie customers in today’s competitive world, where they have multiple options on their plates. One thing that helps to influence a foodie to prefer your food over another is mind-blowing branding. That can make your potential customers believe that your food must have something unique that they must try.
Either way, it’s not wrong to say companies don’t sell food—they sell branding, which creates feelings of soul food and unique customer experiences.
If you want to survive, you must differentiate your food brand. If you crave to be your customer’s preference, branding can fulfil your appetite. Your purpose-driven food branding can take you from nowhere to everywhere. To help you do sensational food branding, we have created an ultimate recipe for food branding so you can make an impact on your customers.
What is food branding?
Food branding is the chain of strategies for creating an exceptional product or service identity. It includes visual elements from design to packaging, an authentic brand message, a brand voice, and values. All
these elements create an emotional connection and make customers
perceive that they will get an experience, not just a meal.
See YOUR food brand as a person, like how that person dresses up, acts,
and his core values and beliefs. Let’s say you want to be in the good books of someone you like. What do you do to impress? Likely, you will go the extra mile with your outfit, make thoughtful gestures, focus on connection, and actively listen to represent your unique persona so they easily remember you. Is it?
The same is true for your food branding essentials, which build positive perceptions of customers around your company. Then, they remember it, ultimately buy it, and become your raving customers. It’s all about their gut feeling about your food product or service.
Why should you consider food branding?
To be on customers’ priority lists, you must consider food branding. Here are the factors that likely push you harder to kick-start food branding;
- Trust: Successful companies are built on trust, which is built by a clear and consistent branding strategy. That trust makes customers confident that they support safe and quality food standards.
- Stand out: In the hustle food industry, first, you need to appeal to customers toward your company product, and this is what you can do by creating a distinct and memorable identity. You make a good impression and set your food product or service apart to make customers irresistible to try yours and cherish an experience.
- Sales: Who doesn’t crave to level up sales? Of course, all of us run business around it. Your powerful food branding strategies can help you persuade your customers to buy your food.
How to build a food brand (with real-world examples)
The best food branding is created by mixing the right ingredients in your branding recipe. Let’s explore the ingredients you need to create an impactful food brand.
1-Dive into Market research.
The first important tool to kick off food branding is thorough market research, as the whole process is based on it. Through market research, you can clearly understand your
- Target group needs
- Emerging trends
- Competitors
- Set realistic business goals.
Therefore, peek behind the curtain of your food industry to know your market and customers’ needs, preferences, and behaviours. You can dive into research through interviews and surveys with people, trend reports, market statistics, and food industry content.
Starbucks is a perfect example of successfully maintaining its presence through market research. It strongly appeals to Millennials and Gen Z, who are reformers, mainstreamers, and explorers. They position themselves as a coffee brand while offering premium quality coffee with a comforting ambience. Starbucks continuously adapts to evolving consumer preferences and
- Track cultural trends.
- Monitor social media.
- Collect customer feedback.
Especially the “My Starbucks Idea platform,” where people share, vote and discuss ideas online to improve the Starbucks experience in and out of the cafe.
On this platform, consumers shared the idea of introducing new flavours of skinny beverages, Mocha Coconut Frappuccino Blended Beverages, and cake pop treats. Starbucks uses consumer research to shape its new savoury products. That ultimately helps them sell more with consumer preferences.
2. Position Your Unique Selling point (USP)
After you have completed your market research, figure out your unique selling point (USP) to position your brand successfully. Your clear USP depends on the market research that you do to know your consumers and competitors in depth. Now, answer these questions to craft your USP well.
- What unique food products bring to the table for customers?
- How is it different from competitors?
Identify your strengths, whether it’s a unique fusion of cuisines, affordability, sustainability, and locally sourced ingredients or an innovative dining experience. Finding your strengths will help you create a clear and affectionate USP.
Domino’s Pizza has an unforgettable USP that their customers linked with the brand.
Domino’s Pizza: “You get fresh, hot pizza delivered in 30 minutes or less to your doorstep, guaranteed.”
The statement illuminates the unique benefits a consumer will receive, including fast delivery and quality pizza. At that time, they brought an innovative vision, targeting customers striving for convenience and reliability.
3. Create a distinct brand identity
The brand’s visual identity is one of the most essential elements of compelling branding. The way your brand looks matters most in grabbing the consumer’s attention and making them hungry for your food product.
Think about any brand that you admire. What comes to your mind first? Probably their logo, colours, the latest social media post you have seen, or likely the last product you purchased. These all come from the visual brand identity.
Since a brand’s visual identity influences consumer perceptions and attitudes, it’s critical to implement it in your food brand to stand out. Some of the critical Brand identity elements include
- Logo: No matter how many times you might have heard, branding is not all about logos. Still, it’s the most needed element for branding. And 75% of consumers even recognize a brand through its logo. Did you know that 94% of the population remembers the Coca-Cola logo? So, create a well-designed and unique logo that communicates the essence of your brand to establish credibility and build recognition.
- Colors: There is no denying that colors greatly impact consumer minds. The colors you choose can make your consumer hungry or even lose appetite. Colors boost 80% of brand recognition. So, dig into color psychology to pick the colors that coordinate with your brand’s personality and target audience interests.
- Typography: Likewise, the color fonts you choose significantly impact consumer behaviors, as they spark different feelings. Therefore, integrate fonts that reflect your brand values and resonate with consumers.
- Packaging: It’s critical to have visually appealing packaging for your food so your customers can feel your brand personality and values through it.
4. Craft your brand story.
Stories build emotional connections with customers and make you stand out from competitors. Storytelling increases the value of your food product or service. It brings authenticity and humanity to your brand.
Through your brand story, you convey your values, purpose, heritage, resilience, passion, and authenticity that resonate with target customers and make your brand a part of the consumer’s identity. If people adore your brand story, they will likely purchase your food or beverages in the future; statistics show that the chance is 55% high.
Even 92% of consumers desire brands to create ads that seem like stories.
The point to consider is to be honest, realistic, clear, and relevant to create an emotional impact on customers.
Ben & Jerry’s, a renowned ice cream company, has created a story by connecting its passion for social justice and environmental care with its devotion to creating outstanding flavors.
Their brand story displays grassroots activism, fair trade sourcing, and community involvement, packing an emotional touch of their mission to use their business to improve the world.
5-Market your food brand.
Make your presence known on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter, and optimize your website with SEO. Invest in local SEO for your food and beverage company website to make your brand noticeable to your target audience. As 56% of food brand website traffic comes from search engines, this is considered the best marketing strategy for businesses.
Launch your brand with Ad Campaigns to increase your customers’ appetite for your food. Share real people enjoying your food and recipes, post your updated menus, spotlight behind-the-scenes shots—bring your brand personality to life. Your marketing effort has to be so powerful that it creates excitement for food.
Taco Bell has completely mastered the marketing game to upsell its tacos, burritos, and quesadillas. It fosters a sense of excitement and urgency about its new store opening and seasonal offers to young adults and teenagers. It always stays up with trends and connects with its ideal consumers with SEO and social media marketing.
Taco Bell thoughtfully engages with customers in real time and appeals to them with a witty and sarcastic sense of humor.
To advertise the launch of their innovative mobile app, Taco Bell blacked out from all social media pages and left a message: “The new way to Taco Bell isn’t on FACEBOOK (social media names changed on every platform). It’s #onlyintheapp.” This became their famous social media promotion, making the app the most popular food and drink category of Apple.
Wind up
Still, the best-tasting food or beverage products need people to notice and buy them before they taste. Here, branding with in-depth market research ensures that your food product looks and feels pleasing with visuals, packaging, USP, and a compelling brand story that resonates with the audience.
Your branding must be consistent from packaging to social media to website so your target group can recognize your brand. A consistently presented brand visibility is 3.5 times greater and boosts revenue by 23% than an inconsistent brand presentation.
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