From Brand Pillars to Bites: How We Turn Business Messages Into Food through experiential catering.

Most brands have a deck full of messages: pillars, values, propositions which are delivered on a screen to a room that's half-checking emails (we've all been there)

We’d rather put them on a plate. Think experiential catering, where the food tells the story instead of just feeding the room.

Start with the story, not the menu

For their 2026 Impact Forum, TripleLift came to us with four commercial pillars: creative, curation, audience and measurement. They were a solid jump-off, but not obviously delicious.

Before we thought about food, we looked at the event structure. This was about human judgement in modern media, and the venue was a 1930s members' cinema, so film gave us the language:

• The Script (creative): what earns attention?

• The Frame (curation): where does a story become powerful?

• The Room (audience): who is it really for?

• The Reviews (measurement): how do we know it landed?

  
  

Four pillars became four acts, and once the story was set, every bite and every drink had a job to do.

Turn data into a drink

TripleLift's world is behavioural signals: how people shop, and what that says about them. That's hard to explain over canapés, but easy to show in a glass.

Guests arrived at the Commerce Kiosk, a cinema concession stand, and took a quick quiz: which Commerce Character are you? Their answers created a shopper profile and a cocktail to match.

• The Impulse Buyer got Add to Basket: aperitivo, blood orange, grapefruit and sparkling wine.

• The Deep Diver got 17 Tabs Open: a yuzu, ginger and jasmine highball.

• The Hard Sell got Convince Me: Lillet Blanc, white peach, Suze and lemon.

Before anyone had said a word about the client's proposition, every guest was holding it in their hand.

TripleLift Impact Forum Commerce Kiosk

Let the food carry the tension

Panels are where events can get a little sleepy. So for Act 2, we built The Hot Seat, a styled, televised podcast setup where Senior Media leaders were invited to talk about the moments that shaped how they lead.

There were three questions, three bites and rising heat. As the questions got sharper, so did the food, and guests added the heat themselves:

1. Warming up: Welsh rarebit hash brown with Aleppo chilli mustard

2. Turn up the heat: mushroom bulgogi on a sesame rice cracker with gochujang chilli crunch

3. The Hot Seat: crispy chicken taco, charred corn crema and Scotch bonnet hot honey

The menu helped set the pace. Nobody had to be told the stakes were rising, because they could taste it.

Hot Seat Style Televised Podcast Setup.

Make people the main ingredient

Everyone has a story people know them by: LinkedIn profiles, job titles and professional histories. During Act Three, we went underneath that, with three media professionals sharing their second lives, and we built a dish around each one.

• Jason Wescott (WPP) is also a DJ. His story ran from frugal vegan food on tour to lavish media lunches. His dish was watermelon 'tuna' nigiri with chia seed caviar.

• Chanelle Urquico (TripleLift) is also a food blogger and podcaster. She took us to a birthday trip in San Sebastián. Her dish was Basque beef cheek with Rioja jus, smoked potato and guindilla.

• Paul Chatwyn-Ros (OMG) is also a wrestling writer. He took us to his New Orleans honeymoon. His dish was a crispy shrimp po' boy with horseradish, lime and slaw.

As well as hearing the story behind the title, guests were able to taste it too.

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Give it an ending

Films don't just stop, and events shouldn't either. We closed with a wrap party, with signature cocktails and a film-inspired menu, so the day's conversations had somewhere to land.

• Pulp Fiction: a Big Kahuna burger

• Barbie: a hot pink beetroot taco with whipped feta

• Bond: gin-cured salmon with vermouth crème fraîche, shaken, not stirred

The references were familiar enough to start a conversation and specific enough to be remembered.

Try it on your own brand

You don't need a cinema to do this. Start with three questions:

1. What's the story? Find a structure your audience already understands, then map your messages onto it.

2. What does each moment need to do? It might spark curiosity, build tension or create connection. Then choose the food that does that job.

3. Where can guests take part? They might take a quiz, choose a drink or add the heat themselves. Taking part is what turns a message into a memory.

That's Edible Engagement.

Got a message that deserves more than a slide? Let's talk.