Seen it, now taste it: brands and the food moment.

Lucinda Barber

4 days ago

5 min read

The dinner is becoming the new default.

Product launches, flagship openings, client thank-yous. Increasingly, the answer is to get everyone around a table.

And when every brand is hosting a dinner, simply putting on a good one isn't enough to make it memorable. A great menu and beautiful florals might set the scene, but they're not the idea. The more interesting question is what food can do for a brand that a product display, a presentation or another perfectly styled event can't.

The brands getting it right are using food to make their worlds tangible. Giving guests something to taste, take part in and talk about long after the plates have been cleared.

Even Vogue is asking whether dining is fashion's next frontier. But this goes beyond fashion or even dinner. It's about finding more meaningful ways to bring people into a brand's world.

Food at events isn't new. What's changing is how much thought goes into it. Eventbrite's 2026 Social Study found that 79% of 18 to 35-year-olds in the UK and US plan to attend more events this year, while 74% think in-person experiences matter more than digital ones. When people come together in person, there's an opportunity to give them more than something to look at. There's something to taste, share and experience together.

The dinner as a statement

Hermès, Brooklyn. To celebrate its new Williamsburg flagship, Hermès skipped the conventional dinner styling and ran an illuminated miniature New York skyline down a winding table for 250 guests. The city became the centrepiece, quite literally, making the dinner feel rooted in the place the brand was celebrating. (My Modern Met)

Lancôme Skin Science Club, Istanbul. Dramatic red draping, florals and product-inspired details brought the brand's world into the room. It's a reminder that a dinner can be more than a setting for a launch; the environment itself can become part of how guests encounter a brand.

Lurpak 125 Good Food Vault. For Lurpak's anniversary, ZEAL built an oven time machine: 125 guests ate their way from 1901 to 2026, spreading, playing with and smashing ingredients to finish their own meal. Rather than simply telling the story of 125 years of good food, the experience let guests get their hands dirty and become part of it.

Different approaches, but the same underlying idea: the food, the setting and what guests do all contribute to the story. Nothing feels like it's there simply to fill a table.

Food as part of the brand

Some brands take this further, building food into their identity rather than bringing it out for a one-off event.

Loewe's Dreamery pop-up created an ice cream inspired by its Pistachio candle, turning a fragrance into something you could taste as well as smell. Saie × Sephora turned London's Regency Café into a chip shop-inspired pop-up to celebrate Saie's UK retail launch, giving a beauty debut a distinctly local twist.

What connects these ideas isn't simply that they're photogenic. It's that food gives each brand another way to express itself. A flavour can translate a fragrance. A familiar treat can take on the codes of a fashion house. A café can turn a beauty brand into somewhere people want to spend time.

The best examples don't put a logo on something edible. They find a connection between the brand and the food, so the experience makes sense beyond the photo.

The supper club is back

There's also something to be said for keeping things smaller.

Alongside the big launches and elaborate brand dinners, intimate supper clubs and recurring gatherings offer a different kind of connection. Communities such as Have You Heard bring people together around shared interests, creating opportunities for conversations that can continue beyond a single event.

A one-off experience can make an impression. Bringing people back to the same table can build a relationship. For brands, that's an interesting shift: from creating a moment for an audience to giving a community a reason to keep showing up.

Fashion, beauty, FMCG, retail: the industries might differ, but the opportunity is much the same. Food gives people a reason to pause, take part and connect with one another, not just with the brand.

How we do it

We've been exploring this territory since our days at Gingerline and Flavourology, so it's brilliant to see more brands putting food at the heart of their experiences. For us, the interesting part has always been finding the connection between what a brand wants to say and what people can actually do, taste or discover.

For Ninja, we built Double Stacked: a pop-up restaurant inside a giant air fryer on the South Bank, where 500+ guests ate their way through a three-course, multi-room journey over three days. Instead of simply demonstrating what the product could do, we made its defining feature the setting for an experience people could eat their way through.

For Soap & Glory, we launched Call of Fruity with a five-course tasting journey where every dish reimagined a fragrance note, from mango to coconut. It gave guests a way to explore fragrance beyond their sense of smell, turning something usually experienced on the skin into something they could discover on the plate. Scent you could taste.

For Tesco, Hatch turned cracking an Easter egg into a sensory experiment, with blindfolded tastings, dry-ice eggs and an Egg Cracking Ceremony. Something familiar became an invitation to get curious, question what you were experiencing and see Easter chocolate differently.

For Subway, we created an edible art gallery at the Vinyl Factory, where hero sandwiches became artworks, including a cheeky take on Tracey Emin's Unmade Bed. By borrowing the language of an art gallery, we gave people a new way to look at something they thought they already knew.

And this summer, we helped Disney+ and RPM bring their shows to life through ice cream, with a different flavour for each title, served across Taste of London, Soho House Festival, BST Hyde Park and The Big Feastival. Each flavour offered another way into the worlds and stories people already love on screen.

Different briefs, different audiences, different menus. But the starting point is always the same: don't just tell people what a brand is about. Find a way for them to experience it.