Why food is a big opportunity for your brand.

There's a moment that happens at every great experience.

It's not when the guests walk in and see the room for the first time. It's not when the performers appear. It's not even when the first course lands.

It's when someone takes a bite - and stops mid-conversation.

That pause. That moment of unexpected recognition. That's what we're building towards every time. And it happens because food, when it's designed with intention, does something no other medium can: it bypasses the thinking brain and goes straight to the feeling one.

The most powerful channel in your marketing mix has no screen

Food doesn't compete in that space. It operates in a completely different register.

Food grabs attention faster than any non-food cue. #Food is one of the most popular hashtags on social media, with over 250 million posts and counting. 70% of Gen Z use social media for food inspiration - and that's 53% across the general population.

And in survey after survey, food and drink consistently top the list of what guests remember and comment on after an event.

Taste and scent are the senses most directly linked to memory and emotion. Multi-sensory experiences are retained significantly longer than single-sense ones. A dish designed around your brand story doesn't just communicate your message - it embeds it.

And 91% of consumers say they're more likely to purchase after participating in a brand experience that engages them on that level.

Food is not just the catering.

The most common mistake brands make is treating food as logistics. The thing that keeps people from going hungry between programmed moments. Briefed in last minute.

The question isn't "what are we feeding people?" It's "what do we want people to feel, and how can the food carry that?" Different brief. Different outcome.

What happens when you get it right

For SharkNinja, we built Double Stacked - a fully immersive pop-up restaurant inside a giant air fryer installation on London's South Bank. The brief was to launch a new air fryer. The answer wasn't a demo stand or a press pack.

It was a three-course, multi-room dining journey where every dish was designed to show what the appliance could do - precision, texture, creativity - better than any brochure ever could. Over three days, more than 500 guests stepped inside the product before they ever touched it.

By the end, they didn't just understand the air fryer. They'd tasted what it was capable of.

In every case, the brief started the same way: what does this brand believe, and how can we make someone taste that?

The three things food does that nothing else can

It creates presence. When someone is eating, they're there. Not on their phone, not half-listening. The act of eating demands a kind of attention that no other brand touchpoint can manufacture.

It manufactures togetherness. Food has always been the context for human connection. Shared meals lower defences, open conversations, and create the conditions for genuine relationship-building. For B2B brands especially, that's worth more than any keynote.

And it lives somewhere the algorithm can't reach. A photograph of a beautiful dish is scrolled past in a fraction of a second. But the taste, the smell, the texture - those become part of how a person remembers the brand. Not a logo or a tagline. A feeling.

So how can brands utilise food more in their activations & events? 

Events have always been structured a certain way, and food has always occupied a certain place within that structure - functional, not creative.

Partly because it requires a different kind of brief. You can't hand food design to a caterer and expect storytelling. It requires someone who thinks about narrative first and menu second. Someone who asks what the food should make people feel before deciding what it should taste like.

And partly because the industry hasn't had great examples to point to. That's changing.

The brands doing the most interesting experiential work right now - the ones whose events actually generate conversation, coverage and repeat attendance - are the ones treating food as a creative medium, not a support function.

Jenny McNeill is the founder of Feast & Fable, the edible engagement agency.

If you've got a brief that deserves more than a buffet, get in touch at hello@feast-fable.co.uk