Industry · Food & Beverage
Everyone eats.
Almost nobody chooses the way
your marketing assumes they do.
Three gaps. All of them expensive.
GAP 1
Why they choose…
GAP 2
One brand out of 1000s
GAP 3
A Consistent Experience
Every one of these is a gap between what the business is
and what the market believes it is.
Closing them is what we do.
Services for Food & Beverage Clients
What an F&B brand gets when it hires NM+U.
We treat the menu as a brand document.
Pricing architecture, category naming, item hierarchy, and what sits at eye level are brand decisions that most agencies never touch and most operators make without a brand lens. The menu is the highest-traffic piece of communication a food business owns.
System coherence without flattening the local.
Multi-unit and franchised food brands have to hold one promise across many kitchens and many markets. We build brand systems that survive contact with independent operators, then build the local expression on top rather than in spite of it.
International market translation, done as positioning.
Cross-border food expansion fails on meaning far more often than on language. We have spent years running casual dining brands across Mexico, Latin America and Canada, where the same brand has to mean the right thing in several markets at once without fragmenting.
Franchise development for food concepts.
Recruiting operators is a different discipline from attracting guests, with a different buyer, a different consideration window, and a different definition of a qualified lead. We run both, and we do not confuse them.
01
Food and restaurant brand strategy
02
Menu strategy and pricing architecture
03
Franchise development for food concepts
04
Multi-unit and system-wide activation
05
International and multicultural market entry
06
Guest experience and hospitality F&B programs
07
Performance media and local marketing
IHOP International
Rolling Stone Food & Beverage Branding
Applebee’s International
FAQs
Gradually, by giving guests a better reason to come. Discounts dominate restaurant marketing because they are easy to measure and work fast. Over time they teach guests that the deal is the reason to visit, and they wait for it. The way out is to find what regulars value most, whether it is a dish, the experience, or what the brand stands for, and make that the headline. Keep offers for trial and slow periods, and stop leading with them.
By giving guests a reason that belongs only to you. In a crowded category, most brands describe the category: fresh, friendly, family, value. Guests then choose on distance and price. The real difference is usually already inside the business, in a dish regulars order every time, in how the kitchen works, or in what reviewers praise that the marketing never mentions. Find it, say it in plain words, and test it with one question: could the place across the street say this? If yes, keep looking.
Fix the core and free the edges. A small set of things has to be the same everywhere: the signature items, the standard guests expect on every plate, the identity, and the way the brand sounds. Everything else, from local events to neighborhood partnerships and market-specific specials, should flex, because operators adapt it anyway. Restaurants are tested every visit, every guest, every plate, so the marketing should promise only what every kitchen can deliver on a busy Friday.
It is the most-read brand document a restaurant has. Pricing architecture, category names, item order, descriptions, and what sits at eye level all tell guests what the brand is and what it wants them to choose. Most menus are designed by operations and priced by finance, without a brand lens. Treating the menu as part of the positioning work often moves average check and guest perception faster than advertising does.
Because the buyer is different. A guest is choosing a meal. A prospective franchisee is choosing a business, often with their savings and the next ten years of their life. They want unit economics, support, site selection, and what current owners say, and they need a funnel built for a long decision. When franchise sales runs on the consumer website and creative, it sells appetite to someone who needs a business case. For IHOP International, our franchise development program produced 450+ qualified franchise sales leads.
As a brand, not an amenity. For many hotels, resorts, stadiums, and attractions, the food program shapes how guests remember the whole visit, and it is usually marketed as a line on the amenities page. Give it a name, a point of view, and its own reason to visit. A food program with its own identity draws local guests who were never going to stay, and it gives overnight guests a reason to spend on property.
Book a 45-minute conversation with two NM+U strategists. We research your brand, category, and competitors before the call. On the call, we show you where the market is misreading your business, what that is likely costing you, and what to fix first. Within 24 hours you receive a one-page summary you can act on with or without us. If working together makes sense, that is a separate conversation, on your initiative.
Launch is the start of the work. In the first weeks, platforms are still learning and early data is noisy, so we watch delivery, spend pacing, and tracking daily and hold back on big changes. Once patterns hold, we move budget toward the audiences, placements, and creative producing qualified outcomes, such as franchise leads, direct bookings, or orders, cut what is not, and test new variations against the winners. For multi-location brands, we plan centrally and adjust by market, and report results location by location.
The story. The logo, the menu, and the room types travel. The meaning often does not, because the brand was built on assumptions local customers and local operators do not share. Most expansion treats this as a translation job when it is a positioning job: what does this brand stand for here, against these competitors, for this guest? It also changes the franchise sales case, since a regional operator weighs the brand differently than a U.S. buyer would. We work in English and Spanish across Mexico, Latin America, and Canada.
Most of our clients work with us for years. Our average client relationship runs more than eight years, because positioning work pays off when the same team carries it into execution and keeps improving it. Many relationships start with a defined project, such as a brand identity, a franchise development launch, or a website, and continue as a monthly retainer once both sides have seen the work.
The Orange Plus
Fueling franchise growth: mastering lead generation in franchise sales
Fueling Franchise Growth: Mastering Lead Generation
Opportunities and dangers: the rise of AI-generated social media content
Opportunities and Dangers: The Rise of
Three mistakes that nascent franchise organizations frequently make
Three common mistakes made by nascent
A term first coined is 2009 is more relevant than ever. The rise of bleisure: a new frontier in hospitality marketing
A term first coined is 2009
Franchise expansion in emerging markets: tapping into growing tourism and middle-class populations
Franchise expansion in emerging markets: tapping
Building brand affinity through storytelling: how every brand can inspire connection
Building brand affinity through storytelling: how
The first conversation
Get an
F&B Perception Gap
Analysis.
45 minutes. Two strategists. We come with a read on your brand, your competitive set, and your agent- and broker-facing communications. You leave with a clear view of where the gap is.
