About Schaefer

We only work with food and beverage. That's it.

Not because we can't do other things. Because deep category focus is the only way to give F&B brands the edge they actually need — in media buying, audience insight, and creative strategy.

The Conviction

Category depth
beats generalist breadth.

Most agencies spread across every vertical — retail, SaaS, real estate, restaurants. They learn your category on your dime. By month six, they're passable. By month twelve, you're their case study and they've moved on.

We've spent years inside food and beverage — talking to shoppers, studying purchase behavior, understanding the specific tension between shelf, DTC, and digital. We don't need to learn your world. We already live in it.

That focus compounds. Every campaign we run makes us sharper for the next one. Every shopper interview builds a picture of how F&B buyers actually decide. That's the edge we bring — and it only exists because we never left the category.

Our Research Engine Updated annually
135,745
F&B customer conversations per year
By Category
Grocery / CPG 42%
QSR / Restaurant 31%
DTC Food & Bev 18%
Specialty Retail 9%
Methods: Surveys 1:1 Interviews In-store In-house. Not outsourced.

How We're Different

Two things most agencies
don't have. We do.

Part 1

We know your customers.

We run surveys and interviews with hundreds of thousands of real F&B customers every year — in-house, not outsourced. We know what drives their decisions at shelf, online, and in-store before we ever touch your ad account.

  • In-house survey and interview capability — no third-party research firms
  • Hundreds of thousands of F&B customer conversations annually
  • We find the purchase trigger before we spend a dollar on media
  • Insight drives creative, targeting, and message — not guesswork
Part 2

We know how ad platforms work.

Creative is the new targeting. The algorithms on Meta, Google, and retail media don't need you to over-define your audience — they need you to give them creative that attracts the right buyer. Most brands get this backwards.

  • Creative signals to the algorithm who to find — not just what to show
  • We build creative that works with platform algorithms, not against them
  • Broad targeting + strong creative outperforms narrow audiences + weak creative — every time
  • Meta, Google, and retail media — we know how each platform learns and optimizes

Where We've Been

Our in-house team brings expertise from the best in the category.

Before Schaefer, we built strategy and ran media for some of the most demanding organizations in food and beverage. We know how these businesses think, what they measure, and what they get wrong.

Retail
Walmart Sam's Club HEB Zappos
CPG
P&G Tyson Kraft Kellogg's Mondelez Kimberly-Clark
Restaurants / QSR
Panera Chick-fil-A Wendy's Burger King GrubHub Tim Hortons Firehouse
The result?

We understand F&B the way in-house teams do — and execute it the way the best agencies should.

Our Leadership

People who know the category.

Sidnee Schaefer
Founder & CEO
Sidnee Schaefer
Founder & CEO

Sidnee founded Schaefer on a simple observation: most food brands are guessing about what actually drives demand. She spent years inside startups, Fortune 500s, and agencies before building Schaefer as a senior-level partner firm that works exclusively in F&B. She leads all advertising work across clients and is known for her pragmatic growth perspective.

LinkedIn
Seth Waite
Partner
Seth Waite
Partner & Chief Strategist

Seth studies consumers and led the creation of our Why People Buy™ framework. At Schaefer, he decodes the psychology behind F&B purchase decisions that make someone choose one brand over twenty others on the shelf. He leads our sales process with F&B brands and helps everyone figure out if we're all a good fit.

LinkedIn
John Schnettgoecke
Operations
John Schnettgoecke
Chief Operating Officer

John leads our research and customer insights. He's worked with Sidnee and Seth for over a decade and brings experience in strategy development and customer intelligence from startups and emerging brands to the Fortune 1. John keeps us organized and insights-driven across every client, campaign, and creative.

LinkedIn

The Schaefer Guarantee

Performance lift in 3 months
— or 100% of fees back.

We only take on clients we're confident we can grow. The guarantee isn't a gimmick — it's how we operate when we believe in the work.

Questions about the guarantee? See our FAQ →
What We Measure

Performance lift is defined upfront — ROAS, CPA, conversion rate, foot traffic, or revenue. We agree on the metric before we start.

The Terms

No measurable lift within 3 months of ad launch? We return 100% of fees for that period. No argument. No negotiation.

By The Numbers

When targeting, message, and creative align, the results aren't incremental. They're transformational.

Across our client engagements, three metrics move consistently and significantly when we fix the underlying audience and creative mismatch.

100%
Higher click-through rate

When targeting, message, and creative are aligned — versus broad, generic campaigns running on guesswork.

Typical range: 20–100%+
75%+
Higher conversion rate

When personalization and dynamic creative are mapped to the right audience at the right moment in the funnel.

Typical range: 20–75%+
90%+
Better ROAS

When untargeted static ads are replaced with personalized, dynamic creative matched to the audiences that actually convert.

Typical range: 30–90%+

These aren't outliers. They're what happens when the fundamentals are right. Most brands are leaving this on the table — because nobody has told them where the problem actually is.

F&B Brands Only

Ready to work with an agency
that actually knows your category?

We guarantee results or give money back. That means we only take on brands we're confident we can grow. Tell us about yours.

Work With Us →