Several of the agencies food and beverage brands weigh us against do not do what we do. Raindrop, Crew Marketing Partners and MarketPlace Branding are brand and creative shops. They build positioning, identity and packaging. We run and measure paid media. Comparing us feature by feature would be like comparing an architect to a builder.
So this page is not a pitch against them. It is a guide to telling which one your situation calls for — and quite often the honest answer is the brand agency first, us second.
Last verified 1 September 2026 · Service descriptions taken from each agency's own site
How narrow is the category focus, and how far does the work go past creative into running and measuring media. Everyone in the F&B agency conversation sits somewhere on this grid.
Positions drawn from each agency's own published service list and stated industry focus, September 2026. Not a quality ranking.
This is the clearest way to tell them apart. A brand engagement is a project — it finishes, and you own a set of assets. A media engagement is an operation — it runs, and it either compounds or it stops. Neither is better. They are different purchases.
Ends with a deliverable. Success is measured by whether the brand is clearer and more distinctive than it was.
Never ends. Success is measured by whether the economics improved, and it is checkable monthly.
The failure mode we see most often: a brand pays for a beautiful identity, hands it to media with no research behind who it is aimed at, and cannot understand why the number did not move. The assets were fine. Nobody had asked why anyone buys.
| Capability | Schaefer | Brand agency |
|---|---|---|
| Brand positioning and strategy | – | ✓ |
| Visual identity and naming | – | ✓ |
| Packaging design | – | ✓ |
| Brand guidelines | – | ✓ |
| Paid media buying and management | ✓ | – |
| Retail media — Amazon, Walmart, Instacart, Target, Kroger | ✓ | – |
| Buyer motivation research tied to media | ✓ | – |
| Ongoing performance measurement | ✓ | – |
| Written performance guarantee | ✓ | – |
Teal dashes are work Schaefer does not do — we refer it to the shops above and are glad they exist. Grey dashes reflect what those agencies publish on their own sites. Several do excellent creative; none of them publish paid media management as a service.
Research is not a report we hand over and leave. It is the input to the creative, which is the input to the media, which is measured back against it. Pull any one of them out and the other three get worse.
Category-scale survey work plus qualitative, fielded and analysed by our own team. The people who read the data are the people who brief the creative, so nothing is lost in a handoff.
How the research works →Concepts built against each motivation the research surfaced, at the volume the platforms need before they can learn anything. Brief, design, copy, test.
See the creative process →Meta, TikTok and Pinterest, structured as a test against the research rather than run on platform defaults and hope.
See how paid social runs →Retail media, search and streaming across Amazon, Walmart Connect, Instacart, Target and Kroger, plus shopper activation through Fetch, Social Nature and Aisle — all measured against the number we agreed at the start.
See the full media scope →If the honest answer sends you elsewhere, we would rather you found that out here than four months into a retainer.
If positioning, identity and packaging are unresolved, media spend will amplify the confusion rather than fix it. Build the thing first.
Awareness problems and preference problems look identical in a dashboard and need opposite solutions. The second one is a research problem.
A project that ends with assets, or an operation that runs monthly and is judged on the number. Be honest about which you are buying.
Every answer here is one we would give on a call. Publishing them just means fewer wasted calls.
Three results from food and beverage brands. Every one started with research into why the category buys, not with a media plan.
Research replaced a 30–45 year-old grill dad with a retiree over 65. Conversion rates doubled. Not one additional dollar of media spend.
Read the case study →We rebuilt the best-customer cohort, re-pointed the budget behind it, and fed the platforms a volume of creative the brand had not run before.
Read the case study →A competitive landscape study surfaced an entire product line inside existing capability — and an $80M category opportunity.
See the work →We work food and beverage brands spending $5,000–$500,000 a month across paid social and retail media, and every engagement starts with buyer research.
Most agencies do not offer one because they do not want the pressure. Ours is the reason we turn work down — it only holds up if we are honest at intake about whether we can move your number.
ROAS, CPA, conversion rate, revenue growth or foot traffic — named before anything launches, so there is nothing to argue about afterwards.
Not at contract signing. Research runs first, two to three weeks, and the three months begin when the ads do.
100% of our agency fees for the period. No negotiation, no process to go through, no exceptions.
And if it isn't, we'll say so on the first call rather than the fourth month.
Work With Us →Not sure which kind of agency you need? Ask us.
Work With Us →