Perspectives & Industry Takes
Where the category is going and what to do about it — industry deep dives, contrarian arguments, and the trends we think are real.
The agencies where paid media is the actual job — ranked by media focus, F&B depth, in-house capability, and who really runs your account. Plus the four questions to ask before signing any media contract.
Why optimizing for efficiency often kills growth — and the counterintuitive way F&B brands should think about spend, reach, and returns at different stages of scale.
29% of U.S. commercial foodservice traffic is now on a deal — a 50-year high. Loyalty programs have become the QSR operating system for value and data. But many risk becoming better-branded discount infrastructure. 14 signals, four failure modes, and what real loyalty looks like instead.
The U.S. QSR industry hit $532B in 2025. Traffic still declined. A complete analysis of the bifurcated competitive map, the discount spiral that failed, consumer confidence collapse, and the operational playbook that won.
Why Jennifer Garner and Once Upon a Farm worked — and why most celebrity-led F&B brands don't. The win/loss pattern across 12 brands, a 10-point scorecard, and the academic framework behind all of it.
Budget, ROAS, creative volume, refresh cadence, retail media, discounting. The eleven questions food and beverage brands ask us most — each one answered with data from 103,750 live F&B ads rather than opinion.
Streaming viewers are the highest-income, most cooking-engaged grocery shoppers in our research. Who they are, what moves them to buy, and why most F&B brands can’t reach them.
F&B Brands Only
Everything in the Pantry is how we think. When you work with Schaefer, we run the full research process against your actual buyers — not a generic model.
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