How to find a food & drink PR agency
If you're searching for a food & drink PR agency, chances are you've hit the same wall most brand founders and managers do: the good ones are expensive, the cheap ones don't know your industry, and it's hard to tell which is which from a website alone.
Here's what to look for, the questions worth asking before you sign anything, and a cheaper route that a lot of food & drink brands are switching to instead.
What makes a good food & drink PR agency
Not every PR agency is built for this industry, and that matters more than people think. Food and drink coverage runs through a specific set of journalists: recipe editors, food critics, drinks writers, lifestyle desks. A generic agency might have great fashion or tech contacts and barely any food and drink ones.
Look for:
A track record in food & drink specifically. Ask for real examples of coverage they've landed for brands like yours, not just a client logo wall.
Genuine relationships with food and drink press, not just a big spreadsheet of contacts they blast the same email to.
Clear reporting. You should know exactly what's being pitched, to whom, and what's landed, in plain terms, not vague monthly summaries.
A team that understands your product. Do they get why your sauce, snack, or drink is different, or are they treating you like every other client on their books?
Questions to ask before you hire one
Before signing a retainer, ask:
Which food & drink journalists have you placed coverage with in the last three months?
What does a typical pitch to a food editor look like?
How is success measured, and how often will I hear from you?
What happens if coverage doesn't land in the first few months?
Is there a minimum contract length?
If the answers are vague, that's usually your answer.
Red flags to watch for
Promises of guaranteed coverage. No agency can promise this, and any that do are overselling.
No food & drink case studies, only generic ones.
Long lock-in contracts with no flexibility.
Reporting that's all activity (emails sent) and no results (coverage landed).
The real cost of hiring an agency
This is the part most founders underestimate. A decent food & drink PR agency typically starts around £2,000 to £3,000 a month, and that's before you factor in the time you'll still spend briefing them, chasing updates, and approving every pitch before it goes out. For an early-stage or bootstrapped brand, that's a huge chunk of budget for results you still don't fully control.
The alternative: doing it yourself, properly
A growing number of food and drink brands are skipping the agency altogether and running PR themselves, with the right tools behind them.
That's exactly what affordable PR for food & drink brands looks like with PR Dispatch: direct access to over 1,000 verified UK food and drink journalists, AI-assisted pitching, pitch templates built for product features and founder stories, and the training to know what you're doing, all from £100 a month instead of £3,000.
The upside isn't just the price. Nobody explains your product better than you do, so when you're pitching directly, your voice comes through instead of getting filtered through an account manager who's never tasted what you make.
So, agency or DIY?
If you've got the budget and want everything handled for you, a good food & drink PR agency can absolutely deliver results, just go in with your eyes open on cost and ask the right questions first.
If you'd rather keep the budget, the control, and your own voice, it's worth seeing what running it yourself looks like before you sign a retainer.
See affordable PR for food & drink brands
Not quite your category? We take the same approach with wellness & beauty brands and homeware & gift brands too.
Get the same results, without the retainer
Watch our quick demo to see how PR Dispatch gives food and drink brands the journalist contacts, pitching tools and training to run PR in-house successfully, at a fraction of the agency cost