Foodservice is arguably the world’s most competitive B2B market - but it’s also the golden opportunity for modern brand growth. With consumer retail saturated, margins squeezed and out-of-home experiences on the up, hospitality has become the key driver of brand discovery and loyalty. The sector is noisy and fast-moving, but the stakes are incredibly high.
While UK foodservice is worth approx. £78.2 billion in 2025 (and set to reach £107.8bn by 2030), it’s not an easy category to crack. National chains and local independents make up ~350,000 UK outlets, only accessible via hyper-fragmented routes to market. There are multiple stakeholders, all with diverse needs and agendas; from Michelin-starred chefs, to commercial procurement officers, all the way to budget-smart school canteen staff. And with some outlets planning menus a year in advance, buying journeys can feel lengthy and invisible.
These shifting demands expose a problem: traditional B2B marketing tactics (like trade press advertising, trade events and wholesaler promotions) no longer deliver impact at scale. Instead, modern decision-makers expect the same seamless, personalised engagement as consumers. Distinct operator needs, like cost per serve and sustainability compliance, require brands to prove how they solve genuine business problems - and sell to stakeholders’ hearts and minds.
Today, real foodservice growth comes from precision marketing: tailored content ecosystems, account-based marketing (ABM) strategies and data-driven engagement that flexes by operator type, menu cycle, and buying group role. But these strategies are only as strong as the data that underpins them. Where does that data come from - and how can brands actually use it?
The data gap: Fragmented, hidden, incomplete
In foodservice, data is the difference between guesswork and growth. The brands that own their data know exactly who their operators are, what they buy, when they buy it and why. That intelligence allows them to anticipate needs and personalise engagement. The result? Smarter targeting, stronger ROI and a real role shift from supplier to strategic partner.
Yet foodservice data is notoriously difficult to access, regardless of brand size. It’s largely owned by routes to market; scattered across wholesalers, EPOS providers, loyalty platforms, menu boards and disparate surveys.
As yet, no single source offers a full picture of the sector. And businesses who lack the resources to be able to piece together intelligence from up to 20 different sources risk overlooking the real decision-makers. Then, they can miss what drives repeat business and resort to blind-spending on campaigns that ultimately fail to resonate. This lack of insight may also leave brands vulnerable to replacement - if they can’t prove their value with hard data, operators could switch to cheaper alternatives.
It all demands the introduction of a platform. One that powers lower cost per conversion via an end-to-end view of the foodservice journey - delivering smarter targeting, seamless execution and faster results.
Going beyond static data to achieve full market coverage
The brands that win are those who turn data into action. This begins with foundational insights; an up-to-date, first-party database that provides direct operator intelligence. Brands need multiple data attributes like category relevance to menu, size of operations and menu selling prices, through to purchasing potential and even outlet reviews, all to understand and be selective of where they want to play.
So, imagine you lead a brand looking to grow pizza sales in big pub groups. With access to the right database, you could instantly filter your parameters to target:
Pub groups
+20 outlets
Serving pizza
Delivery offered
Premium retail sale price
All business contact details
Once this audience is defined, you need a powerful sales and marketing engine to execute it. This is where customer relationship management, account-based marketing, content ecosystems and paid media integrate to create personalised, dynamic engagement across every channel. It provides a centralised view of all outreach campaigns, while iteratively improving in accuracy as it learns more about the audience.
Finally, you need expertise. Data without context and interpretation is just noise. A brand partner with decades of experience can translate datapoints into meaningful strategy - positioning your brand to drive basket spend, increase dwell time or hit ESG goals. Ultimately, the end-to-end know-how to create the messaging, the campaigns, the relevancy and the targeting will close the loop from insight to action to commercial growth.
Expertise that identifies, unlocks and accelerates expansion
At Omne, we’ve pioneered this integration of foundation, execution and interpretation, and seen the results first-hand. As the strategic and creative partner to the world’s best food, beverage, foodservice and hospitality brands, and a top 10 UK B2B agency, we’ve found that expertise is, simply, everything. Take our work with McCain Foodservice.
The frozen potato leaders approached us because, like many brands, they enjoyed strong consumer retail success but lacked operator visibility. We helped them build richer first-party data through always-on digital customer relationship management, aligned to their target market strategy. We also designed tailored content and offers for each channel that were valuable enough for prospects to share their information, helping the brand build richer, more unified customer profiles and nurture prospects into leads.
When combined with broader campaign activation, independent tracking by Opinium showed McCain Foodservice ranking 25-40 percentage points above the category average across the funnel. An extraordinary result, especially for a brand that end-consumers never even see. And it just goes to show how back-of-house brand work can translate into preference, loyalty and premium pricing resilience.
Omne can accelerate your brand’s foodservice expansion, too. Experience has shown us that once you sell your product into hospitality, you become very hard to dislodge. It’s why we’ve built Omne Connect: our new proprietary platform designed to give brands the clarity, targeting and long-term growth you need to turn ‘away from home’ into your, well, home.
We’ll reveal more details on Omne Connect very soon. For now, if you’re ready to explore how B2B foodservice could fuel your brand’s next stage of growth, let’s connect. Drop us a message on LinkedIn or email hello@omne.agency.
