From Trend to Table: Chef Collaborations in Powerhouse PR Campaigns

If you’ve eaten something so unique and delicious at a restaurant that you can’t stop thinking about it, odds are you’ll want to go back and have it again or recreate it at home. We’re all frequently inspired by what we taste on a restaurant menu—likely because trained professionals create them. In some of the best cases, a viral food item of the next “it” food is created by a restaurant chef, or an already existing trend can be amplified through foodservice. Count the number of times you’ve seen Avocado Toast, Cauliflower Crust Pizza, or Zoodles on a menu. I’ll wait. While restaurants got hit harder than any other industry during the pandemic, they are working their way back to pre-pandemic levels. According to The National Restaurant Association, the restaurant industry is predicted to see significant growth in 2025, projected at 1.5 trillion dollars in sales.

The excitement fueled by tasting new flavors or food combinations and applications while dining out provides an ideal opportunity for brands to meet consumers at the table and influence their purchases. In an integrated food PR campaign, partnerships with key opinion leaders — in this case, chefs — can help brands to authentically drive awareness and sales simultaneously. While it’s no secret that chefs look inward for innovation, they’re also deeply influenced by their peers and the trends around them.  

Strategic communications agencies are the critical ingredient in establishing and liaising effective brand partnerships with foodservice operations. At Padilla, our food and beverage team have deep relationships throughout the hospitality channel with restaurants and chefs across the U.S. that tap into their unique culinary expertise for client campaigns. When working with a product or brand, we leverage equal parts data and institutional knowledge to develop the right partnerships to resonate with consumers and drive ROI. When designing a program, we carefully consider the operational demands of the restaurants, striving to create initiatives that add value without increasing stress or workload for our partners.  

When identifying a partner, we share brand history, key attributes and goals and then allow them space to create recipes, ideate menu features and events, and align with the brand on strategic product integration that benefits both parties. This can be applied to partnerships with independent restaurants to restaurant groups and QSR and is integrated across strategies in a variety of ways – including incorporation into social media and earned media campaigns and marketing materials, creating a symbiotic relationship as we create visibility for the chef/and or restaurant, elevating the industry as a whole. Chefs and restaurants know from experience that our clients’ brands are there to support them for mutual success.  

Most recently, Padilla facilitated the inaugural Sea to Table Restaurant Week for Seafood from Norway, launching successful partnerships to drive alliances in New York’s influential foodservice sector. Thirteen chefs/restaurants were recruited to create new dishes highlighting Norwegian salmon, cod and king crab, yielding over 2,500 dishes served during the promotion, with more than half continuing to menu Seafood from Norway dishes beyond the promotion dates. An integrated strategy leveraged social media, influencer partnerships, mouthwatering content, and food media partnerships to generate thousands of impressions. This supported both Seafood from Norway and the participating restaurants, some of which included NYC Michelin guide locations and NY Times Best 100 NYC Restaurants honorees. It was a groundbreaker and the first time a seafood-centric restaurant week had taken place in New York.  

While every partnership is different, and customized to each brand or product, certain things remain a constant:  

• Custom built partnerships are attractive to foodservice operations. They build product loyalty and advocacy from the industry.  

• Consumers love experiential. Trying new and innovative foods brought to life through chefs and restaurants is the perfect platform to encourage trial and repeat behavior resulting in a boom in sales and awareness.

• Integrated PR support benefits the industry. Product features on a menu are just one element. Amplification and integrated marketing tactics such as media partnerships and curated influencer content further support the brand/product and promote the restaurant and or chef to help gain exposure and drive traffic to their operations.  

Leveraging bespoke foodservice programs with the right partner can prove to be an opportunity to grow sales, drive volume, and establish alliances with operators.

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This article was first published on O'Dwyer's.