FOOD & BEVERAGE
MARKETING.

In India the plate is photographed before it is eaten, and the restaurant is chosen before anyone leaves the house. A table for four at 7pm is decided by a reel someone saved on Tuesday, a 4.3 on Google Maps, and whether the delivery app shows the dish or a stock photo of a bowl. Food and beverage marketing means winning those three screens, every day, for a product that is at its best for only minutes after it leaves the kitchen.

It is a large market and a crowded one. The National Restaurant Association of India valued Indian food services at ₹5,69,487 crore in FY24 and expects ₹7,76,511 crore by FY28, with the organised share rising from 43.8% to 52.9% by 2028. Redseer puts online food delivery at 11% of the whole food services market in FY26, up from 4% in FY21, and expects 18% by FY31.

Who we work with in food and beverage

Our food and beverage clients include MTR Foods, one of India's best-known packaged food brands, Samosa Party, a quick-service chain, Banoffee, a café, Nawazish, a restaurant, Ayukrit Organics, an organic food brand, and Sixth Stage, a pub and bar. Between them they cover the main kinds of F&B business, which have more in common than they think: a packet of masala and a plate of biryani are both sold on appetite, trust and a photograph.

What does food and beverage marketing cover?

The three screens that decide what people eat

Instagram is where a restaurant earns the visit. The posts that travel are the ones that show process: the dosa poured, the kebab coming off the sigri, the cheese pull that is really a cheese pull. Instagram says reels over three minutes are not recommended to new audiences, and for food the best reels are far shorter than that: a dish, a reason to stop, and the name of the place before the viewer scrolls on. Creator visits are part of the calendar, briefed properly and labelled with one of ASCI's accepted labels such as "Ad", "Sponsored" or "Collaboration", placed where people will see it; our influencer guide covers rates and briefs.

Google Maps is where the undecided decide. Google ranks local results mainly on relevance, distance and popularity, says more reviews and positive ratings can help, and lets a restaurant add menu and ordering links, mark a preferred delivery partner and have third-party ordering links removed within five business days. A profile with a few hundred photos of real food, replies on every review and the right hours for every outlet beats a bigger ad budget more often than people expect.

The delivery apps are a marketplace with their own rules of discovery. Swiggy delivered 714 million food orders in FY26, with an average of 266,000 restaurant partners transacting each month, and Zomato's parent Eternal reported food delivery revenue of ₹10,159 crore for the same year. On an app the photograph is the menu, the rating is the review, and the description is the waiter, so we treat listing photos as a shoot in their own right and write descriptions that say what is in the dish. Delivery-app advertising is sold per click and per thousand impressions, by Inc42's account; we buy it for the dishes with the best margins and read the results against the commission and the platform fee, which Zomato raised to ₹14.90 an order in March 2026.

What a food brand may claim, and what it may not

Packaged food is where the rules bite, and most of them live in the Food Safety and Standards (Advertising and Claims) Regulations 2018. Claims must be truthful and not misleading. Words such as "natural", "fresh", "pure", "original", "traditional", "authentic", "genuine" and "real" may be used only under the conditions in the regulations' Schedule V, which turn on how the food was actually made: "traditional", for example, needs a recipe or method that has existed for a generation, which the schedule puts at thirty years. A health or nutrition claim needs scientific substantiation, and a food may not claim to prevent, treat or cure any disease or condition unless another FSSAI regulation specifically allows it. A label may not say "recommended by medical, nutrition or health professionals". The FSSAI logo and licence number must appear on the pack, and may not be used to promote the product. Breaches are penalised under section 53 of the Food Safety and Standards Act.

Around those sit three more sets of rules. The Legal Metrology (Packaged Commodities) Rules 2011 fix what a pack must declare (the maker or importer, the product's common name, net quantity, month and year of manufacture, retail price, unit sale price and consumer care details, as amended in 2021). ASCI's food and beverage guidelines ask for scientific evidence behind claims and bar encouraging excessive consumption. And the CCPA's 2022 guidelines bar junk food advertising in children's programmes, with the CCPA able to fine a manufacturer or endorser up to ₹10 lakh, and ₹50 lakh for a repeat, under the Consumer Protection Act. ASCI's 2025-26 complaints report counted 376 food and beverage cases, 52% of them nutraceuticals.

Two changes are coming. FSSAI's Labelling and Display amendment of March 2026 takes effect on 1 July 2027. And front-of-pack warning labels are before the Supreme Court: FSSAI's August 2026 affidavit proposed red hexagonal "HIGH FAT", "HIGH SUGAR" and "HIGH SALT" warnings, and the court reserved judgment on 28 September 2026. A packaged snack brand planning packaging for 2027 should budget for the possibility of a warning on the front.

Restaurants, cafés and chains

Restaurants have their own compliance, and it shows on the menu. Under the Labelling and Display Regulations 2020, a food service business with a central licence or ten or more outlets must print the calories per serving against every item on its menus and boards, with the line "An average active adult requires 2,000 kcal energy per day, however, calorie needs may vary". Allergen information and the veg or non-veg logo go on the menu too, and delivery apps must show the same. Every premises must display its FSSAI licence or registration number under the same regulations. We build those into the menu design rather than sticking them on afterwards.

Restaurant GST did not change in last year's rate rationalisation: a stand-alone restaurant still charges 5% without input tax credit, and the GST Council clarified that it cannot opt for the 18% with credit that restaurants in hotels with rooms above ₹7,500 a night charge. What changed from 22 September 2025 was the tax on packaged food and drink: most packaged snacks, sauces, noodles, chocolates, coffee, biscuits, cakes, ice cream and fruit juices moved to 5%, pre-packaged paneer and Indian breads went to nil, and sweetened carbonated drinks went to 40%. A price on a menu or a pack is a marketing decision as well as a tax one.

Cafés are a growing room in the house. World Coffee Portal counted 5,339 branded coffee shops in India in 2025, up 12.7% in a year, and found that 24% of the 2,000 coffee shop customers it surveyed visit daily and 57% at least weekly. A café's marketing is about habit: the regular's order, the seat by the window, the barista's name.

Drinks, and the alcohol problem

Alcohol cannot be advertised on Indian television, the main ad platforms do not take alcohol ads in India, and surrogate advertising is barred. Rule 7(2)(viii) of the Cable Television Networks Rules bars any advertisement that directly or indirectly promotes wine, alcohol, liquor or other intoxicants, and the CCPA's 2022 guidelines bar surrogate advertising. Google's alcohol policy does not list India among the countries alcohol ads may target, and Meta, which announced in August 2024 that it would accept alcohol ads in India, said days later that this would not happen in India for now. A bar, a brewery or a wine room markets the food, the music, the room and the people, and we keep it on the right side of the surrogate rules. Non-alcoholic ranges can be advertised on Google in India with its 0% alcohol certification.

What works on social media for food brands?

The dish as it is really served, not as a stylist dreams it, because a photograph that oversells the plate turns into a one-star review. Process over plating: people watch things being made. The people behind the counter, by name. A reason to come this week: the new menu, the seasonal special, the dish that sells out by nine. And a festival calendar chosen, not inherited. Diwali falls on 8 November in 2026, and our festival marketing guide has the dates through 2027 and the case for doing fewer festivals properly. Most Indian food brands sound the same on Instagram, as our co-founder Gaurav wrote in Why most Indian brands sound the same on Instagram; a restaurant with a point of view about its own food does not.

Food shoots are planned shot by shot, with the kitchen on the day, because steam fades and garnish wilts. One shoot day done properly supplies the delivery listings, a month of reels, the website and the season's ads, which is why the content calendar and the shot list are written together.

How we measure food and beverage marketing

For a restaurant: reservations, walk-ins on the days a post went out, direction requests and calls from the Google profile, orders and ratings on the delivery apps, and the WhatsApp number used only on social. For a packaged food brand: marketplace sales, website orders, and the lift in searches for the brand after a campaign. Saves and shares tell us which dishes and which formats travel, and the report says what next month changes because of them. Our co-founder Niraj's rule applies here as much as anywhere: destroy the like button and count the orders.

What it costs

We quote against the brief, because a café with one outlet and a packaged brand launching in 2,000 stores are different jobs. The quote covers strategy, content, shoots, publishing, community and reporting; ad budgets, delivery-app advertising, creator fees and shoot extras such as props and food are paid separately, and GST at the standard rate of 18% applies to agency fees. Our guide to what social media marketing costs in India sets out the market ranges. Send the brief with your menu or your product range, and we will tell you what we would do first.