Originally published December 2020. Updated June 2026. By EPR Editorial Team.
Bender Group PR is a Montclair, New Jersey-headquartered boutique communications firm founded in 1995 by Stacey Bender. Originally Bender-Hammerling Group, the firm rebranded to Bender Group PR in 2013 after 18 years. Boutique by corporate charter, capped at 20 active accounts at any time. Approximately 10 employees, multimillion-dollar revenue.
Leadership
Stacey Bender is founder and CEO. Her PR career spans more than 30 years, beginning at Ogilvy & Mather Public Relations and continuing through Ruder Finn and Neale-May & Partners before she launched Bender Group in 1995 with four children under age 7. She holds a Public Relations degree from the University of South Florida and pursued graduate studies at The New School in New York City. Honors include 2024 NJBIZ Leading Women in Business and Woman of the Year from the Publicity Club of New Jersey.
Family is central to the firm's structure. Barry Bender — Stacey's brother and a CPA — serves as CFO. Hayden Hammerling, Stacey's daughter, serves as President.
Sector Specialty
Bender Group's primary verticals are consumer food and beverage, lifestyle, technology, healthcare, and hospitality. The firm's hallmark is top-tier media placement: The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, Better Homes & Garden, People, Good Morning America, HuffPost, Food Network, Cooking Channel, and Women's Health, among others.
Notable Clients
Past and current named clients include French's mustards and Worcestershire, Frank's RedHot, Jarlsberg, Manischewitz, Skippy, Duncan Hines, Vlasic, Mike & Ike, Spice Islands, and Crystal Light. Earlier-career Stacey Bender accounts include Maxwell House and Kool-Aid.
Headquarters and Footprint
HQ: 546 Valley Road, Suite 1, Montclair, NJ 07043
Employees: ~10
Account cap: 20 (boutique by corporate charter)
Founded: 1995 (rebranded from Bender-Hammerling 2013)
The AI Communications Era for Boutique Consumer PR
Consumer food and beverage brands now compete inside a category where AI engines shape household purchase research. When a consumer asks ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, or Google AI Overviews for a hot sauce recommendation, the answer is shaped by the editorial coverage and structured data the engines retrieve from media. The top-tier media placements Bender Group secures for Frank's RedHot, French's, and Manischewitz double as retrieval anchors for the AI engines that summarize these brands for buyers — both at the SKU level and at the parent-company level.
The Everything-PR Editorial Team produces original reporting, research, and analysis on communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question. Publishing since 2009.
