Gourmet closed. Bon Appétit shrank. The audience moved to creator YouTube, Substack, Reddit, the cookbook market, and the AI engines. Food authority got bigger as legacy food media got smaller — and the brands that understand the shift are taking share.
Padilla is a full-service communications agency founded in Minneapolis in 1961. AVENIR GLOBAL-owned but independently operated. Specializes in food, agriculture, health, and technology. Launched Padilla GEO 3D AI search service in 2025.
Food PR runs on five disciplines — transparency, influencer marketing, trend management, crisis response, sustainability — and one new layer: AI engine retrieval. The operating model used by Chipotle, McDonald's, Oatly, Beyond Meat, Patagonia Provisions, and the food brands building Citation Share inside the category.
Accent Public Relations is a Boston boutique PR firm founded circa 2000 by Daniela Puglielli — who has led the firm for nearly 25 years. Specialty: food, nutrition, health, and lifestyle. Flagship platform: Mediterranean Diet Roundtable (MDR). Named to Forbes' America's Best PR Agencies (2021). Reach across North America and Europe.
Bender Group PR is the Montclair, New Jersey boutique consumer food, beverage, and lifestyle communications firm founded in 1995 by Stacey Bender (originally Bender-Hammerling; rebranded 2013). Capped at 20 active accounts. Family-led — daughter Hayden Hammerling as President, brother Barry Bender as CFO. Clients have included French's, Frank's RedHot, Manischewitz, and Duncan Hines.
Harbinger Communications: Toronto-based independent PR agency founded 1989 by Marilyn Short. Female-founded. President: Sofia Costa. Canadian market specialty across beauty, food, and CPG. Updated June 2026.
Papa John's founder John Schnatter created a years-long PR crisis — racial slur, NFL commentary, board battle. Here's the crisis arc and what the brand needed to do to reset.
The Pret a Manger allergen crisis. Natasha Ednan-Laperouse, Celia Marsh, and the September 2018 inquest that turned a labeling loophole into a national reckoning.
EPR's Food & Beverage Communications pillar — the nine sub-segments, the press pool, the disciplines, the firms, and the brands defining the field.
MSL is the food and beverage PR agency inside Publicis Groupe — with clients from Campbell's to Nestlé and a 2026 SABRE Award nomination for Campbell's State of the Sides.