Mistakes I Made in Food Marketing (and How I Would Avoid Them Today)

Why talk about my mistakes in food marketing. When it comes to marketing, especially online, people tend to talk about what worked. The successful strategies, the campaigns that yielded results, the content that generated visibility, the satisfied clients. It’s normal: marketing also lives on reputation, and no one likes starting from their mistakes. Yet, as I look back on my journey in the food sector, I realize that many of the principles I now consider most solid didn’t spring from successes, but from mistakes.

Over the years, I’ve worked with restaurants, producers, events, local businesses, and food-related projects. I’ve seen many realities grow, some stall, others get lost in trends that seemed crucial but, in practice, made little difference. I’ve made poor judgments, put too much faith in certain tools, and believed that some shortcuts might work. Eventually, time, data, and above all direct experience forced me to change perspective.

I don’t consider these mistakes as failures. I see them as necessary steps. Because in food marketing, just like in any field dealing with people, places, emotions, and daily choices, you can’t simply apply formulas. You have to understand what’s behind an activity, what identity it wants to build, what kind of relationship it has with the customer, and what it truly promises when it communicates.

The first mistake: thinking the product is enough on its own

At the outset, it’s easy to fall into a very common belief: if the product is good, marketing just needs to show it off. A well-crafted dish, a quality olive oil, an interesting wine, a traditional recipe, a restaurant with good food all seem strong enough to almost speak for themselves.

Over time, I realized this isn’t the case. Quality is essential, but it’s not automatically communication. A good product can remain invisible if it’s not part of a coherent story. A restaurant can cook well and still not be remembered. A producer can be diligent and still not stand out. A food and wine event can have strong content and still fail to build a lasting relationship with the public.

Food is never just matter. It is memory, territory, choice, culture, relationship. When you communicate only the technical sheet of the product, you risk leaving out precisely what makes it interesting. People don’t remember just the ingredient or the preparation. They remember the context, the person telling the story, the place, the atmosphere, the consistency between what is promised and what is actually experienced.

This was one of the first important lessons: talking about the product is necessary, but talking only about the product is not enough. Marketing must help make visible the value that the product carries with it, not just describe it.

When I gave too much importance to social media

Another mistake, very common in the food sector, is thinking that having a presence on social media can replace strategy. For years, restaurants, producers, and local businesses have felt the need to post: photos of dishes, reels, stories, behind-the-scenes, offers, events, daily content. All useful, of course, but only if it fits within a clear direction.

I too, at certain stages, placed too much importance on the constant production of content. The logic seemed simple: the more you post, the more visible you stay. But visibility alone doesn’t necessarily build positioning. In fact, frequent communication lacking identity can have the opposite effect: the venue is present, but not recognizable.

In food, this risk is even greater because many contents end up looking the same. Overhead shots of dishes, hands pouring sauces, knife cuts, set tables, reels with trending music, generic phrases about quality and passion. All formally correct, but often not distinctive.

I also talked about this in the article dedicated to what to post on social media for a restaurant: the problem isn’t posting a lot or a little, but posting without a clear line. Social media doesn’t replace strategy. It amplifies it, when it exists. It makes it more visible, when it’s weak.

Metrics that reassure, but don’t always drive growth

For a long time, digital marketing has trained everyone to look at instant numbers: followers, likes, views, reach, interactions. These are useful data, but they can become a trap if interpreted as automatic proof of success. In food, this happens often. A photo can get many likes because it’s beautiful, appetizing, well lit. A reel can perform because it follows a trend. A piece of content can generate views yet leave nothing tangible for the business. The point isn’t to deny the value of numbers, but to always ask what they actually represent.

Over time, I’ve learned to be wary of metrics that feel good but don’t explain anything. The question I now find most important is not how many people saw a piece of content, but what happens next. Do those people remember the brand? Do they return to the website? Do they request information? Book? Purchase? Do they talk to others about that place or product?

Visibility may be a step, but it’s not the final result. The same logic applies to website traffic: getting visits doesn’t automatically mean getting customers. I discussed this in the article on why website traffic isn’t enough if it doesn’t convert. In food marketing, this distinction is crucial, because confusing attention and value often leads to investing energy in the wrong direction.

The risk of trying to appeal to everyone

One of the hardest lessons to accept is that not all customers are right for every business. At the beginning, there’s a tendency to want to expand the audience as much as possible: more customers, more segments, more occasions, more offers. It seems like the safe choice. In reality, it’s very often trying to please everyone that weakens your positioning.

In food, this dynamic is especially clear. Some restaurants lengthen their menus to appeal to various tastes, add dishes to avoid missing requests, or chase trends that don’t match their own identity. The result is a broader, but less clear, offer. Customers can find everything, but struggle to see what truly makes the place special.

It’s a topic I tackled in the article dedicated to menus that are too long in restaurants. A menu isn’t just a list of dishes: it is a declaration of identity. When it becomes too scattered, it no longer communicates abundance, but uncertainty. And in marketing, uncertainty rarely helps. Today, I believe a good strategy must also have the courage to choose. Choose whom you want to attract, what you want to represent, and which customers truly fit the project. It’s not shutting people out. It’s positioning.

Identity: the lesson I underestimated the longest

Of all the lessons learned over time, perhaps this is the one I consider most important: without identity, marketing becomes mere decoration. It can be well executed, polished, even technically correct, but it remains fragile. Identity is what unites product, communication, experience, tone of voice, service, and customer perception.

In the food sector, there are thousands of products, restaurants, producers, and local businesses. Many do their job well. Many also communicate in an organized way. But not all manage to be recognizable. And that’s the hardest difference to build: not just being present, but staying in people’s memory. A food project is remembered when it manages to express a vision. It might be a strong bond with the territory, a minimalist kitchen, a family story, a radical choice in raw ingredients, a particular way of welcoming, an authentic narrative of daily work. There’s no need to invent an artificial identity. You need to recognize the real one and make it understandable.

Lately, I’ve been reflecting a lot on this, especially watching the standardization of dining. In the article about Italian cuisine between experience, identity, and marketing I wrote that the risk isn’t just to cook differently, but to lose the ability to leave something behind. I think the same for marketing: if a communication doesn’t leave anything, it hardly builds value.

Digitizing doesn’t mean having a strategy

Another mistake I’ve often seen, and one I partly underestimated myself, is to confuse digitalization and marketing. In recent years, many food businesses have invested in tools: websites, digital menus, reservation systems, apps, management software, platforms, automations. These are extremely useful tools, and often necessary. But by themselves, they don’t make a strategy.

Technology improves processes. Marketing builds perception, relationships, and choices. A restaurant can have an efficient booking system and still keep losing customers if it doesn’t communicate trust. It can have a modern website and not be perceived as distinctive. It can have a perfect digital menu and a weak identity. That’s why when I think about digitalization in food nowadays, I always start from a question that comes before the tool: what kind of experience do we want to build? Only after that does it make sense to choose platforms, automations, and channels. Otherwise, you risk digitalizing chaos, just making it faster.

I’ve talked about this in the article about how to digitize a restaurant with a clear strategy. Digital works when it serves a vision, not when it tries to replace one.

Marketing cannot make up for what doesn’t exist

There is another lesson I consider essential: marketing cannot invent value where there is none. It can certainly help tell the story better, organize a message, make a project more visible, and build trust. But if there is no coherence at the core, marketing will eventually expose the weakness.

In food, this is especially clear, because the experience is tangible. The customer walks in, tastes, observes, experiences the service, and senses the environment. If what is communicated doesn’t match what is experienced, the gap becomes immediately evident. In fact, the stronger the communication, the more apparent the inconsistency becomes. That’s why I now consider coherence one of the most important elements in food marketing. There’s no point in promising authenticity if the experience is then standardized. There’s no point talking about territory if the territory isn’t felt. There’s no point crafting a sophisticated narrative if, once the customer arrives, they experience something completely different. The best marketing doesn’t cover up. It brings things into focus.

What I would do differently today

If I could go back, I’d probably care less about trends and more about the fundamentals. I’d look first at identity, then at tools. First positioning, then the editorial calendar. First the actual experience, then the communication. First the promise, then the content. In food marketing, it’s easy to be distracted by what seems urgent: publishing, sponsoring, updating, producing, chasing. But often what really makes a difference is less visible and deeper: understanding what makes a project different, who it wants to reach, why it should be remembered, and what experience it wants to deliver.

Today, I’m more selective in my analyses and more cautious about quick fixes. I’m skeptical about strategies that claim to work for everyone, because food is made up of different contexts. A neighborhood restaurant doesn’t communicate like a farm producer. A food and wine event doesn’t have the same objectives as a destination. A tourist venue doesn’t face the same challenges as a trattoria with a regular clientele. Applying the same approach to different realities is one of the most common mistakes.

The most important lesson

If I had to sum up everything I’ve learned over these years, I’d say that food marketing works when it manages to connect three elements: identity, experience, and trust. Without identity, the project is not recognizable. Without experience, the promise remains abstract. Without trust, the customer doesn’t choose, doesn’t return, doesn’t recommend. Tools change, algorithms change, platforms change. But these three elements remain. And perhaps this is precisely where many mistakes become useful: they force us to distinguish what is tactical from what is truly strategic.

Today, I no longer believe in marketing that chases after everything. I believe in marketing that helps a project understand what it needs to stop chasing in order to become clearer, more credible, more recognizable.

Conclusion

My mistakes in food marketing have taught me that there are no universal formulas. There are different businesses, different people, different places, different objectives. There are projects that need more visibility, others that need more consistency, and still others that need to completely rethink their positioning. The best strategy almost always comes from the ability to understand what makes a business unique and to build consistent communication around that uniqueness. Everything else comes later: social media, website, advertising, tools, content.

Perhaps the most valuable lesson is this: marketing is not meant to make something interesting that isn’t. It’s meant to make what truly has something to say readable, credible, and memorable.