Lead generation has changed a lot over the past years. The days of mass emailing and product push are over. Today’s food professionals, chefs, bakers, caterers, and restaurant owners expect tailored, helpful content that makes their work easier, tastier, and more profitable. If you’re a foodservice manufacturer, it’s useful to rethink how and where you connect with your prospects.
In this article, we explore the most relevant digital environments for lead generation and share proven ways to rise above the noise.
Where to Find Foodservice Leads Online
To generate leads, you need to be where your audience spends time. In foodservice, these are the top digital hotspots according to GROUP7 Professional Community Research in The Netherlands (2024):
Google on top, 87% of the food professionals intentionally search in Google for his business at least once a month. Next in line are Facebook (67%) , Instagram (61%), YouTube (49%) and LinkedIn (39%). We will start deep diving into Social Media, but the Google part will be discussed in the sixth suggestion!
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Social media (LinkedIn & Meta)
- LinkedIn is ideal for targeting decision-makers like purchasing managers at catering companies or chains.
- Meta (Facebook, Instagram) appeals to chefs and bakers with its visual storytelling power. Those are platforms where both professionals and consumers find inspiration, so if you want to use these media, be sure that the message is clearly relevant for professionals!
- The organic reach of those platforms is limited. If you want to use these platforms well, you need to make use of paid campaigns. Just another reason to be very specific at setting your target audience, every irrelevant lead will cost you a part of your budget. An option that works well is a look-alike audience. Find a number of decision makers for your best customers (or the prospects you still hunt for) and let LinkedIn or Meta create a target group based on similarities to your current contact list.
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Online News Groups / Communities
- Niche groups on for example WhatsApp or industry platforms like Chef’s Talk offer direct access to passionate professionals. It is indirect marketing to engage in these kinds of groups, because you don’t want to be over-promotional. Be of value, a helpful voice, to build a long term trust with the participants in those groups.
- Use WhatsApp for business to stay in touch with your known leads, to give them quick updates. Again, this is not a sales channel, but it is very useful to find leads for a recently launched product among your current contacts.
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Email Lists from Wholesalers or Trade Events
- Collaborate with wholesalers or event organizers to make use of their email lists. For example with an item in their newsletter or an event invite. It is hard to find a partnership where all data is shared with you, also consider GDPR limitations, but these methods make leads aware of your role and services in their market.
- In case of an event, all traffic to your location will give you an opportunity to capture the data of the most relevant tools. For example trade fairs, they usually offer a scanning tool that makes it very easy to capture the contact data and some segmentation data of the people who visit your stand or meeting.
- These lists offer high-quality leads who’ve already shown interest in foodservice solutions. And it’s possible to target quite specific.
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Wholesaler webshops
- Wholesalers websites or regional online ordering platforms often allow branded content or ads. We call this wholesaler media and we’ve written another article about this topic. Again, this method can give you access to a high quality audience, but it’s uncommon that you will get the data about who has seen and interacted with your content.
- Consider sponsored placements or value-driven content partnerships.
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A database
- It is not per se lead generation, but still a good option to find new leads: Acquire a list of (generic) email addresses of outlets that could be your customers. For example, Roamler owns a list with most of the outlets in B2B food. It’s easy to do a look-alike search in their data, but it is also possible to start nurturing a whole segment. These databases are limited by GDPR regulations and therefore only provide generic email addresses, like info@… or kitchen@… These addresses have their limitations, but can be used in the first stage of lead generation to find out interest and maybe capture a personal email address of the one within the company who has shown the intent.
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Your own website
- A well-optimized landing page with strong calls to action (CTAs) is crucial. And of course, since that digital journey starts in Google, SEA and SEO are very important to get that traffic to your website. Keyword research is valuable to some extent, but also use your common sense. Or the common sense of your sales team, who speak with your clients every day. The downside of keyword research in our business is, that most of the data is consumer data. Professionals use other terms and have other preferences. For example, a consumer might search for “best chocolate for baking,” while a professional pastry chef would search for “bulk couverture chocolate 70%.” Understanding these differences helps you better tailor your SEO and SEA campaigns to food professionals.
- Practical suggestion: A tool like Google Trends can give you quick insights in search behaviour in Google. We use it a lot to compare synonyms and to see what is trending in a market. See this example of the search terms Sugared and Sweetened
- When the routing in the website is clear and the CTAs are strong, your website is able to direct people to a part of your website containing the most relevant Lead Magnet. This is where you can capture new data. Use downloadable resources (recipes, e-books, checklists) in exchange for email addresses. You want to match effort to value. If the value for the prospect is very high, you can ask him to fill in more details in the form. In the best case, you will actually need these data to set up the specific action the prospect is asking for. Sending something to his mailbox, but maybe an update when a product of interest is promoted at his wholesaler (What product, which wholesaler? This is super valuable info!). But to see your product catalogue, do you need to ask more data than just an email address? Do you even ask for an email address? See that discussion below.
Discussion: Gated content, is that still accepted?
There is a lot of discussion about “gated” content nowadays. Gated content is content that we all know, where you need to fill in some details before you get access to the content. As mentioned above, filling in that email address or other contact details. This system has some pros and cons. The effort for getting the content is actually both a pro and a con. Because when you require people do put some effort, you will miss the leads that are not willing to give their data and will try to get the needed information elsewhere. Or people who are only browsing and do not want to be approached yet by companies; they are not sales ready yet. You will lose numbers as you increase the effort, for example the number of fields in the form.
But on the other hand, the “pro” is that you know that people are very interested, if they want to make some effort to see the content piece. Or the tool. People who want to make effort, are hot leads!
How to Stand Out in a Crowded Online Market
Digital communication is noisy. Your prospects scroll past hundreds of ads and posts daily. To break through, you need to speak their language and focus on what matters to them, not you. The best topic to communicate is one that truly matters to your prospect and where you can offer a meaningful solution.
Trigger Their Pains and Gains
Don’t just describe your product. Speak to what your customer feels and wants:
Instead of this:
“Our sauce is shelf-stable for 3 months.”
“We sell artisan bread.”
Say this:
“Save precious storage space and reduce spoilage with our sauce.”
“Let your guests taste the difference: handcrafted bread that saves prep time.”
Use testimonials, case studies, or examples that reflect real challenges in kitchens, bakeries, or catering.
Offer Services, Not Just Products
Food professionals often crave support more than just ingredients. Ask yourself:
Can you help them with menu development? Do you offer inspiration through seasonal recipes? Can you provide calculators, nutritional insights, or training?
Package your services around your products to position yourself as a partner, not just a supplier.
Some good examples of companies we (have) work(ed) with:
McCain Big Profit Calculator Tool: Based on your wholesalers price and your portion price, you can calculate easily how much you expect to make on a certain product. .
Flora emission calculator tool: For sustainability reports and the trend to decrease emissions, this calculator helps to give an overview of the environmental impact you make.
Debic training video for skills:This page is an easy instruction to learn certain techniques, such as laminating in this example.
Make It Easy to Take the Next Step
Use clear CTAs like “Download the free menu planner” or “Request a demo box.” Avoid vague terms like “Contact us” or “Read more” without explaining what he or she can expect after the click. Give a clear reason to click.
Final Thoughts: Think Like a Food Pro
Every successful lead generation campaign starts with empathy. Get into the mindset of a busy chef or baker who is juggling quality, margins, and time. The more relevant, helpful, and human your outreach is, the better your lead conversion will be.
We’ve supported dozens of foodservice brands with successful lead generation, whether through trade fairs (Perfect Fair), social media funnels, or automated email campaigns.
If you’re short on time but have the insights we can work with, let’s explore how we can set up or sharpen your lead generation process.
Not having a lead generation plan will harm your market share in all competitive foodservice and bakery markets.
And what comes after lead generation? That’s where lead nurturing enters the picture. The more technical part of this process in your systems is the topic of our next article.