Performance marketing for F&B brands in India

The Shizz is a D2C performance marketing studio for FMCG, F&B, Nutrition and Consumer Goods brands, working out of Bangalore and Kolkata. Over six years we have worked with 160+ brands, managed ₹150 Cr+ in ad spend and attributed ₹450 Cr+ in revenue, at an average ROAS of 3.8× and an average client relationship of 1.5 years.

Food and drink is the largest part of that book. Of the 21 case studies published on this site, 12 are food and beverage brands: farm-made ghee, honey and pickles, mithai from a ₹1,500 Cr sweets business, clean-label chocolate, hand-plucked functional tea, a Himalayan pantry range, Maharashtrian recipes, dates turned into nut butters, premium Ayurvedic foods, hand-pounded gulkand and murabba, ketchup and Khapli atta.

That is not a positioning statement, it is where the work has actually been. Everything below comes from those accounts, and every number links to the case it came from.

What actually goes wrong

Six patterns show up again and again in these accounts. None of them is a media-buying problem, which is why more budget rarely fixes them.

Every label on the shelf claims the same thing

In ghee and honey, every label claims purity, and almost none of those claims are proved. A genuinely better product then competes on price with one that only says the same words. Barosi came in at 0.6x ROAS, running ads that spoke to everyone and converted no one. The correction was positioning built on the farm and the people behind it, not a louder ad. ROAS moved to 3.8x, CAC was halved, and on-site conversion went from 0.8% to 6.8%.

Repeat buyers hide a top of funnel that has stopped working

A revenue line made mostly of repeat orders looks stable and reports a flattering blended return. It also hides the fact that nobody new is arriving. My Pahadi Dukaan was sitting at ₹12 lakhs a month on a loyal base, with the same creative going to the same audience. Rebuilding acquisition from the creative pipeline up took it to ₹1.2 crores a month in eight months, climbing month on month rather than spiking.

The basket is smaller than the cost of buying the customer

At food basket sizes, every order has to clear acquisition cost on its own unless order value is planned for. Vediko Origins fixed tracking and raised order value before buying more traffic: sales rose 1321% in eight months, ROAS ran consistently above 4x and CAC fell 60%. Brawny Bear did the same job with bundling and cross-sell, lifting average order value 25% and conversion 40%, which took ROAS from 1.6x to over 3.5x.

A wide range with no decision about which product buys the customer

Catalogue breadth spreads budget thin and hides which SKU is actually acquiring. Zama Organics turned ketchup, ghee, mushrooms and Khapli atta into hero SKUs and tripled D2C. Aazol identified the SKUs worth building on and cut CAC by nearly 70%. Pushti Organics concentrated on ghee until it was over 65% of sales, and grew 570% in four months.

Recall built offline does not convert online by itself

Lal Sweets is a ₹1,500 Cr household name in mithai that was running basic catalogue ads and seasonal offers. Recall was never the problem, the funnel was. A full-stack revamp across Meta, Amazon, Blinkit and the brand's own website brought cost per purchase on Blinkit down to ₹19, with Meta-Blinkit ROAS touching 10x.

In a crowded category, a point of view does more than a better recipe

Soothys launched into clean-label chocolate with no sales data and a website converting at 1.3%. It did not need a new recipe, it needed a reason to be chosen. Three months later revenue was up 208%, order volume had doubled and conversion sat at 6%.

What we do for these brands

Most F&B engagements use three or four of these together. Barosi ran performance marketing, content, social, CRO consultation and retention consultation. Aazol was strategy, performance consultation and a creative revamp, with no media buying at all. The mix follows the problem, not a retainer template.