Consumer food brands understand press instinctively. B2B food businesses mostly skip it, on the reasonable sounding theory that their customers are not reading magazines about food.
Their customers are reading something, though, and it is usually trade press. That is a much smaller, much more winnable field than consumer media, and almost nobody in it is trying.
Your buyer reads differently than a shopper
An operator deciding on a distributor, or a facilities director choosing equipment, does research nobody sees. They read trade publications, they ask peers, they look you up. A byline in a publication they respect does something an ad in the same publication does not, which is suggest you know something rather than that you paid for space.
The same applies to caterers. A venue coordinator vetting you before adding you to a preferred list is going to search your name. What comes back shapes whether you are a safe recommendation.
"Consumer media is crowded. Trade media is starving for anybody with something specific to say."
Thought leadership sounds hollow until you see the math
Trade publications need a constant stream of informed pieces and have small staffs. If you can write six hundred honest words about something you genuinely know, like why operators switch distributors or what fails first on a piece of equipment, you are more useful to that editor than most of their inbox.
That is a low bar in practice and it produces something you can send to a prospect for years.
Awards and lists are earned media you can enter
Best of lists, industry awards, regional business rankings. Unlike editorial coverage, these have a submission process, which means the outcome is partly within your control. Most companies skip them because filling out the form is tedious.
For caterers especially this pays off, because a couple choosing between three vendors will absolutely use an award as a tiebreaker.
Local business press counts too
A distributor expanding a warehouse, a caterer hiring twenty people, an equipment dealer opening a second location. Regional business journals cover this and it reaches exactly the commercial audience you want. It is not glamorous and it works.
The point is that food and beverage PR is not only for the companies whose logo ends up in a shopper's hand. It works anywhere a decision gets made partly on reputation, which is most of this industry.