Food, drink and FMCG brands convert better than almost any category — but thin margins and a sub-£80 basket mean the money is made on the second, fifth and tenth order, not the first. RiseUp engineers the whole repeat-purchase engine: efficient acquisition, baskets that build, and CRM that turns a one-off treat into a standing order.
The challenge in food, drink & fmcg
Your category is a paradox. People buy food and drink on impulse, so traffic converts at 5-6% — three times the ecommerce average — yet you still struggle to make the numbers work, because a typical UK basket is around £77 and your gross margin is a fraction of a fashion brand's. That means a single sale rarely repays the cost of winning it; profit only arrives when a customer comes back. So the real enemies are a first order that loses money, a basket too small to ship economically, and a shopper who tries you once and drifts. Win the reorder and FMCG has some of the lowest acquisition costs in retail. Lose it and you're buying the same customer twice.
RiseUp treats the first order as the start of a relationship, not the win. We acquire efficiently on the channels where food and drink is cheapest to reach — appetite-led creative on Meta and TikTok where CPMs are the lowest of any category — then immediately lift the basket with bundles, multipacks and free-shipping thresholds, and hand every new buyer to a Klaviyo flow built to trigger the second order before the cupboard's empty. Performance, creative, web and CRM run as one team against one number: profit per customer over 90 days, not cost per first sale.
The profit engine for FMCG — replenishment reminders, subscribe-and-save and win-backs turn a £77 first order into a standing habit.
Food and drink has the lowest CPMs of any category — appetite-led video and UGC make impulse buyers act on the scroll.
Bundles, multipacks and free-shipping thresholds lift a thin sub-£80 basket above the cost-to-ship line and rescue the 70% who abandon.
Taste, texture and 'real people eating it' content is what sells food — scroll-stopping creative is the single biggest ROAS lever here.
Capture in-the-moment intent for gifting, occasions and 'where to buy' searches with Shopping and PMax tuned to margin, not revenue.
Own recipe, occasion and 'best [category] UK' searches — and get cited when shoppers ask AI what to buy or gift.
A senior strategist will map exactly where the growth is — channels, creative, site and data. No obligation.
A high conversion rate is exactly why food and drink is deceptive. You're winning the first sale but a sub-£80 basket on thin margins means that sale barely breaks even. The work — and the profit — is in the basket size and the reorder, which is where most food brands leak money and where we focus first.
More than ever. Even without a formal subscription, food and drink replenishes naturally, so a well-timed Klaviyo flow that reminds a buyer before they run out behaves like a subscription you didn't have to sell. We also layer in subscribe-and-save where it fits, which is what pushes 12-month repeat rates from ~35% toward 50%+.
Yes, but only if you measure the right thing. Food and drink has the lowest CPMs in ecommerce, so reach is cheap — the median first-order ROAS is modest, around 1.6x, which looks marginal until you count the reorder. We optimise to profit per customer over 90 days, plus order-level tactics like multipacks and free-shipping thresholds to lift each basket.
Increasingly. Shoppers search recipes, occasions, dietary needs and 'best [category] UK', and they now ask AI assistants what to buy or gift. We build content and structured data so you rank in classic search and get cited in AI answers — a channel most food brands haven't claimed yet.
