Food & Drink Industry – Innovation and adaptation in the face of lockdown

Hospitality Sector Fighting Back

It’s certainly true to say that everyone has been impacted in some way from the past 12 months with the awful Covid-19 pandemic. It has been devastating on a personal level and also to businesses not just in the UK, but throughout the world. However, where there are extreme challenges, there is also innovation. People find a way to adapt to not just survive but also to thrive in times of hardship and we have seen this within the food & drink industry. How businesses in the UK have adapted to make sure that they not only just keep going, but also supply a new need to their customers has been truly inspiring to see.

Coming 4^th in the world for entrepreneurship, we guess it really isn’t a surprise to see that in UK, people have found extraordinary ways to keep pushing forward during the pandemic. We, as a country, love to create something from nothing and in times of struggle, this is what helps to keep the economy pushing forward as a whole.

What has the food & drink industry been doing?

For many owners of food or drink businesses, they had their lives turned upside down overnight last year. One day, it was business as normal with busy bars, pubs and restaurants across the UK and the next moment, they had to close their doors. They were then allowed to re-open with the ‘eat out to help out’ incentive from the Government, only to have to close again with the next lockdown.

We can’t imagine how hard and upsetting the past year must have been with that type of inconsistency and uncertainty of not knowing what would happen one day to the next. However, some of things that have really impressed us which we have seen from the food and drink sectors are the following:

• Takeaway & delivery service – One of the first things we saw from pubs, bars and restaurants around the UK was the initiation of both takeaway and delivery services. Pubs, whilst not allowed to be open to the public for a time, could provide takeaway food services to the public and the same for restaurants. We also saw pubs providing a ‘hatch’ service, where people could order their drinks and sit outside when lockdown restrictions allowed. This quick shift in adopting a full takeaway and delivery service certainly saved number of food and drink businesses from having to close down for good.
• Hand sanitiser market – We saw a number of breweries such as BrewDog answering the call to the shortage of hand sanitiser during the peak of the pandemic. Halting their normal day-to-day work and start producing hand sanitiser has proven to be extremely successful for them on both a sales and marketing perspective.
• Rise of the micro brewery – It’s been amazing to see local bars such as Gyre & Gimble in Norwich, St Benedicts completely pivot their offering and start launching their own gin ranges, which have proven to be extremely popular and are now stocked in national supermarket chains! We have also been tasked with creating some stunning product photography of their ranges to help promote them.

Whilst Covid-19 has been absolutely awful, it has been so inspiring to see how people and businesses have adapted and evolved to meet the challenges faced. In the UK we don’t give up, we find new ways to thrive and this could not be better displayed than what has been shown from the food and drink industry throughout the past 12-months. We are proud to also be a part of this with our product photography services at The Packshot People, where we have helped a number of food & drink business such as Gyre & Gimble create stunning new product shots of their own ranges of drink.

Creative Product Styling

Along with our sought-after standard pack shot services, we also provide a premium creative product styling service for our clients. We can take your products and photograph them in their natural setting to make the product the centrepiece, whilst also including stunning backgrounds to create an overall image with the WOW factor. We have a fantastic design and styling team who will be able to dress up the imagery to make each individual product look unique and beautiful from all angles. If you click HERE, you will be able to see the case study from Gyre & Gimble which is a perfect example of our creative product styling in action for the hospitality sector.

We hope you enjoy looking through our website and if you have any questions about our product photography services which includes our premium creative product styling photography, then please do not hesitate to get in touch.