By the third monthly report, shelf sales arrive per store per week for each retailer, kept apart from retailer-site, marketplace and direct orders. Every promotion that ran shows who funded it, the extra units it sold, and the margin left once your share of that funding is paid. Each claim on pack, on your site and in an ad sits beside the register entry, regulator's definition or evidence behind it. Every paid placement and creator post has a named payer on file, with that payer's headcount. The ad accounts, customer lists and creative files are in your name. Those five tests cover four channels: supermarket shelves, retailer websites and delivery apps, paid social with creators, and your own shop. Foodservice, selling to restaurants, cafés and caterers, is left out because we found no source on its advertising rules that we could cite.
Supermarket and retailer shelves
Worldpanel by Numerator's grocery data for the four weeks to 22 February 2026 put online's share of take-home sales at 13.0%, the highest level since July 2021. By subtraction, that leaves 87.0% outside online orders. For a brand ranged in supermarkets, the agency's first audience is the buyer who lists the product. The second is the shopper who keeps it listed.
On the shelf, the agency's skill is promotion economics: knowing who pays for a deal and what it really adds. The Groceries Supply Code of Practice applies to designated retailers, and the Competition and Markets Authority considers any retailer with UK annual groceries turnover of more than £1 billion for designation. Paragraph 12 of the Code, headed No Payments for better positioning of goods unless in relation to Promotions, means a retailer cannot require you to pay for a better spot or a bigger slice of shelf in store except as part of a promotion. A retailer also must not require a supplier to fund a promotion predominantly. Unless the supply agreement provides for it, a retailer cannot require payment towards its costs of artwork or packaging design. The Adjudicator's list of designated retailers includes Amazon.com, Inc. as well as the supermarket groups, so check yours is on it before you lean on any of this.
Hand the agency one past promotion and ask it to price it: who funded it, how many extra units it sold per store, and what margin those units left once your share of that funding is taken off. A plan that counts a promotion's gross uplift and ignores who paid for it is spending your margin without showing it.
In England, the restriction of products by location came into force on 1 October 2022, and it governs where in a shop, and in the equivalent places online, less healthy products may sit. It reaches businesses with 50 or more employees offering pre-packed food for sale in store and online. An agency proposing an end-of-aisle display should already know whether your product may stand there.
Retailer websites and delivery apps
UK food and drink brands, called CPG brands (consumer packaged goods) in the US, also sell where shoppers order online. In Britain, more than 18 million grocery orders were placed online in those same four weeks. Brick Meets Click reports that in the US the online share of total grocery spending reached 19% to close the year, a figure for December 2025 alone, not the whole year. Salsify, a product-content software company, ran a 2025 survey of nearly 2,000 US and UK shoppers and reports that 67% of its food and beverage online shoppers use online marketplaces such as Amazon to discover new products and brands. Treat that as a vendor's survey.
Here every paid placement is a decision with two parts, and the agency should make both visible. The first is whether the deal is advertising at all. CAP guidance for the UK says supermarket and delivery-app listings are ordinarily out of scope as they are communications in an advertiser's own media space. It adds that a commercial deal can change that when the listing gets enhanced prominence, and the ASA will consider whether the listing sits differently from ordinary, organic product listings. The second is whether it paid. A rise in the retailer's sales of your product while a placement was live, against a similar stretch beforehand, is a starting point and not the answer: a promotion, a range change or the season can move the same numbers, and the placement's fee and any funded discount come off whatever it added. An agency should show that comparison placement by placement, with the paying party, the cost and anything else running at the same time named on each line.
Paid social and creators
Research from the digital agency Greenpark, reported by Grocery Gazette, found that one third of UK shoppers have bought food directly through social media. Salsify's survey adds that 57% of its food and beverage online shoppers use social media to discover new products and brands. Both come from commercial researchers, so read them as indications, not market sizes.
Social is where the payer test decides most. From 5 January 2026, ads for identifiable less healthy food and drink products are banned in paid online media at any time. The rule is CAP Code rule 15.19, and the regulations come into force UK-wide on 5 January 2026. An agency should run three tests before it builds a campaign.
The first test is the product. Government guidance says a product is caught only if it falls within one of the product categories of the schedule and is deemed less healthy when scored with the 2004 to 2005 nutrient profiling model.
The second test is the payer. Where a food or drink SME pays for the placement, the online restriction does not apply, and the regulations count a business as an SME only if it has fewer than 250 people, with international and franchisee staff counted in. The same guidance says advertisements by any non-SME party are potentially in scope irrespective of whether they are directly involved in the supply of food or drink products. So ask who pays when a parent group, retailer or distributor funds the creative.
The third test is what the ad shows. Logos for company brands and brands of ranges of products are permitted, provided the advertisement does not depict a specific less healthy product, according to the government's response on brand advertising. That response adds that a logo belonging only to a specific less healthy product is not permitted because it is essentially an advertisement for that product.
Creators sit inside the payer test. ASA guidance says paying includes providing any consideration, whether monetary or non-monetary, and that this is likely to include arrangements such as the gifting of products. It also says posts solely by companies from their own social media accounts are not within scope provided payment is not involved, while paid-for promoted or boosted posts meet the payment test.
Drinks brands (beverage brands in the US) face audience rules as well. Under the UK CAP Code, no medium may carry alcohol ads when under-18s make up more than 25% of its audience, and alcohol marketing must not make any health, fitness or weight-control claims. In the US, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) says that where a producer or other industry member gets a creator to make content about its brand, paying in cash or in kind, TTB would consider such content as an advertisement. TTB's advertising FAQ also says its regulations do not define the word "clean", that the word can be simply a descriptor of the taste of the beverage and is considered puffery, and that used with other language to suggest health benefits it is a misleading health-related statement.
What the agency owes you here is a payer file. Before launch, each ad and each creator post should have the paying party and that party's headcount method written down, the products checked against the listed categories, and, for gifted product, the creator brief beside the reasoning. A drinks brand should also see the under-18 share of every audience bought.
Your own shop, search and email
Salsify's survey also reports that 62% of its food and beverage online shoppers use search engines such as Google to discover new products and brands. Your own site is where that search lands.
On your own pages, the risk sits in the claims. In Great Britain, the government's register sets out all authorised and rejected nutrition and health claims, and only the authorised entries may be used. For advertising, CAP Code rule 15.1.1 ties nutrition claims in marketing to the same kind of register. Other claims fall outside it and need evidence or a regulator's definition.
US wording runs on other terms. FDA says placing a "healthy" claim on a food package is voluntary, and the final rule's compliance date is February 25, 2028. For "natural", FDA works from a longstanding policy rather than a rule: it has taken the term to mean that nothing artificial or synthetic has been added that a shopper would not expect in that food, and the page setting this out was last updated on 22 October 2018. Online alcohol sales in the US also bring in the states: TTB's answer on internet sales says its own requirements still apply and that the seller must also check with the state agencies on both sides of the sale.
A competent agency arrives at your product pages with a claims map: each nutrition or health claim beside its Great Britain register entry, every other claim beside its evidence or a regulator's definition, and a note on how "healthy" and "natural" will be worded for US pages. An alcohol brand should add the list of destination states the agency has confirmed before any ad for direct shipping runs. Reorder email is a separate job, and the email flows every ecommerce brand needs covers the sequences.
What leaves with you if you part company
Whatever the channel, the ad accounts should be opened in your business name, customer lists and sales data should be yours to export on any day, and creative files should come with written usage rights.
Food and drink adds two wrinkles. Creator content needs rights that cover paid use on social and use on retailer pages, or you cannot reuse your best-performing video where it sells. And retailer-side logins, such as supplier portals or retail media accounts, should be in your name or shared with you from day one, because store-level numbers may be held there, so ask where yours sit.
Proof from a business like yours
Ask for a case that matches your channel mix and your rule position. Take two illustrative cases: a snack brand with fewer than 250 staff running paid social, and an alcohol brand selling through supermarkets. They need different proof. A drinks brand's results from direct sales say little about a shelf listing. The case should carry numbers from the client's own sales, reported by channel, and a name you can phone.
Be careful with portfolios. Packaging and photography show an eye for the shelf. They do not show rate of sale, so ask for the sales figures that sat behind the work.
Our own food and drink work is on our case pages, and it is design work: Ikonic Beer, brand identity and limited-edition packaging for an Italian craft release, and packaging across the Paris Caseificio Artigianale cheese range. They show how we handle packaging, not channel results. The services on offer to food and drink brands are listed on our food and drink brands page.
The question to close each agency meeting on
Ask this: "Which channels merit spending now, and what evidence supports that allocation?"
The question makes the agency rank your channels, and ranking is where knowledge of them shows. Judge the reply on whether you could check it next week. A reason drawn from your own figures, or from one of the rules set out above, can be checked, and so can a matching client case with sales figures and a name to phone. Funding every channel can be the right answer, provided each one has its own evidence. A reply that spreads the budget without saying why has not answered.
If the reply shows that only one channel needs outside help, our view is that a freelancer or an in-house hire for that channel may cost less than a retained agency, and waiting until a retailer lists you may beat paying anyone to plan promotions.
If choosing the lead channel is the hard part, tell us about your business.
↳ Frequently asked
01Can I send free bags of salted popcorn to creators if I pay no fee?
Product gifted for influencer content can count as payment. The UK online rule treats paying as any consideration, monetary or non-monetary, and ASA guidance says that is likely to include arrangements such as the gifting of products. That matters for a less healthy product when the payer is not an SME. Where a food or drink SME with fewer than 250 staff is the payer, the online restriction does not apply, though the other advertising rules still do.
02Does a values film with my company logo fall under the UK ban on paid online ads for less healthy food?
Not on logo grounds alone. The government's response on brand advertising says logos for company brands and brands of ranges are permitted, provided the advertisement does not depict a specific less healthy product. A logo that belongs only to one less healthy product is treated as an advertisement for that product. Check each frame of the film against that test before you pay to place it.
03Can an American craft beer call itself clean in its ads?
TTB does not define the word clean. It can be a simple taste descriptor and is then treated as puffery. Where clean is combined with other language to suggest health benefits, TTB treats it as a misleading health-related statement. A line such as clean and no hangover would be a poor risk.
04What should the month-three report show for a soft drink ranged in supermarkets?
It should show stores ranging the drink, units sold per store per week for each retailer, and each promotion's extra units and the margin they left after the cost you carried. It should also show direct and marketplace sales apart from shelf sales, so one blended number cannot hide a channel that is cannibalising another. Each nutrition or health claim used in that period should sit beside its Great Britain register entry, and each other claim beside its evidence or a regulator's definition.