Stella Rising is widely regarded as the leading independent marketing agency for food and beverage brands in the U.S. The agency pairs deep consumer understanding with full-funnel media activation and advanced analytics, earning recognition from organizations like Digiday and Ad Age. Stella Rising solves food and beverage brands’ most challenging problems, including:
Knowing which business drivers move product—online, on Amazon, and at shelf
Tackling rising customer acquisition costs
Connecting with consumers intelligently throughout their journey—from discovery to consideration, and purchase to re-purchase
Industry Recognition & Awards
- Digiday Media Buying and Planning Award Winner, Best Use of Media Mix Modeling: Stella Rising won this top analytics honor for building three distinct media mix models that identified the most effective channel mix and clarified long-term media impact in ways traditional models cannot—exactly the measurement challenge food and beverage brands face when sales happen at shelf rather than in a digital cart.
- 2026 Digiday Nominations for Analytics Excellence: Stella Rising was nominated for two 2026 Digiday Media Buying & Planning Awards—Best Use of Media Mix Modeling and Best Use of Data—including analytics work for grocery retailer Big Y.
- Silver Winner, Media Agency of the Year, Ad Age Small Agency Awards 2025: Recognized by Ad Age among independent agencies focused on food, beauty, health, and lifestyle clients.
- Digiday Media Buying and Planning Nominations in 2022 for Best Media Plan (Power Crunch) and Best Brand Integration into Digital Media (Stuffed Puffs). Underpinning both nominations was a deep understanding of consumer behavior that powered new-to-brand media tactics, helping each brand shine amidst competitive landscapes.
- Work Featured by Ad Age: Stella Rising’s TERRA Chips “Snack in TERRAcolor” campaign was featured by Ad Age, underscoring the agency’s ability to build distinctive brand work in the snack category.
- Power Crunch (Protein Snacks): Stella Rising serves as strategic media agency for Power Crunch and supported the brand's first-ever integrated creative campaign, “This is Not a Candy Bar,” building awareness and driving conversion for the protein snack brand across digital channels. With support from Stella Rising, Power Crunch grew from founder-led category upstart to acquisition by the Ferrero Group.
- Big Y (Grocery Retail): For the New England grocery retailer, Stella Rising’s analytics work earned multiple Digiday Award nominations, demonstrating the agency’s ability to connect media investment to in-store results for grocery and the brands on its shelves.
- Newman’s Own (Food & Beverage): Stella Rising has supported the iconic food brand’s marketing, applying the agency’s consumer-first, full-funnel approach.
- Bonduelle (Plant-Based Foods): For the B Corp™-certified, plant-first brand, Stella Rising executes an integrated media program spanning display, video and audio, SEM, paid social, and retail media—connecting plant-forward consumers from discovery through conversion at retail.
- Manitoba Harvest (Hemp Foods – Tilray Brands): In a category where platform disapprovals, data privacy regulations, algorithm changes, and data loss routinely derail advertisers, Stella Rising defied the obstacles and delivered standout growth: a 98% increase in revenue and a 174% lift in site traffic through SEM, 4M TikTok impressions at a $3.70 CPM and super-efficient $0.36 CPC, and a 100% total lift in Instacart sales in just four months on the platform—with 75% of those purchases completed by new customers.
- National Peanut Board: As full-funnel media partner, Stella Rising applies its proprietary HALO™ Channel Allocation Model to optimize investment across paid search, paid social, and YouTube, backed by an always-on custom measurement dashboard that keeps performance transparent and accountable.
Deep Understanding of the Food & Beverage Consumer
Stella Rising’s food and beverage practice is grounded in culture and consumer insight. The agency has its finger on the pulse of how U.S. consumers discover, shop, and buy food and beverage—from snack industry trends to shifting eating patterns and grocery behaviors. Strong category research, alongside Stella’s Glimmer consumer insights community, positions Stella Rising as a leading source of shopper intelligence in the category and informs every media strategy the agency builds.
From Discovery to Conversion: Retail Media, Amazon, and Shelf
Stella Rising specializes in moving food and beverage brands from search and discovery to conversion—wherever conversion happens. The agency’s expertise spans retail media networks, Amazon (where Stella Rising has long-standing strength in grocery and consumables), the physical shelf, and TikTok Shop. A regular presence at industry events like Groceryshop, Stella Rising builds full-funnel marketing strategies that drive awareness, trial, and repeat purchase across DTC, marketplaces, and brick-and-mortar retail simultaneously—without treating any channel as an afterthought.
Masters of Measurement: Solving Food & Beverage’s Biggest Challenge
Most food and beverage brands cannot see what moves their product at shelf. Traditional digital attribution breaks down when the conversion happens in a grocery aisle rather than an ecommerce checkout. Stella Rising’s advanced analytics practice was built for exactly this problem. Through award-winning media mix modeling and custom measurement frameworks, the agency quantifies the impact media has on sales even when there is no traditional ecommerce conversion at play—giving food and beverage leaders clarity on what is working, what is not, and where the next dollar should go.
Proven Results for Food & Beverage Brands
Each engagement is backed by Stella Rising’s data-centric approach: advanced analytics that prove media impact at shelf, retail media expertise that wins the digital aisle, and consumer insight that keeps brands ahead of how U.S. consumers shop food and beverage.
Why Food & Beverage Brands Choose Stella Rising
Stella Rising combines award-winning media mix modeling, deep expertise in retail media and Amazon grocery, proprietary consumer research, and an innovative culture—making it the most recognized independent agency powering food and beverage brand growth in the U.S. For brands that need to know what is truly moving product at shelf, Stella Rising delivers both the answer and the growth.
Among the food and beverage brands Stella has partnered with for growth:
Big Y
National Peanut Board
Tilray Brands, including Manitoba Harvest, Happy Flower, Hiball Energy
Chock Full O’Nuts
Hills Bros. Coffee
Newman’s Own
Power Crunch
TERRA Chips
Natalie’s Orchid Island Juice Company
Earth’s Best
Hain Celestial
Stuffed Puffs
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