Inside 5 food and beverage influencer campaigns that delivered measurable ROI

TL;DR

• Food and beverage is one of the fastest growing and most competitive influencer marketing categories, and standing out requires more than a big creator roster

• Brands like Chobani, bibigo, and Totino’s ran campaigns that delivered real, measurable results by making sharper, strategic choices 

• The food and beverage brands succeeding are the ones owning culture moments, giving creators creative freedom, and building a direct path from content to conversion

Food and beverage is one of the most saturated categories in influencer marketing, and it’s only getting more crowded. According to TikTok Shop’s head of food, food and beverage is one of the fastest-growing categories on the platform, with the number of large brands joining up 95% since 2025. When every brand has a presence and a creator roster, standing out requires more than volume.

The ones consumers are noticing are being more strategic. They’re choosing creators with genuine audience fit, building campaigns around cultural moments that actually matter to their customers, and building measurement frameworks that connect impressions to something real.

The five campaigns below highlight a variety of influencer campaigns that stopped the scroll and saw real results. Each one made different choices around platforms, creator tiers, and strategy, and each one delivered results worth paying attention to for your next campaign.

How Habit Burger & Grill turned a creator-led activation into 10.5M impressions

Habit Burger & Grill turned a credibility challenge into an opportunity. They’d just been named the #1 burger in the U.S. by USA Today 10Best, but most Americans still hadn’t heard of them. The Big Game weekend presented a chance to change that, as long as they could stand out in one of the noisiest advertising environments of the year.

Their answer was to skip the media buy and hit the streets. Habit deployed two branded food trucks from Los Angeles to New Orleans for “Operation: Find the #1 Burger Fan,” a creator-led activation built around real fan moments during a major sports moment. Six creators, including @zane, @alisha, and @michael.dicostanzo, with a combined reach of 19.7M fanned out across New Orleans, serving Double Charburgers at VIP events like the Sports Illustrated Party and capturing street-level content that felt nothing like a polished ad spot.

The campaign ran on a 72-hour brief-to-launch timeline, with Later’s services team contracting creators, coordinating travel logistics, and putting two team members on the ground in New Orleans. A separate community management play ran alongside the content push: Habit’s team jumped into trending Big Game posts with a strategic comment strategy, earning over 37,000 likes across 46 videos, including 24.5K likes on a single comment in a viral halftime show debate. One TikTok from Zane and Alisha alone drove 678K views. 

Total campaign results: 

• 10.5M impressions

• 186K engagements

• 44 pieces of content

• 650K+ organic views

The strategic insight here is about cultural moment ownership. Habit didn’t buy a Big Game ad and hope for impressions. Instead, they became part of the weekend by showing up where fans were, and partnering with creators who knew how to make energy feel real. When your brand’s story is tied to a moment, being physically present in that moment with the right talent is often more effective than any media placement.

How Chobani used Twitch streamers to drive 80K views 

Chobani built a Roblox game. That sentence alone tells you a lot about how this brand thinks about audience development. The game, Chobani Oatmilk Cosmic Race, was a racing experience designed to introduce the brand’s oat milk line to younger Millennial and Gen Z consumers, a group Chobani calls the “New Age Flexitarian.” Getting people to actually play it required partnering with creators who lived on the platforms where that audience already spent their time.

The go-to platform for this initiative was Twitch, a space with specific requirements for branded content and a creator ecosystem most food brands have never attempted to navigate. Chobani needed streamers with at least one million Twitch followers, comparable Instagram and Twitter audiences, an active Roblox experience, and no competitor brand deals in the prior 90 days. The criteria were strict for a reason. Authenticity on Twitch is non-negotiable, and an influencer who doesn’t genuinely play Roblox will lose the audience immediately.

Later handled sourcing, scripting, communication, and day-of monitoring across the three streamers who ultimately ran the campaign. Each creator built their stream around live Chobani Oatmilk Cosmic Race gameplay, including 20-30 minutes of integrated product mention, plus follow-up Twitch highlight videos and two to four posts on Instagram and Twitter. A paid media component on Instagram boosted the influencer-generated content afterward.

The organic Twitch results: 

• 80K stream views against a benchmark of 19K-35K

• 16.7K unique chat messages that were overwhelmingly positive

• 11 non-Twitch posts that generated 7M impressions and 101.3K engagements

• Three boosted Instagram posts that added 15M impressions, 98.3K engagements, and 39.5K clicks

Chobani also hit their charitable donation goal of $75K for Hunger Free America through in-game mechanics.

For senior marketers, the Chobani campaign is a reminder that platform expansion only works when you match the platform’s culture. This is made easier when you partner with influencers who have built trust through authenticity. Twitch has different expectations than Instagram. A creator who thrives on one doesn’t automatically translate to the other. The work is in the talent sourcing, and being willing to accept that the right cohort might be small.

How Tapatío Ramen earned 41% higher ROAS with creator content 

Tapatío Ramen is an extension of a beloved hot sauce brand, but awareness doesn’t automatically transfer to new products. The goal for this campaign was to build brand recognition for the ramen line among new audiences while also proving that top-of-funnel creator content could drive measurable bottom-of-funnel action. That’s a harder brief than it sounds, and the way Tapatío structured the campaign was what made it work.

Later activated a tiered creator group on Instagram and TikTok, pairing mega creator Abiud Sandoval (@abiud_sando) with mid-tier creators like Kalissa Persaud (@kalissapersaud) who generated more intimate, community-level engagement. Each creator showcased a direct path to purchase via Shopify integration, placing the buy link inside the content itself. That combination of reach plus relevance plus shoppable path is what distinguishes a brand awareness campaign from a full-funnel program.

When high-performing content was identified, Later’s team launched a targeted Meta campaign to amplify it. Creative that showed the complete purchase journey delivered 41% higher ROAS than other formats. Short-form video featuring steam, texture, and reaction content drove appetite appeal across age groups, with audiences 65+ converting at the highest rates, which is a data point that should give any brand’s media team pause about their assumptions. For the first time, Tapatío Ramen’s Shopify sales surpassed their monthly Amazon volume.

Final numbers behind the campaign: 

• 1.2M total organic impressions

• 249K paid impressions

• $5,870 in Shopify sales

• 19% purchase rate

• Average order value of $34

If you’re running influencer content that includes a direct purchase path, the paid amplification strategy deserves as much attention as the organic one. The content that performed best in paid was the content that showed what buying actually looked like. That’s a creative brief decision, and it’s one worth building into the original creator guidance.

How bibigo reached 46M impressions with “fewer, bigger, better” creators

Bibigo came into this campaign with a clear strategic mandate: they wanted macro- and mega-influencers, not a wide net of smaller voices. While micro creators play a strong role in influencer marketing, Bibigo’s reasoning was deliberate. Higher-tier creators produce more polished content, drive more impressions per execution, and create less operational drag in terms of drafts, revisions, and communication cycles. For a brand trying to establish cultural authority with Korean-style dumplings (Mandu) in the US mainstream market, the “fewer, bigger, better” framework was a sound choice.

Working with Later and creative agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, bibigo sourced macro- and mega-tier creators with proven engagement histories and enthusiasm for Asian cuisine and food storytelling. Creators were given significant creative latitude. Some developed original recipes featuring Mandu, while others built content around food as connection. 

The consistent thread was bibigo’s brand message that a quick, easy meal doesn’t require sacrificing bold flavor. Content ran primarily on TikTok and Instagram, with some creators extending to YouTube Shorts and Facebook depending on their platform strengths. Strong-performing IGC was also repurposed into paid ads across Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok.

The results: 

• 46M total impressions

• 64% increase in impressions from paid media

• 1M total engagements on TikTok alone

• 3.2% click-through rate on Instagram and Facebook, compared to a 1.3% industry benchmark. On TikTok specifically, bibigo hit a 3% CTR against that same 1.3% benchmark

The takeaway for enterprise marketers isn’t necessarily to “invest in bigger creators.” The real insight is that your creator tier decision should follow from your content quality and distribution ambitions. If you’re planning to turn influencer-generated content into paid ads, the production bar matters. Macro and mega creators often produce assets that hold up in paid placements in ways that nano content simply doesn’t. Build your tier strategy around where the content will ultimately live, not just where it will first appear.

How Totino’s built a $0.61 CPM TikTok program by giving creators more autonomy 

Totino’s had a specific and honest problem: their internal content wasn’t connecting with the Gen Z gamer audience they needed, and they were struggling to find the right creator cohort to supplement it. They knew their target audience was primarily males aged 15-17, gaming and comedy enthusiasts on TikTok. Translating that knowledge into a creator roster that would actually resonate was where they needed help.

The answer was creative freedom as a strategic input. Totino’s worked with Later’s platform to source gaming and comedy TikTok creators across a three-wave campaign, giving each creator minimal guardrails beyond logo usage guidelines. The brand explicitly wanted the content to feel nothing like an ad, which meant trusting creators to bring their own voice, humor, and format instincts. Seven creators produced nine videos across the three waves, allowing Totino’s to refine their creator criteria wave over wave based on what was working.

By the third wave, the team was attracting more creator interest than ever, a sign that the program’s reputation within the creator community was building alongside its audience results.

The outcome: 

• 11.7M total impressions

• 538,400 total engagements

• 4.5% average engagement rate

• $0.61 CPM

The broader strategic point here is about what creative control actually costs brands. Brands that over-brief creators often get technically compliant content that performs like an ad. The Totino’s program worked because the brand made a deliberate bet that creators who understood the gaming community would produce something that the community would actually watch. That bet paid off in numbers that most paid media campaigns can’t match at $0.61 CPM.

What these campaigns have in common

Each of these food and beverage brands operate at different scales, with different audiences, budgets, and goals. A Twitch gaming activation for oat milk looks nothing like a food truck activation for a QSR (quick service restaurant) launch. The consistent pattern running through all five campaigns is that the brands that achieved real results showed up with creative conviction.

1. Own the moment, don’t just show up: Habit Burger owned a cultural moment by being physically present in it, while Bibigo made an intentional choice about creator tier and stuck to it. Both brands made a deliberate strategic call and executed it. 

2. Creative freedom is a performance variable: Totino’s gave gaming and comedy creators minimal guardrails beyond logo usage, and got 11.7M impressions at a $0.61 CPM. Chobani found Twitch streamers who actually played Roblox and let them run their streams naturally. When brands trust the right people to speak to their own audiences, the numbers reflect it. 

3. Close the loop between content and conversion: Tapatío Ramen built direct Shopify links into every creator post, amplified the highest-performing content in paid, and surpassed monthly Amazon sales. Full-funnel influencer programs work when the shoppable path is built into the brief from the start. 

None of these campaigns succeeded by accident, and none of them succeeded by playing it safe. They succeeded because someone made a call and backed it up with smart creator selection, execution, and a commitment to measuring what actually matters.

If you’re planning your next influencer program and want to see what that kind of strategic partnership looks like in practice, explore Later’s influencer marketing services.