SBR 78: Breakfast meeting in New York for Expanding Food & Drink Brands

On Tuesday 8th September, I'm hosting a private breakfast in Midtown NYC for US food and drink founders, marketers and growth leads who are weighing up a move into the UK or Europe.

Eight to twelve people around one table. No sales pitch, no deck. Just a straight conversation about what actually needs to be true before you commit money to retail, distribution, marketing or activation over here.

I've launched close to 20 brands into the UK market, client-side for businesses including Heineken, Arla and Post Holdings, and more recently through Big Black Door, working with founders and marketing teams making the same jump. The mistakes are rarely about ambition. They're about assuming the UK works like the US, and finding out the expensive way that it doesn't.

We'll get into how UK retail and shopper behaviour actually differs from the US, what needs adapting and what should stay exactly as it is, and the specific places brands tend to waste money when they enter a new market without knowing the terrain.

Who it's for: anyone at a US food or drink brand seriously considering UK or European growth, or who wants a straight answer on what that would really take before they decide either way.

Details:
Tuesday 8th September 2026, 08:30 to 10:00, Midtown NYC.

Seats are limited to keep it a real conversation rather than a room of people politely listening to each other. [Request a seat here.]

If this isn't the right moment for you but you know someone it would matter to, someone building a US food or drink brand and starting to ask "could this work in the UK", send it their way. That's genuinely the most useful thing you can do with it.