Turning Meals into Movements

A communications specialist with deep expertise in brand and marketing, Libby Andrews has shaped food and hospitality storytelling for nearly two decades. She began her career at a London PR agency, leading campaigns for chefs, restaurants, cookbooks and retail products. Andrews later joined Pho in-house as head of marketing when the company had only a few restaurants. Over the years, she guided the brand’s growth to 50 locations across the UK, eventually becoming Marketing Director. Today, she oversees PR, digital, social, new openings and brand development, serving as Pho’s brand guardian.

In this interview, Andrews emphasises the importance of building authentic connections with guests, protecting brand identity through rapid growth and ensuring consistency while leaving space for creativity. She also highlights the role of storytelling, culture and community engagement as central to sustainable hospitality leadership.

More than Food on a Plate

For me, the most important thing is ensuring a restaurant brand understands what it wants to portray. Every restaurant will say they have delicious food, great drinks and great hospitality. The real question is, what makes you unique?

At Pho, it’s Vietnamese street food. Our brand pillars are healthy and fresh; we’ve been open about that for years by sharing our nutritional information online. Our food is designed to fit into everyday life as part of a healthy diet. At the same time, we don’t take ourselves too seriously. We’re not a health brand. We’re a fun, slightly sarcastic brand and I think that balance makes people feel they can connect with us.

When it comes to content, it’s not enough to just show tasty food. We look for partnerships and stories that are entertaining and relevant, the kind of content that makes people want to engage with us. It’s always about going beyond the food to tell the right stories and bring the brand to life.

I want people to engage with the brand naturally, not in a forced way. You can care about wellness and healthy eating, but also want to enjoy life. That’s the spirit we try to bring into everything we do.

Why Passion Beats Algorithms

When I think about social platforms from a brand perspective, the most significant shift has been how people find and engage with content. It used to be all about followers. You’d measure loyalty by how many people chose to follow you and engage with what you posted. But the algorithms have completely changed that. Now your content can reach thousands, even millions, of people who don’t follow you at all.

I always say social media content must come from genuine love and excitement for the brand. It can’t just be about ticking boxes or putting out the same type of posts. People can feel when content is made with real passion, whether for the food, the drink, the people or the brand as a whole.

I need to ensure that energy translates from the person creating the content to the person consuming it. You can use trends, great photography or video, but the key is that the passion behind it comes through. That’s what builds momentum. That’s what makes people want to engage with you, not just once but again and again.

Experiences Built to be Shared

I see experiential marketing evolving well beyond where it started. It used to be about sampling or offering people a direct experience with the brand, almost a one-to-one exchange. That’s still valuable, but it’s grown into something bigger.

The real power of experiential marketing is in creating experiences that people want to capture and share. That’s how a live event becomes thousands of authentic stories amplifying your brand. It’s not just about what happens in the moment; it’s about creating something that lives on through the content people put into the world. When you plan an event or a campaign with that in mind, you can turn hundreds of individual experiences into thousands of pieces of content, each amplifying the brand personally and authentically.

So, over the next couple of years, I think the best experiential marketing will be designed with that dual purpose; creating a meaningful live experience and building it in a way that invites people to share it. That’s how you maximise visibility and make the brand part of conversations far beyond the original event.

Thinking Like a Consumer

If I were advising peers, colleagues or people coming up in hospitality marketing, I’d say to always think like a consumer first. I spent much time looking outside hospitality and asking myself why I feel connected to certain brands. What makes me loyal to them? How are they speaking to me? What does their marketing look and feel like?

That lens is essential because in hospitality, we’re all essentially saying the same baseline. We have a great restaurant, great food and excellent service. But the real question is, what’s beyond that? Why do we exist outside of the obvious? What’s our personality, tone of voice and role in people’s lives?

For me, building a brand is about making those cultural and emotional connections. It’s about tapping into pop culture, storytelling, the partnerships we choose and the occasions we fit into. If you can articulate what you stand for beyond food and drink, people won’t just come for a meal; they’ll feel part of something bigger.

I’d warn against the common trap of stopping at the basics. Food and service should always be excellent, but that alone won’t create real brand engagement. To build a true following, you must be clear about why you exist and ensure every touchpoint reflects that.