Who are FIS Group's partners?

Currently two named partners: G Force (our specialist innovation partner) and The Food People (our trend foresight partner). The partnership model is deliberately small. Both partners are chosen because the partner is the right specialist for specific work rather than because we want to inflate the capability list. As the firm grows, new partnerships will be added where the same specialist logic applies.

Should I contact The Food People or G Force directly, or through FIS Group?

Depends on what you need. If you are commissioning partnership-related work or have a question about a specific partnership output (Future Food Trend Tracker, Future Food Trends webinar, or G Force collaborative work), FIS Group is the right route, as the partnership work runs through FIS Group project engagement. If you have a question for the partner specifically that is outside the FIS Group partnership scope, the partner external websites carry their own buyer journeys.

Are the partners part of FIS Group?

No. G Force and The Food People are independent companies in their own right, each with their own commercial offer, identity and buyer journey. The partnerships are strategic commercial relationships rather than ownership or sub-brand structures. The Food People is led by Charles Banks; G Force is led by [TO CONFIRM]. Both partners maintain their independence and their own commercial work outside the FIS Group partnership.

How do partnerships work operationally on a project?

Where a brief shape calls for partner specialism, the partner is brought into the FIS Group project as named partner on the engagement. Client interaction remains with the FIS Group senior team; specialist work is delivered with the partner integrated into the project. The partnership work is named transparently in the proposal so the client knows the structure before the project starts.

Can I work with FIS Group without involving the partners?

Yes. Most FIS Group projects do not involve the partners directly. The integrated insight and innovation model covers the substantial majority of commercial briefs through the core FIS Group team. The partnerships extend capability into specific specialisms (trend foresight with TFP; specific innovation specialisms with G Force) for the brief shapes that warrant them. The partner involvement is project-specific rather than default.

Can I become a partner?

The partnership model is deliberately small and selective. We add partnerships where there is a specific specialism that extends our capability in a commercially significant way, where the partner is genuinely the right specialist for the work, and where the partnership serves clients better than building the capability internally. If you believe a partnership with FIS Group meets that logic, contact the senior team directly to discuss.

Where do the partners sit geographically?

Both G Force and The Food People are UK-based independent firms. FIS Group operates from Mission Kitchen, London, plus the NOTED Fieldwork facilities at Bury St Edmunds and Birmingham (the dedicated FIS Group fieldwork sub-brand). The partnerships operate within the UK food and drink ecosystem with international project reach where briefs require it.

Partnerships | Strategic partners including G Force and The Food People

Q: Is the Future Food Trend Tracker a FIS Group publication or a TFP publication?

Both. The Future Food Trend Tracker is developed in partnership between FIS Group and The Food People, combining FIS Group integrated specialist depth with TFP trend foresight infrastructure. The publication is published through the FIS Group Trends and Foresight section, with TFP credited as partner. Each edition carries the partnership attribution clearly. The same partnership model applies to the Future Food Trends webinar series, co-hosted by Kelly Dowson of FIS Group and Charles Banks of TFP.

A small set of trusted partners. Selected because they are the best in their space.

Where specialist expertise sits outside the core FIS Group team, we work through a curated set of strategic partners. Currently two: G Force and The Food People. Both are named partnerships chosen because the partner is the right specialist for the work, not a roster of suppliers we draw from indiscriminately.

Why we work through partnerships at all

FIS Group is built around an integrated insight and innovation model that runs across strategic insight, innovation and product consultancy work. That covers the substantial majority of food and drink commercial briefs. There are specific specialisms, though, where the right answer for a client question sits outside the core FIS Group team. Trend foresight at the level of specialism The Food People bring to the conversation. Innovation work in the specific shapes where G Force has built deep expertise.

Rather than build those specialisms internally just to claim full coverage, we work in partnership with the best specialists in the space. The partnership model serves clients better because it gives them genuine specialist depth from a team that has spent years building that specialism, rather than nominal coverage from a generalist team learning the specialism on the job. It also serves the broader food and drink ecosystem better because the specialist firms maintain the depth that makes them worth working with.

The partnership model is deliberately small. Currently two named partnerships. Both chosen because the partner is the right specialist for specific work, not because we want to inflate the capability list. As the firm grows, new partnerships will be added where the same specialist logic applies. The partner list will stay curated rather than expanded for its own sake.

The Food People

Food and drink trend foresight

FIS Contacts

Kelly Dowson Group Managing Director

Visit Website Read the Future Food Trend Tracker Register for the next Future Food Trends webinar

The Food People (TFP) is our trend foresight partner. Led by Charles Banks, TFP is one of the most respected trend voices in UK food and drink, with a specialism in identifying emerging consumer behaviour shifts, category dynamics and the cultural signals that translate into food and drink commercial reality six to twelve months ahead of mainstream conversation. The TFP team has built one of the deepest specialist trend foresight infrastructures in UK food and drink.

The FIS Group and TFP partnership brings together two complementary specialisms. FIS Group runs the integrated insight and innovation model across strategic, innovation and product consultancy work for food and drink clients. TFP runs the dedicated trend foresight infrastructure that informs the front-end of that work. The partnership is the structural mechanism that gives FIS Group clients access to the depth of TFP trend foresight without TFP having to scale into a full integrated consultancy, and that gives TFP’s broader audience access to the strategic and innovation depth that FIS Group brings to trend conversations.

The partnership delivers two visible outputs into the public domain: the quarterly Future Food Trends webinar series (co-hosted by Kelly Dowson of FIS Group and Charles Banks of TFP), and the Future Food Trend Tracker (the trend foresight publication developed in partnership and published through the FIS Group Trends and Foresight section). Both outputs combine the FIS Group integrated specialist depth with the TFP trend foresight specialism.

Work Delivered

Future Food Trend Tracker (quarterly trend foresight publication, in our Trends and Foresight section)
Future Food Trends webinar series (quarterly, co-hosted by Kelly Dowson and Charles Banks)
[TO CONFIRM: additional collaborative work between FIS Group and TFP]

G Force

[TO CONFIRM: G Force's specific innovation specialism]

FIS Contacts

Danny Butt Group Innovation Director

G Force is our specialist innovation partner. [TO CONFIRM: substantive description of G Force, including the specific specialism that defines the partnership, the principals or senior leads at G Force, and the context that makes the G Force partnership commercially significant for FIS Group clients]. G Force has built deep expertise in [TO CONFIRM: specific innovation specialism], and works alongside the FIS Group innovation team on specific brief shapes where their specialism extends our capability.

The FIS Group and G Force partnership operates through integrated project work where G Force expertise is needed on specific innovation briefs. Rather than referring clients out to G Force separately, the partnership allows G Force capability to run inside FIS Group projects when the brief shape calls for it. The client engagement remains with FIS Group; the specialist innovation work is delivered with G Force as named partner on the project.

[TO CONFIRM: the visible work or notable collaborative projects between FIS Group and G Force that should be surfaced as partnership outputs, similar to how the Future Food Trend Tracker and the webinar series surface the TFP partnership]

Work Delivered

[TO CONFIRM: notable collaborative projects, methodologies developed jointly, or other visible partnership outputs]
[TO CONFIRM: notable collaborative projects, methodologies developed jointly, or other visible partnership outputs]
[TO CONFIRM: notable collaborative projects, methodologies developed jointly, or other visible partnership outputs]

Future Food Trend Tracker (TFP partnership)

Our quarterly trend foresight publication, developed in partnership with The Food People. Combines FIS Group integrated specialist depth with TFP trend foresight infrastructure to track how future food trends translate into real purchasing behaviour. Free summary content available. Sits in the Trends and Foresight section of FIS Group Thought Leadership.

Got a brief that needs the integrated team plus partner specialism?

Tell us what you are trying to learn. We will tell you straight whether the integrated FIS Group team is the right fit on its own, whether the work calls for the TFP trend foresight partnership or G Force innovation partnership, and how the partnership work would run on your specific brief. Twenty minutes on a scoping call with the senior team.