AI training for food, drink and consumer brands
Hands-on AI agent training for food and drink brands, FMCG and D2C teams. Your team builds agents on its own work: retailer reports, competitor prices, product copy and demand forecasts.
Led by James McAulay, ex-ElevenLabs and founder of Encore (acquired by Mixcloud).
Consumer brands whose teams we’ve trained
The number is people trained, on the live cohort, the self-paced course or a team bootcamp.
62 people trained
5 people trained
7 people trained
3 people trained
10 people trained
5 people trained
2 people trained
7 people trained
3 people trained
What food and drink teams built
Built on the cohort by the people who do these jobs every week.
Watching competitor prices
An agent checks competitors’ prices on a set of key products every week, with London and the rest of the UK side by side.
A food and drink business
Claude Code
Retailer and sales reporting
The sales team’s weekly numbers in Slack became a dashboard built with Claude Code. It shows rate of sale, service level and a view per retailer, and flags missing data.
A food and drink brand
Slack- Claude Code
SEO and content
An agent audits the website for SEO and files each finding as a task in Asana. A second build gives colleagues a live link to partnership performance instead of asking for updates.
A food and drink brand
Claude
Asana
Product descriptions at scale
A skill turns product notes into Shopify product descriptions. They now need minimal edits.
A food and drink business- Claude
Shopify
Operations and customer service
A weekday briefing at 09:30 shows where the team is waiting on someone. The helpdesk is connected to Claude with read-only tools, each needing approval before it runs.
A food and drink brand- Claude
Gorgias
Beyond food and drink
The same jobs come up in wellness, flowers, gifting and pet products.
Demand forecasting
A commercial director built a barcode-level demand forecast in Claude Code. A second build compares freight costs shipment by shipment.
A health and wellness business- Claude Code
Google Sheets
Customer feedback
An agent sorts support tickets into eight themes. It was checked against 100 test tickets and saves about four hours of tagging a week.
A gifting brand- Claude
Competitor monitoring
An agent tracks five rival brands and drafts a weekly market brief.
A gifting brand- Claude
Brand copy and paid media
A copywriter skill combines the brand’s tone of voice, research and a humaniser. A weekly digest flags paid ads that are showing fatigue.
A consumer brand- Claude
A whole team in two days
The CEO took the cohort first, then booked a two-day bootcamp for the whole company.
A gifting company
Gmail
HubSpot- Slack
“It’s probably the highest ROI thing I’ve done since the day I founded the company. There’s no doubt about it.”
Paul Wickers, Founder & CEO, Huggg
Three skills from Cohort 4
Built in Cohort 4, which started on 29 September 2026. Time saved is each learner’s own estimate when they shipped it: the middle of each band, over 46 working weeks.
On-brand copy writer
Senior Brand Manager · a food and drink brand“It takes our brand guidelines and tone of voice and writes on brand copy. It gave me 3 examples and I helped steer it in the right direction.”
- Claude
3.5 hsaved a week · about 161 hours a year- By hand
- 30 to 60 minutes
- With the skill
- 1 to 5 minutes
- How often
- Daily
Weekly sales read
Head of Marketing and Sustainability · a consumer brand“Pulls a weekly report from my data report downloads.”
- Claude
1.1 hsaved a week · about 52 hours a year- By hand
- 1 to 2 hours
- With the skill
- 15 to 30 minutes
- How often
- Weekly
Monday growth report
Head of Insights · a health and wellness brand“It pulls the data together and updates my weekly KPI report. Then drafts an email of what to watch and what went well to send to the team.”
- Claude
Tableau- Shopify
- Slack
1.1 hsaved a week · about 52 hours a year- By hand
- 1 to 2 hours
- With the skill
- 15 to 30 minutes
- How often
- Weekly
More from consumer brands
Builds shown at demo days and checkpoints, named by sector only.
- A consumer business
- A monitor that flags which bookings risk running under capacity, as a red, amber and green summary.
- Claude
- A health and wellness brand
- A search tool over about 14,000 customer reviews that the team checks every day.
- Claude
- A consumer marketplace
- An app that turns contractor timesheets into bills in Xero.
- Claude Code
Xero
- A food and drink business
- A Friday update for the directors on online sales, email and reviews.
- Claude
- A gifting business
- A daily briefing that flags unusual changes in the sales funnel.
- Claude
- A consumer brand
- A one-page weekly sales read from the retailer data download, ready for buyer meetings.
- Claude
Two ways to start
Train your team together
A private bootcamp, one or two days, in person or online, built on your team’s own tools. James quotes it per team after a 20-minute scoping call.
Book a callSend one or two people first
The live Agent Accelerator: four weeks, remote, alongside people from other companies. Cohort 5 starts Tuesday 17 November 2026. £1,000 +VAT per seat. Huggg’s CEO started this way, then booked a bootcamp for the company.
Apply for early accessWhat they said after the cohort
Thanks so much for such a brilliant course, I'm feeling so much more clear and confident on how to use AI to improve my work and I'm really excited to spend more time exploring as I feel like I've only scratched the surface of everything you've taught us. You've been a fab teacher and I love that your ethics shone through the course too, it's made me feel much more hopeful that AI can be used safely and thoughtfully.
It's like you're in the matrix and you're having the AI agent building skill downloaded into your brain (nice callback...). In a structured, easily understandable format, with great takeaway tasks that leave you feeling confident and able to go forth where you don't know things, figure them out.
Allowed me to both gain knowledge of agents, and then effectively put them into practice to solve real life problems that I'm tacking day to day. I have also created my own AI Advisor that's able to challenge me plus provide reflection and coaching on issues I'm facing.
Super helpful in making the jump from using AI for ad-hoc conversations to really being an additive personal and professional tool.
Will help you realise what you can actually do inside Claude - not just asking it questions for a one reponse.
Really fantastic course, to help make sense of the (very confusing) world of agentic AI!
Questions food and drink teams ask
How are food and drink brands using AI agents?
For the weekly jobs that eat time. From food and drink teams James has trained: weekly competitor price checks, a retailer dashboard with rate of sale and service level, an SEO audit that files tasks in Asana and product descriptions written from product notes.
Can AI forecast demand for a food or drink brand?
Yes, when the sales data exists. A commercial director at a health and wellness business built a barcode-level demand forecast in Claude Code during the cohort. It works best on data you already trust, such as EPOS or Shopify exports, with a person checking the output.
Can AI watch competitor prices and promotions?
Yes. A food and drink business runs a weekly agent that compares competitors’ prices on its key products, and a gifting brand has one that tracks five rivals and drafts a market brief. Both read public web pages on a schedule.
Can AI write product copy in our brand voice?
Yes, once it has your brand guidelines and tone of voice. A senior brand manager at a food and drink brand built a copywriter that does this and estimates it saves 3.5 h a week. Another business turns product notes into Shopify product descriptions the same way.
Can AI automate retailer and channel sales reporting?
Much of it. One food and drink brand built a dashboard from its sales team’s weekly numbers, with a view per retailer. In Cohort 4, a health and wellness brand’s head of insights built a skill that updates the weekly KPI report and drafts the team email.
Can AI check food labelling and allergen compliance?
It can draft and cross-check, but a person has to sign off. An agent can compare a label against your recipe data and the Food Standards Agency’s allergen guidance and flag mismatches. None of the teams James has trained has built this yet, so scope it carefully before relying on it.
Do we need developers or a data team?
No. Most of the people who built the agents on this page work in marketing, operations, insights or sales. They work in Claude and Claude Code, connected to tools they already use, such as Shopify, Slack, Google Sheets and Asana.
Do you run Claude training for food, drink and D2C brands?
Yes. Teams learn Claude and Claude Code on their own tools, such as Shopify, Slack, Google Sheets and their helpdesk, and build agents for jobs like the ones on this page. James runs it as a private bootcamp for one team or as the four-week live cohort.
Is this only for food and drink brands?
No. The same jobs come up across consumer brands, and the teams James has trained include Bloom & Wild (flowers), Healf (wellness), Huggg (gifting), Heights (supplements) and Beco (pet products).
How much does AI training for a consumer brand team cost?
A seat on the live four-week cohort is £1,000 +VAT per person. A private bootcamp for your whole team is quoted per team after a 20-minute scoping call.
James McAulay runs every session
Cambridge Computer Science, then CEO of Encore (acquired by Mixcloud) and Creator Growth at ElevenLabs. James has trained 500+ people from 200+ companies to build AI agents. More about James
Tell James about your team
Say how many people and what eats their week. James replies with a format and a quote.
Prefer to talk? Book a 20-minute call
Train your team to build its own agents
20 minutes with James on your team’s tools and what to build first
Book a call