Digital marketing agency digiVortex has acquired food and beverage marketing group Food Gurus Hawaii.
The deal closed earlier this year for an undisclosed sum.
Food Gurus provides services such as advertising, public relations and digital marketing to a client roster that features a range of food businesses including restaurants, retailers and farms. Most of its clients are based in Hawaii, but the agency also recently expanded to the Mainland.
Food Gurus Hawaii was previously owned by The Harris Agency. DigiVortex is a private partnership between Harris Agency founder Doug Harris and a Hawaii-based partner, and Harris continues to lead digiVortex as CEO and managing partner.
“Under this new ownership, Food Gurus Hawaii will be able to grow and expand the brand while sharpening its focus and expertise in food-and-beverage marketing for restaurants, packaged goods, grocery, retail and farms,” Harris said in an email to PBN. “DigiVortex will continue to provide the full suite of digital marketing services for Food Gurus Hawaii and digital-only clients.”
He explained that The Harris Agency has shifted its focus to business consulting and investment rather than marketing and advertising.
“Food Gurus Hawaii’s mission is to provide customized, full-service marketing solutions for [food and beverage] brands. This encompasses a wide array of services including advertising, branding, communications, consultancy, content creation, creative and production, database [customer relationship management], digital, executive profiling, marketing support, media buying, public and media relations, social media and more,” Harris said.
“By focusing on one industry — F&B — we can hire specialized talent who have a passion for food, refine our processes, build our relationships, and continually hone our services to ensure that we are delivering best practice across all of these categories. It also enables us to evaluate market and consumer trends and apply campaign success lessons learned across all clients.”
In conjunction with the acquisition, Harris said digiVortex recently added seven new employees, for a total staff count of 25.