"Uncomfortable Food" is a brand reputation campaign rooted in earned media. We created a unique gastronomy circuit, taking the discussion of gender equality in gastronomy to a national level, engaging even the newly elected president in Brazil. The project became a massive movement with female chefs joining from the north to the south of the country, creating their dishes as a form of protest. The conversation broke the gastronomy bubble, reaching the most relevant newspapers in the country and becoming a topic on TV, podcasts, and social networks. It all culminated in Stella's biggest earned media of all time.

Stella Artois has always supported Brazilian gastronomy. But the deeper the brand went into this territory, the more apparent the contradiction became - a brand with female DNA supporting a market that continually excludes women. This is because, in Brazil, although 96% of family kitchens are run by women, they lead only 7% of award-winning restaurants. That is, when cooking gained status, it ceased to belong to women and became a role for men.

Stella Artois needed to position itself as an ally for women, mobilizing society towards an urgent and necessary change in gastronomy, and thus rebuild cultural relevance while positioning the brand as the best beer to drink in restaurants. To keep growing in the gastronomy field, gaining women’s trust, and transforming men into allies on this cause. All based in a campaign that provoked a necessary reflection and brought impactful actions.

Uncomfortable Food: the data of gender disparity becoming dishes of activism. Through a national survey alongside Ipsos Institute, Stella Artois made a deep dive into gender disparity and discovered women's main discomforts, such as:

Lack of credit (1 in each 3 say it’s more expensive to endeavour as a woman)

Lack of visibility (1 in 3 is not even listened by male chefs)

Lack of access to professional education (50% can't afford tuitions)

The data became ingredients for creating unique dishes, which engaged over 100 female chefs within a gastronomy circuit, redefining the concept of comfort food.

For more credit, for instance, Katia Barbosa created the Sea of Gold. For visibility, Bela Gil created Rice & Shine. Others were created, as Cookies&Scream (to expose moral abuse) and Ladder of Mansplaining (to expose male chauvinism).

Stella Artois also provided $60 million in credit to female entrepreneurs and +1000 gastronomy scholarships.

We transformed the research in more than numbers. Each piece of data was a much needed ingredient to change the taste and the reality of women in gastronomy. Sadly, data is not as savoring as food. But it could be. So, the starting point of our strategy was the dissemination of the unprecedented research in the country, which for the first time analyzed the gastronomy market in depth to understand the challenges and ambitions of these professionals in the sector. We divide the data by themes and negotiate guidelines with unpublished data for different vehicles, guaranteeing volume and capillarity of the results. Transforming the data into dishes with the more than 100 chefs we engaged was paramount to make the information even more appealing. The project's ambassador chefs to personify the numbers and give life to the invisible challenges experienced by thousands of women who make up this country's market.

We started hiring 10 known and yet to me known female chefs (contemplating full diversity) to create the dishes based on the data collected. Those dishes became the material for the press to disseminate the research and kick off a movement that later engaged more than 100 chefs all over Brazil. Starting with a dinner event for journalists, we then negotiated chefs' participation on TV Shows, podcasts and newspapers to talk about the research results and the gastronomy circuit created. Covering business, marketing, gastronomy, female and lifestyle editorials. We also announced the brand's commitment to invest $60 million in credit for female entrepreneurs and +1000 scholarships.

We also negotiated the cover of the most important magazine for gastronomy to feature the chefs talking about the research. And went further: we negotiated their participation in the inauguration menu for the newly elected president, who was keen on working on gender inequality.

The Uncomfortable Food project started as a gastronomy-only matter but turned into a major national debate about gender disparity.

After the release of the initiative, hundreds of chefs joined the Uncomfortable Foods circuit with exclusive dishes from all over Brazil, made by only-female chefs.

More than 128 stories in press, biggest earned media for Stella Artois ever in Brazil.

42% more bookings in their restaurants.

More than 90 million people reached.

The biggest increase in brand lovers among beers.

Chefs were invited to lead the presidential inauguration menu. And it gets better: one of them was officially invited to join the Government to help with food insecurity in Brazil.

The portrait of gastronomy as we know, finally gained new faces. As, for the first time ever, the cover of the main magazine about gastronomy in Brazil portrayed the chefs who participated in the project.

In Brazil, although 96% of family kitchens are run by women, they lead only 7% of award-winning restaurants. In other words, cooking for the family is still seen as a female obligation, while cooking in large restaurants is definitely a male privilege.

An issue that, although is a reality for so many in other countries, gains a strong cultural context, as we have gone through 4 years under the government led by a misogynistic president, recognized worldwide for hate speeches that incite violence against women. In 2014, for example, Bolsonaro attacked a congresswoman saying that she didn’t deserve to be raped because she was too ugly. The president also defended that women should continue to receive lower wages than men, because they get pregnant.

All of this has made gender issues more prominent than ever in recent times.