According to the European Innovation Scoreboard report, there is a big difference between the European Union (EU) member states innovation performance. The majority of the Southern-European countries and Member States joined to the EU in 2004 are considered as moderate innovators. On the top of the list there are the Scandinavian and the Benelux countries, the UK and Germany, while Bulgaria and Romania are the modest innovators in Europe. From an innovation point of view food industry is seen as slow one, which is lagging behind the technology pushed possibilities, but sometimes behind the costumers desires and requirements as well. In our research, we determine why the food companies in the examined European countries - do not engage in innovation activities and - if they do so, what are the main drivers of their innovation performance? We use the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) 2012 data and employ double hurdle estimation because of the nature of the innovation distribution. This method also helps in overcoming the selection bias problem, which necessarily occurs in this situation. Results prove that networking scope as well as networking intensity, play important role in explaining innovation performance. The size and market obstacles are also significant factors. Acknowledgement : Research was supported by the National Research, Development and Innovation Office of Hungary (K 120563 - Innovation resilience in food production and consumption)