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Ecosystem engineering research has recently demonstrated the fundamental importance of non‐trophic interactions for food‐web structure. Particularly, by creating benign conditions in stressful environments, ecosystem engineers create hot beds of elevated levels of recruitment, growth, and survival of associated organisms; this should fuel food webs and promote production on the ecosystem scale. However, there is still limited empirical evidence of the influence of non‐trophic interactions on the classical food‐web processes that determine energy transfer, that is, consumer–resource interactions. On the basis of a biomanipulation experiment covering 600 m² of an intertidal flat, we show that ecosystem engineers influence resource uptake efficiency and the accumulation of algae following nutrient enrichment in a soft‐sediment food web. Nutrient additions increased chlorophyll a concentrations in the sediment …