Microtrends that matter for food and beverage brands

Recently, it seems that food and beverage brands are attempting to leverage the intimacy of sharing a meal with someone as a viable marketing tactic. From dinner-date style celebrity interviews to mukbangs churned out to promote an influencer’s side business, sharing a meal has become a viral format for marketing content. I couldn’t help but wonder who’s doing it right, why it works when it does and how it can go wrong. 

Why do faux dinner date shows work well for brand marketing? 

The intimacy of a dinner party has long been cherished: conversations with friends around the dinner table, family dinners and holiday soirees. In recent years, influencers and brands have attempted to translate the sense of intimacy and connection that’s inherent to shared mealtimes into successful partnerships, ad campaigns and entire businesses.

There are YouTube shows like Hot Ones, in which guests eat increasingly spicy chicken wings while Complex host and producer Sean Evans grills them with escalating personal questions, and Chicken Shop Date, in which affably awkward Amelia Dimoldenberg goes on pseudo-dates with her celebrity guests. The success of these chicken-centric programs is contingent on the fact that these shows break the fourth wall. Guests are disarmed by brain-tingling spice, knocked off their PR game, and they’re charmed by Amelia’s quirky, real-girl-sitting-with-an-A-lister banter. 

Breaking the fourth wall: how food and beverage brands and businesses are leveraging relatability 

Prior to this sort of viral video content, the OG influencer (reality show stars) were harnessing the power of relatable personal brands to market their side businesses. Take Bethenny Frankel and Harry Hamlin of Real Housewives notoriety, for example. Bethenny Frankel, a former RHONY, launched SkinnyGirl during her run on the show: a diet-culture driven line of margarita mix and various snacks (like popcorn). In 2011, she sold the company to Beam Global for $120 million. 

Frankel’s persona as a housewife was brazen and outspoken — love her or hate her, I’m sure that you’ve heard of her (personally, I think that she’s a little kooky, but I enjoy her TikToks). Similar to Blake Lively’s attempt to capitalize on her iconic lush hair with a line of shampoos, Frankel capitalized on her Bravo-lebrity fame to launch a business, by launching a product that aligns with her (sometimes controversial) personal brand. 

Emma Chamberlain took a similar approach, with her eponymous coffee company, Chamberlain Coffee. In Emma Chamberlain’s YouTube videos (she rose to fame as a teenage YouTuber), she’s constantly drinking coffee, chatting to the camera while tamping espresso. The product is good (Chamberlain Coffee consistently gets solid reviews) and the brand feels authentic to her. For lack of a better phrase, she crushed it. 

Harry Hamlin, an actor known for his role in 80s and 90s movies and more recently on Mad Men, is married to Lisa Rinna. Rinna is a former RHOBH star who, like Frankel, was a polarizing figure, both adored and scorned. I’m a huge Housewives fan (hi, Andy Cohen) and I LOVE Lisa Rinna. She and Harry have a very cute YouTube podcast called Let’s Not Talk About the Husband, btw.

On RHOBH, Hamlin was seen as a supportive husband, loving father and overall caregiving figure. He frequently cooked dinner for his family, and Rinna would perkily quip that his pasta sauce was unreal to anyone who would listen. In 2023, Hamlin launched “Harry’s Famous Sauce,” which seems to be doing quite well — it was incorporated into an LLC last year (Frankel, incidentally, has promoted the sauce on her TikTok). 

What’s the difference between a successful food and beverage marketing campaign and one that misses the mark? 

So why are these shows and businesses booming? Aside from tapping into mealtime as a moment to be shared — with your favourite branded condiments at the table, or by watching your favourite YouTube talk show — they also harness a critical element: relatability. 

New York Magazine publishes a weekly “Approval Matrix,” pinpointing relevant pop culture moments on an axis of Highbrow, Lowbrow, Brilliant and Despicable. I’ve noticed a pattern here — most of the content that the internet deems as cool and loveable falls between Lowbrow and Brilliant. It’s relatable and smart, charming and catchy. This axis is where these sorts of shows, brands and businesses tend to fall.

While there are brands that have successfully tapped into this personable food and beverage space, there are others, like Khloe Kardashian’s recent protein popcorn line “Khloud,” that have failed. Whether Khloud is failing economically, I have no idea, but in terms of product reviews, messaging, branding and tone, it missed the mark. In a recent article, The Cut reviewed Khloud, summing up the brand’s questionable identity succinctly: 

“It all begs the question: Does popcorn need more protein?”

The article cites the snack’s tagline: “good stuff, zero fluff.” From a marketing perspective, the copy seems ChatGPT generated — coupled with Kardashian’s Instagram face and perfectly toned arms and tightly-slicked, scalp-pulling ponytail, seen in a product shot where she fake eats Khloud, the entire enterprise reeks of a business idea generated in an ultra-mod board room, one that Kardashian signed off on. Khloud, I suspect, will continue to flop, because not only is it “dry and dusty,” as The Cut article described, it lacks any semblance of personability or authentic connection that drives consumers to subscribe to celebrity brands.

Another celebrity food and beverage business that missed the mark is Unwell Hydration, Alex Cooper’s electrolyte drink company. On TikTok, she opens her fridge to Unwells lined up in rows of colour-coordinated rainbows, grabbing a bottle with a hoodie and sunglasses on, heading up to bed “hungover.”

In theory, the business makes perfect sense for Cooper, who has built her brand around girls who like to party and aren’t afraid to say so. But as Alex ascends beyond millionaire status as a married businesswoman living in a luxe LA mansion, her relatability factor has dropped — something that I believe she’s attempting to boost with the Facetime-with-a-friend-esque content she posts on her TikTok page. For viewers like myself, who were aware of Call Her Daddy (Cooper’s podcast) in its earliest iteration, as two girls in their sweats laughing their way through R-rated conversations, the party-aesthetic meet ups and cutesy Unwell branding and alleged hangovers documented on TikTok feel a little . . . forced. And that’s ok! Alex is doing well, and it makes sense that the 20-something, partying lifestyle that catapulted her to success doesn’t align with her stable, healthy life today. That being said, I won’t be buying Unwell Hydration when I’m hungover (I’m going for the ROAR Organic). 

How to make your food and beverage brand connect with your audience

When it comes to food and beverage marketing, it’s important to tap into the microtrends of the moment in a way that feels authentic. Audiences online are smart, and they can suss out content that feels contrived. Whether you’re looking to launch a new product, a campaign or re-vamp your socials, if you’re a food and beverage business looking to boost your branding and speak to your target audience in a way that’s authentic to your key messaging, we can help.