The Art of the Food Mashup

Food innovation continues its evolution in 2023, as early adopters of trending flavors from previous years now have the head start incorporating them into flavor mashups - combinations of different culinary concepts, tastes, and textures that are not typically associated with each other. Exotic ingredients like ube and jamaica, as well as seasonings like chamoy and gochujang, have seen sustained interest through flavor mashups that help bring new ingredients closer to familiarity. The increased visibility of ethnic ingredients continues to change the expectations of consumers that are already clamoring for new experiences to lure them out of the house.

Multiple Pandemic-related factors still exist that make flavor mashups a particularly effective approach. As we transition into the Endemic Stage, the search for the ‘Health Halo’ in certain foods has given way significantly. A lot of people teeter closer to flavor burnout, with golden oak milk lattes and plant-based meats beginning to show an oversaturation. In its place, the different flavors that survived in home kitchens and successful takeout restaurants look to entice more people out of their homes with creative flavor mashups. "Shared through the memory, influence and multi-generational heritage of immigrants, this wave of texture and flavor offers complex, nuanced blends of herbs, spice, specialty chiles, fruit, rich nuts and seeds and punches of umami,” remarks Sherpa CPG founder Victoria Ho.

The Meaning of Mashups

Food Mashups take advantage of more familiar ingredients and concepts and use them as a starting point to try something unique. Hult International Business School’s Neuromarketing Professor Prince Ghuman observes that “People’s brains want familiarity and novelty at different times, but what they really love is the perfect combination of both.”

The idea of food mashups have been present in popular culture for a while with many like the 2013 cronut etched into pleasing memory. Asian restaurants in the 1970s debuted entertaining desserts like the fried banana eggroll or tempura ice cream, and today continue to make the swich providing more authentic ethnic desserts like boba tea and taiyaki. While some histories trace the turducken all the way back to 1809, the perennial joke around the gameday snack bar became popular with US chefs in 1985, years before John Madden's 1996 On-air feast during the that year's Thanksgiving Game between the New Orleans Saints and the St. Louis Rams.

Food mashups primarily achieve the mix of familiarity and novelty through three approaches: flavor mashup, cuisine mashup, and brand mashup. A mashup has a possibility of having all three approaches, however cuisine and brand mashups also consider a combination of preparations and experiences that help accentuate a mashup beyond a sum and outcome of its flavors. Brand mashups are able to take the experience one step further beyond flavors to cultivate an atmosphere in which to experience a dish or series of dishes.

#foodmashup and At-Home TikTok Recipes

At over 3 million views on TikTok, #foodmashup is one part of the Foodie Community on the social media app dedicated to continued innovation and recipe experimentation. If not a recipe from scratch, many users will mashup premade ingredients such as a Marie Calendars Pot Pie to create a completely different dish and preparation. With 69% of active hashtag viewers between 18-34, #foodmashup is filled with innovative hacks, recipes, and taste challenges that all follow the principles of blending flavor, cuisine, and brand.

Flavor Mashups: Sweet & Savory Soirees

The foundational layer to many mashups, the flavor mashup blends dissimilar flavors together to create unique flavor through the wider range of taste buds activated by the experience. Combining the most familiar of savory tastes like salty potatoes or hot chili peppers them with equally familiar sweet sensations such as caramel or chocolate reveals surprising depth of flavor unattainable by the separate ingredients. Salted caramel is a popular classic sweet and savory flavor mashup, and remains the classic example of the natural phenomenon that the taste buds experience sweet more intensely in the presence of salt. Sweet pairings with bacon, other salty meats, and mushrooms also have the potential to bring out more umami flavor from the proteins.

Mashup Spotlights: Sweet Heat and Hot Honey

The sustained popularity of Asian chili sauces like Siracha and Thai sweet chili has changed flavor expectations to welcome combinations like Mike's Hot Honey as new trending flavors. At 4 million views in the last 7 days adding to the 345 million total, #hothoney is one of the flavor combinations that has soared above the rest.

“What began in the hot sauce category is exploding into honey, spreads, confections, beverages, and snacks, snagging new markets like younger consumers, especially, and inspiring specialty food companies to introduce heat and spice into existing product lines,” said Mikel Cirkus, global creative director at Firmenich Inc. Like sweet caramel flavor, honey is an ingredient trusted and enjoyed by most, which can help introduce something unexpected like red chili or smokey chipotle.

Flavor Mashups in Mixology

Cocktails and mixology evolve with the rest of the menu to incorporate trending flavors and take advantage of the overall elevation in availability of quality spirits and ingredients. The Jalapeno margarita is experiencing a rise in popularity from the increased desire for spicier foods as well as the increased availability of imported jalapeno spiced Mexican tequilas in order to introduce heat in more than one way. High quality mezcal is finding further innovation - either as the one anchor of spice when paired with sweeter ingredients, or being paired with smoke to bring out more spice. Other ethnic flavors like lychee, yuzu, and calamansi continue to gain familiarity as their purees mix very well into vodka and rums, if not turned into a liquor as well.

Mocktails and the #Zerofree Movement

Amateur and professional mixologists alike also take innovation in the direction of eliminating the alcoholic spirits from classic cocktail recipes and still delivering the familiar flavor. #zeroproof has 2 million views in the last 12 months on TikTok, and is the second most popular "zero hashtag" after #zerosugaradded. #mocktailmondays has also amassed 1 million views in the last 4 months, with 88% of its viewers below the age of 35, showing a growing community within the younger generations that are experimenting with the timings of their alcohol consumption.

Mashup Spotlights: Pickle Mashups

The heightened interest in sweet and savory combinations has also brought attention to dill and pickle flavors, with the salty, spicy, and sometimes sweet brines naturally able to accept a lot of variation. At 489.6M views on TikTok for #pickletok, the pickle loving community has a strong presence on the App and constantly reviews recipes, accessories, and all things pickle. It is the proud producer of the viral #pickleinablanket recipe. At 24.4M views, the recipe calls for a spear of a pickle with slice of provolone cheese as the next salt and caramel or chili and honey.

Cuisine Mashups: Passport to Innovation

As the success of Siracha and the popularity growth of gochujang suggest, the cuisine mashup refers to the combination of several ingredients and culinary patterns that interplay together to create a unique style of food. Trending cuisine mashups include Korean-Mexican, Indian-Italian, and Japanese-Mexican. Cuisine mashups can be as simple as adding a trending sauce like Siracha or the Japanese Mayonnaise Kewpie as a topping, to a complete reimagining of the original dish that may look like the original in some form but has completely different flavors like the Tandoori Chicken Pizza.

Comfort Food Mashups: Hitting Close to Home

As some of the above examples suggest, a lot of successful mashups rely on the creative combination of classic comfort food to make a new hybrid dish. These dishes typically retain the satisfying, nostalgic, and welcoming qualities of the original recipe while providing an exciting twist. A lot of cuisines utilize their own comfort dishes and flavors in combinations, such as the ube yam from the Philippines whose color instantly adds striking colorful flair to the dish. Dessert Mashups are a particular area of success for cuisine mashups, with flavors like #churros at 2.9B views on TikTok showing successful incorporations of new flavors.

Brand Mashups: Unparalleled Collaboration

Similar to cuisine mashups, brand mashups utilize a familiar set of characteristics and presentations to rapidly associate a familiar experience to a new dish. Instead of a strictly geographical or ethnological set of flavors, brand mashups will utilize each brand's established trademark feel or experience, which in the example of the Tapatio ramen cup can be considered both a cuisine and brand mashup.  Brands like Oreo and Fruity Pebbles with their very familiar cookie crumble look and textures effortlessly leverage those experiences when adding them to desserts and drinks. Similarly, Flamin' Hot Cheetos and Doritos crumbles also add a similar effect to savory dishes and associate a fun, more vibrant experience to the dish.

Brand Collaboration Spotlight: Barbie Mashups

Barbie continues to surge since its movie release with #barbie TikTok views at 5 billion in the last 30 days. Within food and beverage, #barbiesweet and #barbiemilkshake are two of the leading hashtags, with the latter at 10 million views in the last 30 days. These two hashtags are cutting-edge proof that a brand's presentation and experience can associate into flavors even while barbie pink (hex code #e0218a) has no innate taste.

In the above examples, both Cold Stone and Krispy Kreme utilize the potential of the Barbie brand to make a collaboration. Larger brand mashups or "collabs" can exist between two renowned brands that co-market a new product, and gain increased visibility from each other's primary customer base.

Brand collaborations often utilize a robust marketing roadmap, such as Pepsi and Peeps organizing a digital scavenger hunt using augmented reality, with prizes such as Pepsi X Peeps merchandise. Brands are also able to crowdsource ideas for innovation through limited time mashup offerings to their established customer base, such as in the case of Heinz's Crowdsauced campaign.

Summary

Growing knowledge and availability of quality exotic ingredients will continue to drive food and beverage innovation along with novel uses of social media marketing and brand collaboration. Online communities such as the spaces created by TikTok and Instagram will continue to be an indispensable meeting place for people to share their experiences with new flavors and recipes. Through social media and other marketing strategies, mashups will continue to be an effective way in these avenues to generate intrigue quickly with just enough assuring comfort and familiarity to coax consumers.

Ethnic cuisine mashups continue to grow in scale as each individual cuisine gains more visibility on their own, at the same time allowing cuisine mashups the ability to introduce variety into more familiar spaces through familiar comfort foods. As consumers become more accustomed to seeing new combinations of flavors, large brand collabs have new opportunities to engage with their customers through contests and AR promotions to not just mashup flavor but experience.