Innovation Spotlight - Food Mashups

At over 3 million views, one of the TikTok Foodie Community parts most dedicated to continued innovation and recipe experimentation has to be #foodmashup.


Weekly Bites 🍽️

⏰🎃☕ | Too early or not early enough? The Pumpkin Spice Latte is 🔄 BACK at Starbucks. Here’s how the 🍂 fall flavor became 💰 so lucrative. Link

🧑‍🤝‍🧑📱 vs 📺 | GenZ favors social media over tv for CPG 🛍️ purchases and accepts 🎯 personalized ads more than other groups.  Link

🍱❌ | The Era of Food Delivery Is Fading…. Many would rather 🚶 pick up or 🍽️ dine in, and restaurants are 🔄 trying to adapt. Link

🎤🍔 | I tried Snoop Dogg's new meal at Jack in the Box 📦 and I'd order it again…👍Link


Interested in our FREE Summer 23' GenZ Insights Report? Click here and we'll walk you through it!


If not a recipe from scratch, many users will mashup premade ingredients such as a Marie Calendar’s 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.

Food Mashup take advantage the familiarity aspects of its individual ingredients, which can be broken down three attributes: flavor, cuisine, and brand


Food mashups blend dissimilar flavors together to create unique experiences through the wider range of taste buds activated by wider range of contrasting flavors. 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.

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.”

Food mashups have been ubiquitous throughout history, with memorable items using two or more components easily recognizable in the final product.


Mixologists have also caught wind of flavor mashup innovation, particularly in the direction of eliminating the alcoholic spirits from classic cocktail recipes while still delivering the familiar textures and experience. #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.

Leave the hangover behind with Dri/kit’s curated mocktail sets:
https://shopdrikit.com/

Check out petitcakery’s Tiktok post on the Marie Calendar’s Pot Pie Pizza:
https://lnkd.in/gPiU-5R8

See Insider’s take on The Most Delicious Fast Food Mashups Including the Infamous KFC Double Down:
https://lnkd.in/gFfHUzMY

#foodmashup #flavormashup #collab #sweetheat #swicy #tiktok #birria #gochujang #pickletok #mocktail #mocktailmondays #zeroproof

Subscribe to MenuData

Sign up now to get access to the library of members-only issues.
Jamie Larson
Subscribe