Flavors Collide with Food Collabs

Food is like Music

We’re used to hearing the term “collabs” when people talk about the music world. One artist who doesn’t normally work with another artist – and the two team up and record a hit single. Sometimes it’s two artists who create music in the same genre (country meets country). Sometimes it’s two artists who produce music in different genres (country meets rap). The same is happening with the onset of a new food trend bursting onto the culinary world scene over the last few years. We see unique collaborations popping up on grocery store shelves and restaurant menus; Oreo Churros, McFlurries and Goldfish get spicy when they meet Frank’s Red Hot. Sometimes these collabs consist of things you’d naturally think of as an obvious pairing. Other times these are “out of the box thinking” combinations that wow and even surprise taste buds.

Are Food Collabs Really “New?”

Food collabs have been around forever. Back in 2014, Trendhunter published a list of 27 of the most popular (successful) food and drink collaborations. You can find the article here.

Often things go around and come around again. The onset of social media and the swell of influencers make them seem new or cool, or trendy. Those in the Gen Z age bracket and younger millennials are particularly influenced on social media. But kids who grew up in the 80’s who feasted on Saturday morning cartoons and big bowls of Cinnamon Toast Crunch probably looked at the barrage of breakfast cereal collabs they grew up with simply as “creative branding.” Back then people actually watched the commercials.

Today it’s about seeing and liking something on social media. So if your product or your restaurant has a social media presence, and it should, you can post your collaboration online and watch the interest in it grow. Your post might even sway someone who doesn’t think they would like your product to try the collaborated version. Someone who doesn’t like hot sauce might be persuaded to try a hot sauce flavored hummus or a pickle flavored eggless mayo.

Calling Attention to Your Restaurant

With the increased popularity and attention on food collabs, innovative chefs and restaurateurs might be incentivized to add collaborative items to a menu. Collabs can also be the joining of forces between two establishments; The bakery next door to your seafood restaurant makes a killer pie crust. Incorporate their crust with your concept for a crawfish pot pie. Add a post on both websites, create a few enticing social media posts and watch people come in the doors. Maybe Guy Fieri will even pay your joint a visit.  Or partner with a place across town, or even across the country. Maybe you’re visiting a wine county and you find a wine vinegar produced and sold by a winery that you enjoy. Collaborate and use it in a salad dressing that you make tableside and also bottle to sell. It’s a win-win for both you and the winery, especially if you also serve their wines. The world is smaller these days and the ability to collaborate with anyone you want is entirely possible. 

Aim for Taste

Fast food restaurants hopped on the collab bandwagon long before it became popular in sit down restaurants. Think Taco Bell and Doritos, KFC and Cheetos.  Both of those are concepts that pop because they aim for a flavor explosion in your mouth.  Even if you’re not one to sit down and munch on a bag of Cheetos, you might find the concept alluring in chicken batter. Cheddar cheesy chicken batter.  What about Cheddar Cheesy Battered Chicken served on local honey flavored waffles?  

Summing Up This New Food Trend

From collaborating with the restaurant next door, to approaching a popular eatery with an idea, to incorporating a friend’s bottled barbecue sauce with one of your more popular menu items, to creating something that is “outside the box” that will catch attention out on social media… the possibilities for successful and delicious food collabs are endless. They key to a successful food collaboration is making unique (and often recognizable) flavors collide. That is a collision course for success.  

As always – 

Eat well,

Mary Kay