Not so long ago, food stylists were one of the key links in the chain from fast food brand to consumer. Their task was to make the burger as tempting as possible, often resorting to many (unknown to consumers) tricks: for instance, they would coat the meat with shoe polish, make the buns and salads shine with hair spray, and they had other completely inedible products like motor oil or glue at hand, which also contributed to the final, delicious appearance of the dish. Of course, such stylized burgers were photographed for advertising campaigns, and shortly after for the social media profiles of fast food brands.
Stylized photographs of delicious dishes were supposed to provoke growling stomachs among social media users, and they indeed did. But times have changed, as The Drum claims, because the aesthetics of Instagram have been replaced by those of TikTok. Although it is hard to speak of any aesthetics here, it is more about a ‘mishmash’ of different personal styles, a kind of ‘crazy’ combination of performative art and entertainment followed by millions of users. TikTokization of fast food is changing menus in ways that were previously unimaginable. The Drum, or rather its author and marketing expert Pollyanna Ward, explained how.
Attractive visual
Ward was prompted to research the trend by a campaign or, better said, a phenomenon called Grimace. The famous chain McDonald’s decided to celebrate the 52nd birthday of Ronald McDonald’s friend – the purple, fluffy mascot Grimace. Nostalgics ‘hooked’ onto the campaign, which reached as many as 2.7 billion views on social media, and users celebrated the birthday on YouTube and in TikTok videos with their versions of Grimace drinks. Thus, a peculiar purple version of a milkshake colored with Grimace syrup and topped with whipped cream was created by TikToker Austin Frazer.
His video recorded 3.6 million views and prompted thousands of users to create personalized versions of the Grimace drink and film themselves in the craziest poses. Although Frazer helped McDonald’s by encouraging the audience to feed their nostalgia and have fun shaking personalized Grimace dishes and drinks, this trend was actually inspired by competition, Burger King. This fast food chain marked the premiere of ‘Spider-Man’ by launching the Spider-Verse Whopper, a burger with red buns and black sesame seeds, and the Spider-Verse Sundae, an ice cream with red, blue, and black toppings.
Creators tasted these novelties and then filmed videos on TikTok pretending that the dishes had turned them into Spider-Men. In this case, as with Grimace, the fast food product became a prop, a tool for expressing one’s creativity. Brands that want their product to come alive on social media must offer something unique that leaves a strong visual impression. Besides playing with products, users have recently been playing with menus, i.e., combinations of dishes.
Menu hacking
Ward continues that the trend includes mixing individual dishes, ingredients, or even ordering going a step too far. For instance, one TikTok user posted a video in which they ordered a sandwich from the Subway chain. However, they did not order a regular sandwich, nor did they ask for all the ingredients to be crammed into it – but rather to dip the whole thing in sauce.
Another user created a TikTok video in which they ordered the so-called The Quad from Chipotle. Instead of one standard tortilla, they ordered four stacked on top of each other with such a pile of ingredients and toppings that one person could not roll the creation into a burrito by themselves. Of course, users watched this almost inedible experiment with bated breath. Ward found a third example, a little less extravagant but no less shocking. One TikToker visited Subway and ordered a Subway pizza ‘with everything,’ thus sparking a microtrend of ordering pizzas with an excessive amount of toppings.
