When You Serve Beauty And Food; It's The Ultimate Combo

Who would have thought that combining food with beauty would hit the charts within the beauty community?

Oh, wait, it’s kinda in the foundation of beauty, think about it? Elizabeth Arden started her beauty brand in her kitchen, as did many other notable brands. It’s no surprise that beauty and food just flow. 

Beauty is already visually appealing, so when you combine all the other senses, it makes sense why people are drawn to it. Beauty and food; a perfect combo, and brands are leveraging this in more ways than one.

We have Dunkin, Erewhon, and Tajin, to name a few that have dove into the beauty industry. So let’s talk about… 

Why are beauty and food the perfect combination? 

Let’s take it back to the early ’90s when Lip Smackers was making soda pop lip balms and lip glosses that tasted like fruit (don’t act like you didn’t eat your lip gloss ;) ). It’s nostalgia that brings us back to a time when beauty was fun.

Lip Smackers was ahead of the game when it came to this marketing trend. Now, you see this happening with Laneige, Summer Fridays, and ELF; they bring that nostalgic feeling back with added hydration benefits.  

You also can’t forget about Too Faced and their chocolate-inspired eyeshadow palettes and bronzers that smelled like chocolate! Beauty brands are proving that flavor is the new frontier in formulation than just jaw dropping ingredients. 

What is the psychology behind the trend, and why does it work? 

Joining beauty and food works because you are bringing all the senses together, making it not just visually appealing, but you can imagine how it tastes and how it may feel.

According to an article in Psychology Today, dopamine is a “feel-good” drug of anticipation; we do not need to experience the product. By just imagining it, we activate our prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that lets us envision future possibilities.

Dopamine also guides our decision making, guiding us to buy those delicious lip glosses we see Hailey slathering over her lips. 

Beauty brands bring all the senses together

Fenty Beauty is going on a Complexion Cafe World Tour, bringing complimentary yummy lattes and shade-matching tips to a city near you! They’re celebrating the launch of their new primers and re-introducing their foundations.

A fun way to bring people’s favorite beverage and introduce them to a new product line! 

Gisou, Dae, and Topicals also bring yummy social feeds to life in their social media campaigns. This makes for visually aesthetic IG feeds and highlights either specific ingredients or scents inside the formula.

Gisou does a great job at highlighting that honey is their superfood and main ingredient when it comes to their formulas. 

Brands are killing the marketing game when it comes to beauty and food

There’s no secret that Rhode is killing the game when it comes to integrating food into their marketing campaigns, and they do a beautiful job at executing this. They are at the frontier of this trend, and it helps that Hailey Bieber spearheaded the glazed donut trend and strawberry girl makeup. 

Rhode’s Krispy Kreme lip treatment, sold out almost instantly and boosted engagement by almost 700%, according to Symrise. This just goes to show how much beauty and food-inspired products resonate with people. 

Beauty inspired by our favorite treats

We can’t seem to get enough of glazed donuts, we wanna look like one, and we want our nails to look like them too.

It’s amazing how we connect food to how we want to look; it makes it easier and less intimidating to try out makeup looks that we wouldn’t have done before. Makeup can already be intimidating, but when we put trends into easily digestible ways it makes makeup more fun and inspiring. 

Milk Makeup’s jelly-inspired Cooling Water Jelly Tints also brought a fun element to beauty and food marketing. The texture of the jelly tints is squishy and very cooling and almost feels like you can eat it. 

Unexpected collabs we didn’t know we needed

Dunkin has been in the front game with beauty; their collabs with Tarte, ELF, and Native brings a whole new definition to beauty and food marketing. One that we all probably did not see coming was Panera coming out with their own version of lip balms inspired by their Mac N Cheese and bread bowl. 

Selena Gomez and Tajin, this one was unexpected, but they created the most luscious Chamoy-inspired lippies that just work. Their social media campaign behind it also includes her Hispanic heritage, which just ties everything back together. 

Dunkin x Tarte: bridging Dunkin Refreshers with Tarte Maracuja Juicy lip formulas. This is a great way to not only advertise their Refreshers to a new demographic but also indulge people in a new way. It brings it back to Lip Smackers and their flavor biting lippies, you get to experience the refreshers in a lip smacking way. 

Dunkin x ELF; They came out with 4 palettes inspired by their popular donut flavors, lip gloss set, also inspired by not just donuts but the logo colors, their putty primer also inspired by their donuts, and coffee lip scrub, which duh makes total sense!

Both makeup collabs with Dunkin were exclusively sold at Ulta Beauty. 

Dunkin x Native; if the smell of donuts wasn’t enough, Dunkin and Native came out with body washes, shampoos, conditioners, and deodorants to indulge you even more for a limited amount of time exclusively at Walmart.

Dunkin' just like Rhode figured out that combining smell, touch, and sight is a wonderful way to sell your product. It brings nostalgia, comfort of what we already know, and it eases us into trying new things.

Plus, they create IG and Tiktok-worthy videos for us to post about; who wouldn’t want to post their Dunkin’ refresher with their cute lip color! 

The trend was set way before it became a marketing tactic for big brands. Now we have brands like Rhode, Fenty, and Dunkin doing their versions of combining beauty and food.

The psychological effects make sense, it brings comfort and imagination of how the product will work and feel. It sells itself before even hitting the register counter! 

Beauty and food inspired products and experiences have always been here and will continue to be here!

✍️ Written by Valeria Molina