Do you want to smell Donuts? Beauty Brands Think You Do

But in 2023, we’ve moved on from the food-inspired aesthetic to actually wanting it take a look like food, with trends like cinnamon cookie butter hair, blueberry milk nails and glazed donut skin. Today, everything goes: Velveeta Hair Dye, dill-pickle flavored lubeand Hellman’s mayonnaise flavor– The rule seems to be the messier, the better.

For millennials and zillennials, these products are a sensory trip down memory lane, reviving the mall staples of our youth. For Gen Z, it’s a clash of high and low—a clean beauty brand like Native rubbing shoulders with a fast food institution like Dunkin’.

So Happy Together

TikTok, with its algorithmic obsession with absurdity, thrives on these launches of edible beauty. The marketing strategy borrows liberally from the streetwear scarcity playbook, deploying limited-edition drops designed to create urgency and exclusivity. But unfortunately, these products are not built to last. They are focal points for FOMO-prone shoppers and sentimentalists looking to romanticize their routines. For Gen Z, the stranger the concept, the faster it seems to circulate.

The food and beverage (F&B) license is a lucrative route for these partnerships. According to Licensing International’s 2023 Global Licensing Industry StudyF&B grew by 5.3 percent, and the cosmetics industry took its manicured fingers in the cake. Everyone benefits from these symbiotic relationships, as food franchises use the shareability of #BeautyTalk to spread its brand in new markets.

The result is a syrupy cocktail of millennial nostalgia and Gen Z irony that generates free publicity via memes, TikTok reactions and social media discourse.

So, what’s next? Crunchwrap scented cologne? Hot Cheetos flavored toothpaste? Maybe a McRib collagen serum? As brands push the limits of absurdity, the question isn’t if they’ll go too far, it’s when we reach our breaking point. Novelty has a shelf life.

Without a significant innovation, the joke risks wearing thin, like some of these franchises themselves. In the meantime, however, there is a cautionary tale: The punch here is the consumer, not the product. We don’t want to wake up tomorrow smelling like Cheetos and pickles and realize the joke is on us.