Want to smell like donuts? Beauty Brands Think About You

But in 2023, we’ve moved from a food-inspired aesthetic to actually wanting one see like food, trends like cinnamon cookie butter hair, blueberry milk nails, and glazed donut skin. Today everything goes: Velveeta hair dye, dill-pickle flavored lubricantand Hellman’s mayonnaise flavor— the more misleading the rule, the better.

For millennials and zillennials, these products are a sensory trip down memory lane, reliving the candy-scented mall of our youth. For Gen Z, it’s a collision of high and low—a pure beauty brand like Native rubbing shoulders with a fast food establishment like Dunkin’.

Be Happy Together

TikTok thrives on these edible beauty presentations, with its algorithmic obsession with the absurd. The marketing strategy borrows liberally from the streetwear scarcity playbook, rolling out limited-edition releases designed to create urgency and exclusivity. But unfortunately, these products are not sustainable. They’re hot spots for FOMO-prone shoppers and sentimentalists looking to romanticize their routines. For Gen Z, the weirder the concept, the faster it seems to catch on.

A food and beverage (F&B) license is a lucrative avenue for these partnerships. According to Licensing International’s 2023 Global Licensing Industry StudyF&B grew by 5.3 percent and the cosmetics industry is dipping its manicured fingers into the pie. Everyone benefits from this symbiotic relationship, as food franchises take advantage of the opportunity to share #BeautyTalk spreading its branding to new markets.

The result is a syrupy cocktail of millennial nostalgia and Gen Z sarcasm, generating free publicity through memes, TikTok reactions and social media discourse.

What will happen next? Crunchwrap scented cologne? Hot Cheetos flavored toothpaste? Maybe a McRib collagen serum? As brands push the boundaries of absurdity, the question is not if they’ll go too far, but when we’ll reach our tipping point. Innovation has a shelf life.

Without meaningful innovation, the joke risks wearing thin, as some do franchise themselves. Meanwhile, here’s a cautionary tale: The bottom line 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.