Yesterday I begrudgingly pulled up to a Starbucks drive-thru and stared at the sandwich board sign as my car inched closer to the menu. It’s embarrassing enough to order my grande chai latte (or anything, really) without feeling the barista’s judgement through the speaker system, so when I read the words, “Unicorn Frappuccino” on the sign I was beyond confused.
That is a total out-of-character move, right? Selling a brightly colored non-caffeinated beverage with hints of blue raspberry and pink swirls swimming around. But Starbucks made a savvy decision to hop on the social media trend known as ‘Unicorn Food’ and of course, for a limited time only.
The drink is only available in the US, Canada and Mexico from April 19 to April 23, and the marketing surrounding the drink is as cute and cliché to catch the eye of anyone who entertains the idea of unicorns in real life. Two Buttons Deep’s very own Morgan wrote her review of the drink here.
But this trend doesn’t start and end with Starbucks. Popular Instagram accounts, food bloggers and artsy people alike have been turning food and drink into visual masterpieces by using unique ingredients, food dye and creative plating arrangements to show off beautifully photographed, colorful displays. For what reason, I’m not quite sure –but the visuals are certainly eye-catching.
The hashtag, #RainbowFood has 50,792 tagged posts on Instagram.
#Unicorn alone has 4,709,949 posts.
When you do add #Starbucks to the mix at 27,250,212 and this is social media gold!!!
I’m a sucker for artsy photographs whether it be fashion-related, travel, or sports. But if you used social media before it hit peak popularity, you might remember that photographing your meals used to be a major-no. Mobile phone camera quality was not great and homemade meals just didn’t have much aesthetic appeal.
These rainbow food posts have proved us wrong and made food pics cool again –I’m just not sure how appetizing some of it might actually be in real life. But that’s social media for ya folks, where perception is not always reality.
So carry on, unicorn lovers, carry on.
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