Social media trend sees Australian consumers increase cucumber intake
Cucumber salad might be the healthiest dish to go viral in today’s world of overindulgent and novel foods designed for social media consumption.
When Canadian content creator Logan Moffitt posts a cucumber salad recipe, millions watch. With over 6.8mn followers on TikTok, the worldwide audience has been mesmerised by his videos. Starting each recipe with an entire cucumber, Moffitt adapts each salad to a different flavour combination from kimchi to salmon cream cheese bagel.
The concept has inspired people around the world to try it for themselves, which has led to shortages in Iceland, but it has been good news for Australian cucumber producers. While many vegetables are going up in price, prices for cucumbers are down 5.1 per cent year-on-year, thanks to good supplies.
This – along with positive trends in prepacked cucumber snacking and the viral social media recipe inspiration – has supported an 8.6 per cent growth in the volume of household consumption of cucumbers in the past year.
However, taking a look at consumption by life stage reveals an outsized growth in one particular cohort. Incredibly, young transitional households, those aged 17-35 years have increased their consumption 32.5 per cent year-on-year. These consumers aren’t going to books for recipe inspiration, they are going to TikTok.
There are close to 10mn TikTok users in Australia, the majority of which are aged 18-35 year old. As a go-to app for entertainment, Australians are spending a lot of time on TikTok, and brands are following them, spending millions on advertising and influencer marketing. While the fresh produce industry spends little on marketing compared to the rest of the food sector, social media marketing can be positive for the fresh produce industry, and can increase consumption, particularly in younger age demographics.
Will the trend last? Cucumber salad has likely already reached peak internet interest, but for some consumers it may become part of their weekly routines. People are still making TikTok’s viral feta pasta almost four years later. As more households use social media to find recipe inspiration, the fresh produce industry can capitalise on opportunities to market to a new generation of consumers.
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