Pringles Announces $140 Caviar Kit as Brands Seize on Social Media Trends

Pringles is getting fancy as food and beverage brands turn to social media for inspiration on how best to reach their consumers.

Kellogg Company, which owns the chip brand, announced Tuesday (Sept. 19) that Pringles is partnering with The Caviar Company to launch the “Crisps and Caviar Collection.” The collaboration was inspired by a TikTok trend of pairing the snack with caviar, which has garnered over 10 billion views.   

This collaboration includes a $49 kit featuring Sour Cream & Onion chips and Smoked Trout Roe, a $110 option that includes original-flavor Pringles and Classic White Sturgeon Caviar, or a $140 set that includes both of the former. All kits also come with crème fraiche and a themed serving tray.

“Our partnership with The Caviar Co. not only embraces the trending snacking behavior in an approachable manner, but expertly curates our beloved crisp flavors with this seafood delicacy for a Pringles tasting experience unlike one you’ve ever had before,” Mauricio Jenkins, U.S. marketing lead for Pringles, said in a statement.

The news comes as food brands take note of how consumers are interacting with their products on social media. The PYMNTS Intelligence study “Tracking the Digital Payments Takeover: Monetizing Social Media Edition,” created in collaboration with Amazon Web Services, which draws from a census-balanced panel of nearly 3,000 U.S. consumers, reveals that, among those who made purchases via TikTok, 1 in 3 had bought food and beverage products. Plus, a similar share of those who had made purchases on any social media platform bought food and beverage items.

Many consumers use these platforms for inspiration, even among those not making purchases directly through social media. The same study found that 43% of consumers browse social media to find goods and services.

Indeed, the question of how to leverage social media to boost performance is a key one for many food and beverage brands. At a Digital Food & Beverage Conference keynote panel in June, executives from PepsiCo and General Mills, among others, discussed the subject of “Preparing for the Next Wave of Social Commerce.”

Smaller brands, too, are looking to social media trends to garner their followings. In an interview with PYMNTS, David Kovalevski, founder and CEO of premium instant coffee brand Waka Coffee, noted how the company gained popularity with Gen Z amid the viral TikTok craze of people making dalgona coffee, also known as whipped coffee, during quarantine.

“We recognized the trend really early on,” said Kovalevski. “We created content — videos, blog posts, tutorials — and we were actually first on Google for ‘dalgona coffee’ and ‘whipped coffee’ when the trend first started.”

In a conversation with PYMNTS, Jason Young, then president of digital advertising platform Chicory, laid out the advantage that food and beverage brands and retailers have in contextual commerce.

“Recipe content has always been incredibly shoppable. What’s happening is, we now have the pipes all connected so that you can go very directly from content like recipes into transactional moments,” Young explained. “But if you look at recipes historically, they’ve always been a point of inspiration, a point of kicking off the food shopping process.”