How food is reshaping product photography

Plus: insights from SaladSprinkles' co-founder, Forever21's bankruptcy, and more 🔗

Apr 01, 2025

Hello and welcome back to Brandscape!

In today’s letter:

Food is taking over product photography
Insights from Jordan Wannemacher, the co-founder of SaladSprinkles, on starting the business
News about Forever21’s bankruptcy, a new campaign from Hinge, and more

The rise of food in product photography 🍽️

This is a trend I’ve been tracking for a while, and it’s seemingly becoming more of an impactful, longer-term strategy than a mere fad. In product photography, food brings a sense of freshness and novelty, engaging the senses by placing products in unexpected environments. I’m most interested in seeing how brands outside of food/bev are using this approach. Here are some of my favorite examples:

Flamingo Estate

To celebrate his dog’s 15th birthday, Flamingo Estate founder Richard Christiansen hosted a flash candle sale. To promote it, he shared photos where birthday cake candles are swapped out with Flamingo Estate candles on a sheet cake.

Bink

binkmade

A post shared by @binkmade

To promote the launch of their Butter color, Bink shared these shots of their Mini Bottle side-by-side sticks of butter.

Soft Services

softservices

A post shared by @softservices

Soft Services’ Buffing Bars, Theraplush, and Soap Home sit on a fruit platter.

Jacquemus

jacquemus

A post shared by @jacquemus

Jacquemus promoted the opening of their first NYC boutique with a video featuring fresh-squeezed orange juice and a brown bag version of their The Rond Carré bag.

What other brands use food in their product photography? Let me know in the comments!

Reinventing Salad Toppings: A Chat with SaladSprinkles’ Jordan Wannemacher 🥗

I recently tried SaladSprinkles, small rice puffs that add crunch and flavor to salads. Curious to learn more about the brand, I chatted with co-founder Jordan Wannemacher. Read on to learn more!

For those unfamiliar, what is SaladSprinkles?

SaladSprinkles are toasted, flavorful rice sprinkles that put crunch in every bite! They are the perfect gluten free alternative to croutons, and they transcend salad by adding crunch to pasta, veggies, fruit, even ice cream! We just launched last July and are a first of its kind pantry staple in what has been a very stale category, pun intended.

What has the process of building SaladSprinkles looked like so far? What were your first steps in starting the business?

Jordan had her own design studio so knew the basics of opening up a business (LLC, new bank account, etc.) and secured the social handles. Blakely immediately filed the trademarks and secured domain names. We created a Miro board to decide the why/what/look of it all. Jordan quickly designed the branding and labels and Blakely’s dream packaging was neatly sketched out with samples arriving in the mail. Then we wandered around a dark forest grabbing at every branch for a year. Kidding, but not really. It was a huge learning curve!

What’s it like to be a trailblazer in an entirely new category? How has this shaped customer education surrounding your products?

This is a great piggyback off the last question because the steepest part of the learning curve was figuring out how to create a product at scale that did not exist yet with no CPG experience! We often felt envious of the granola, sauce, or spice blend people; those avenues already had an established white label and small batch ecosystem in place. Making it ourselves took FOREVER and wasn’t a viable option with our day jobs, hence seeking a manufacturing partner before officially launching.
We hired some operations consultants to help us speak the language and know what types of questions to ask, and train our nose for red flags. All of that helped immensely! We also reformulated to make it easier to find a manufacturer, which coincidentally made it a fully gluten-free brand. Win-win!
Customer education turned out to be a really expansive social media opportunity. We love that it’s such a FUN social product. The ASMR of the sprinkles; the flashy metallic label. People use it in the most insanely creative ways, and eat salad in equally insane and creative ways (see–our viral launch with DaTrashMaaan!) It’s a product that needs to be demo’d but people genuinely find joy in using it and showing off their creativity.

Where do you see SaladSprinkles going in the future?

Salt, Pepper, SaladSprinkles™.

Headlines of the week 🗞️

Forever 21’s bankruptcy paves the way for even faster fast fashion. The mall brand, founded in 1984, faced insurmountable competition by Shein and Temu in recent years. Shein, which uses algorithms to decide what to produce, identifies trends quickly and puts garments into production even faster. Forever 21 going out of business doesn’t necessarily shock me, but these statistics about their competitors did:
- Shein’s revenue was $38 billion in 2024 (compared to F21’s all-time highest revenue of $4.4 billion in 2015).
- 44% of Gen Z consumers purchase something from Shein at least once per month.
- Temu was the most-downloaded free app in the Apple App Store last year.
Hinge is committing $1 million to hosting in-person events in NYC, LA, and London. We’ve seen other community-first Hinge campaigns like this, all which fit into their “designed to be deleted” motto. See this breakdown I did from a campaign they did called It’s Funny We Met on Hinge which features couples who inadvertently crossed paths in person earlier in life before eventually matching on Hinge.
Minneapolis-based electrolyte brand GoodOnya just announced a rebrand. With the rebrand, they sought to shake up the clinical design elements that tend to dominate the electrolyte industry. They pair a modern serif with 2D lemon illustrations to emphasize their organic philosophy and add some fun to the space.
GoodOnya’s Lemon Electrolyte Drink Mix
2025 is the year to invest in scent marketing. While custom scents are already popular among hotel groups, brands are increasingly using customized scents to infuse the air of their retail spaces. Wayfair, for example, recently made a custom scent for their flagship retail store to create a homey feel. Some hotels and stores even sell candles that smell like their spaces. Purchasing one seems to be the ultimate sign of brand loyalty.
Rimowa just launched RE-CRAFTED, their new trade-in program. Travelers can trade in their suitcase for a gift voucher (even if it’s covered in stickers!). This move solidifies their emphasis on quality and being a lifetime travel partner. Nice.
Rimowa RE-CRAFTED
Thanks for reading!
— Henry