So Food Is a Status Symbol Now
I mean, it always has been but now, it's on another level
I hope you enjoy reading The Sauce as much as I enjoy writing it. This is a reader-supported publication. Your paid subscriptions mean I have the time to research and write about food culture as an independent entity. No #sponcon, no shilling products I don’t care about, just a whole lot of commentary about how food and drink fit into modern society.
I have spent at least six hours of my one wild and precious life trying to figure out where olive oil brand Graza sources its oil.
I’ve got as far as “Jaén, Spain.” A region that produces 20% of the world’s liquid gold.
The same goes for almost every new food-based consumer packaged good (CPG) that’s come across my desk in the last few months. I’ve dug and dug and most of the time, all I find are buzzwords or distracting press releases about the packaging or branding or what the creator wants to “say” with the product.
Ingredients? Not so much.
It’s like the excellent
says:You could read an entire article about a new launch without any indication of how the thing tastes.
Food brands are beginning to capitalise on the buying power of Gen Zs, a famously aesthetically-obsessed generation. Branding matters. A lot.
Taste? Quality? Value for money? They should be a focus — Gen Z is more sensitive to the provenance of their food than many other generations.
But time and again brands shout about the style, not the substance.
Call me a curmudgeonly elder Millennial if you like, but I can’t see this as anything other than a problem, especially for those spending their hard-earned (and often scarce) cash on products that don’t live up to the hype.
Style may be important, but substance is more so.
Status sells
We are living in our Instagram era. Everything and everyone is beautiful. So it doesn’t take a genius to understand why food brands focus so hard on looks these days.
They matter.
Our kitchens haven’t escaped beautification either. Whilst this has arguably always been a thing — in the 1990s my mother would lust over country kitchens in Home and Garden magazine— the extent to which we curate our kitchens has become so fantastical that it’s unmanageable for most normal people.
Fridge-scaping for instance, is a thing:
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People are creating at-home salad bars:
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It stands to reason therefore that brands focus on packaging that looks the part in these perfect kitchens. After all, 72% of purchase decisions are influenced by packaging design.
There’s no problem with this in itself. Heck, I love a well-packaged product.
The problem lies when the quality of the product doesn’t match the packaging — especially when the price it commands means it should.
During my time in my wine store and bar, I saw this time and again. There are so many nothing-special wines out there that hide behind meaningless buzzwords. Favourite phrases included “family owned” or “we respect the land we farm” or “our wines reflect our region.”
If I saw this — but nothing specific about the farming of the grapes or the processes in the winery — my spidey sense went into overdrive.
It has happened hundreds (perhaps thousands) of times. Every time someone tried to sell me a slick new wine brand, a quick Google would reveal whether it was really worth the (often hefty) price tag.
It seldom was.
And when it comes to fancy foodstuffs, I’ve found that spidey sense is activated more often than I would like.
Behind the smoke and mirrors
I have a particular affinity towards olives and olive oil ; some buddies and I once came fourth in the world championship olive picking competition. A story for another time.
My love for olives accounts for why I have been fascinated by the popularity of Graza and the way it positions itself.
Their website talks about how it’s real Extra Virgin Olive Oil. About how it’s made from single varietal Picual. About how it comes from Jaén in Spain.
That all sounds like good stuff, but whilst Picual is a decent olive variety, Arbequina — for instance — is generally considered better. And Jaén is a big place. Like everywhere, it will have its good and its bad.
I’m not saying Graza comes from the bad, I’m saying we have no idea because the website doesn’t give any more indication of provenance or quantifiable indicators of quality.
Much like with those wineries, this bothers me.
The jury is out on taste too. America’s Test Kitchen tested three new olive oil brands — including Graza — against traditional brands. They said:
Tasters rated traditional brands significantly higher than the newer brands.
Their aromas were enticing, but the flavor didn’t sustain that initial appeal, failing to build and bloom the way the traditional favorites had.
As one taster put it, these oils were: “Nice, but not particularly special.”
Yet Graza positions itself as the saviour of EVOO. Almost the first thing on their website is the statement: Most olive oil in the US including a lot of “extra virgin” stuff is blended from old, low quality oils.
That’s a bold statement and it hasn’t gone down well with everybody, including the executive director of the North American Olive Oil Association Joseph Profaci. He is on the record saying:
I find these brands promoting the idea that theirs is great and everything else is crap, or fake. It just does a disservice to the whole industry. It makes people feel that if they can’t afford a $40 half liter of oil, (they) had better not buy any olive oil. And nothing can be further from the truth.
Another interesting example is Chamberlain Coffee
I’d never heard of 23-year-old influencer Emma Chamberlain, likely because I am not her demographic. But she is HUGE. Like 15 million Instagram followers huge.
She too has dipped her toe into food and drink production with her coffee company Chamberlain Coffee.
Much like Graza, Chamberlain Coffee gives almost nothing away about the specific providence of their beans, how they roast, or any of the other markers of quality I see with other specialty coffee roasters.
The coffee is specialty-grade and organic, which is a good start. They specify the country or countries of origin. They specify a roasting profile.
But that’s as far as it goes.
As far as I can see on their site, we have no idea about the coffee processing. Is it natural? Washed? Anaerobic? These are important points in the coffee world.
There’s also a lot of marketing speak like:
Our beans are roasted with love to bring out the unique tasting notes for our signature blends.
Compare that to my friend Morgan. He’s both a coffee roaster and coffee shop owner here in Porto. His website says:
From origin, to you, we want to show you the journey the coffee made with as much transparency and traceability as we possibly can.
He means it. You can find out everything about the coffee down to the farm of origin, how much he paid for it, and exactly how he roasts it. Technical sheet and all.
Emma may say she gives you “geeky details” but they’re nothing compared to Morgan’s.
I’m involved in the European speciality coffee scene thanks to my husband’s coffee app Kava so I know first-hand how truly geeky it can get. From my experience in the speciality coffee world, Morgan’s approach isn’t unusual.
And in my opinion, Chamberlain Coffee falls short.
But it’s brightly coloured. It’s got a great design that would look wonderful in a design-concerned kitchen. And it’s got the seal of approval from an incredibly influential woman.
When food becomes a status symbol, that is arguably the biggest flex of all.
Graza and Chamberlain are just two examples of a wider issue in current food trends. Where style competes with substance. Where you have to dig hard to find out about the ingredients inside the bottle, bag or jar.
Look, give me an aesthetically packaged product and I’ll be just as influenced as everyone else. I will want it. I’m a human after all. But if you want me to part with $21 for half a litre of olive oil or $20 on a bag of coffee, you’d better start telling me why I should.
And no, a squeezy bottle or celebrity endorsement won’t cut it.
Food brands can do better. They should. At the price they sell for, I don’t want to have to dig to find out the provenance of ingredients. They should shouted about from the rooftops.
Statusy food products might look lovely in a “scaped” fridge, but in real life, I want the quality of the product to be the reason why you part with your hard-earned cash.
At these price points, providence and taste matter. The sooner these CPGs realise that, the better.
I'd heard of fridgescaping but the at home salad bar thing has me wheezing! Crossing my fingers we'll get at-home hibachi or unlimited breadsticks in the living room next
I just finished our olive harvest here in Lazio and the oil is wonderful.