2024 Faire Forecast: Unexpected collabs

This post is part of the Faire Forecast: our predictions for the buying trends that will shape 2024.

Ranch-flavored ice cream, caviar on Pringles, vodka-infused chocolate truffles: 2023 saw some unusual and creative collaborations between food and beverage brands. Whether it’s infusing chocolate with chili crunch or making mocktails out of olive oil, brands from Hidden Valley Ranch to Momofuku have been teaming up and thinking outside the box to create buzzworthy product combinations.

“Collaborations like this aren’t new, but they feel new to food and beverage,” says Alli Ball, a former grocery buyer who now runs her own wholesale consultancy, Food Biz Wiz. Alli believes consumers are flocking to these products for two reasons: the sense of FOMO created by what’s often a limited-edition product run and the built-in trust that comes from knowing one, if not both, of the collaborating brands.

“Marketing is becoming more expensive in the food and beverage industry,” says Alli. “These collaborations are a creative way to get in front of someone else’s trusted, aligned audience.”

Of the top 10 brands in Faire’s Food and Beverage category in 2023, four of them participated in a product collaboration with another brand this year.

And it’s worked. Both Momofuku’s chocolate bars made in collaboration with Raaka Chocolate and Aura Bora’s non-alcoholic Olive Oil Martini made in partnership with Graza quickly sold out after launch.

These types of unexpected collabs are a powerful marketing tool for brands looking to stand out in the food and beverage industry, and in 2024, among an increasingly competitive landscape, we predict the popularity of these unique and attention-catching partnerships will only grow.

“With the rising cost of advertising on big platforms, emerging brands have to be as scrappy as possible and look to other channels,” says Cameron Faist, VP of Growth at Aura Bora, whose recent partnership with Graza marked its first venture beyond sparkling water into the non-alcoholic realm. “Our product collab was a strategic approach to a long-term partnership and sharing of audiences. I think the opportunity for two brands to bring two like-minded communities together and share those audiences is why we’re seeing so much collaboration across so many different categories.”