TikTok to a Heinz jar: vodka pasta sauce’s journey from fad to supermarket shelves
Sometimes you just need some vodka pasta sauce – especially when you’ve been grounded for trying to charter a helicopter on your dad’s credit card.
When Sofia Coppola’s 16-year-old daughter, Romy Mars, set the internet alight last month after doing just that – and then recorded a TikTok video to complain about her punishment while making the sauce – there was plenty of discussion about her family dynamics. Others, though, were more interested in her food choices.
Vodka pasta sauce has been a viral favourite among social media users since the model Gigi Hadid posted a how-to video to her Instagram stories in 2020, sparking an instant food craze among her fans.
Two of those fans have now been revealed to be Heinz and the vodka brand Absolut, who have jointly launched a limited edition run of their own version of the sauce, which they say comes from their commitment to innovate “at the speed of social media trends”.
Online fads driven by a brief celebrity clip might seem trivial but to retailers, especially in the highly competitive grocery sector, they are anything but. Vodka pasta sauce is far from the only viral craze to have found itself on supermarket shelves in recent years. Pasta chips, cloud bread, and an alarmingbubblegum-coloured condiment called “pink sauce” have all made the journey from wildly popular videos to mainstream product lines.
TikTok, Instagram and Facebook, in other words, are not just where brands’ customers are – they are also potentially where their next product ideas can be found.
“Traditionally with product development, you would get people together, ask them some questions and develop products on the back of that,” says Jamie Ray, a co-founder of Buttermilk, a specialist brand and influencer agency.
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