Why Generation Z loves expensive food, treats and snacks

Jade Lily wanted to show off her grocery shopping. In a recent video, the 26-year-old TikToker held up item after item: celebrity-endorsed supplements, packaged berries, coconut yogurt, bone broth, kombucha and ready-made meals from Hot Bar. Last but not least, a “little Bevvy,” she said, presenting Olipop with grape flavor. “I’m an Olipop girl until I die,” she said.

The food came from Los Angeles-based upscale grocery chain Erewhon, known for its $19 smoothies created with artists like Kourtney Kardashian and Katy Perry. Lily told her followers that the meal cost $500. “These are all things I can’t live without,” she said in the video.

More and more young people are craving expensive food. In a McKinsey survey in February, food was the top category in which Gen Z and Millennial respondents said they wanted to spend money, surpassing restaurants, travel and fitness. In 2017, Generation X spent the most on groceries, followed by Baby Boomers. Some 20-year-olds take on second and third jobs to be able to afford the daily commute to Erewhon. In June, Bank of America reported that its Generation Z customers spent more at premium grocery stores than any other generation.

Considering regular grocery prices have risen in recent years, this trend is puzzling. CreditKarma said that in a survey conducted in May, more than a quarter of respondents who said they had noticed rising food prices also said they had skipped meals to save money. However, some Gen Zers are taking advantage of rising costs by prioritizing healthy foods and expensive snacks. Gone are the days of coveting the latest iPhone or designer handbag. Expensive snacks and fun drinks are the “it” items for many young consumers. Buying a $53 box of croissant-shaped cereal or a $45 can of potato chips may seem outrageous, but they're still cheaper than a $2,000 bag.

In other words, inflation is no match for Generation Z's love of small treats.

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After documentaries like “Super Size Me” and “Food, Inc.” first aired in the 2000s, nutritional concerns spread like wildfire. Millennials sparked a healthy eating craze with fads like avocado toast and grain bowls.

The trend gained momentum among Generation Z. Millennials and Gen Zers are driving demand for vegetarian and vegan food. In a recent YouGov survey for Whole Foods, 70% of Gen Z respondents said they would be willing to pay more for quality food. Since plant-based and organic options are often more expensive, it's no surprise that Gen Z's grocery bills are adding up.

Neeru Paharia, a professor of marketing at Arizona State University, said that when it comes to expensive food, “you can always find a health-related reason to spend the money on it.”

Everything is satisfied. Everything has to signal something.
Andrea Hernández, author of the Snaxshot newsletter

This generation's love of health-conscious food is also an expression of economic power. As buying a home becomes increasingly unaffordable and fewer young people have a driver's license (let alone a fancy car to show off), Generation Z is turning to a cheaper status symbol: their shopping cart. Andrea Hernández, author of the newsletter Snaxshot, calls this the new lipstick effect — an economic theory that suggests that during economic downturns, consumers spend money on more affordable luxuries like lipstick. “It’s a form of affordable wealth,” she said. “We are now dealing with the phenomenon that food is not a basic need, but a luxury experience.”

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Of course, Generation Z is not the first generation to use food as a status symbol. In a 1986 New York Times article titled “Pure Food: The Status Symbol of the Decade,” nutritionist and cookbook author Barbara Kafka was quoted as saying, “The food you buy reflects your position in society .” She added: “It's a way to enhance the image of yourself. “It’s a class thing and has a lot to do with upward social mobility.” Generation Z is taking this to the next level.

Erewhon is the starting point for this phenomenon. The store sells thousands of smoothies every month for $19. The pastel-colored drinks consist of an alphabet soup with ingredients: chlorella, spirulina, hemp, lucuma, maca, mesquite, xylitol, tocos. More importantly, they're ripe for social media: Videos discussing the most popular options rack up hundreds of thousands of views. “Everything is happy,” said Hernández. “Everything has to signal something.”

Lily has been shopping at Erewhon for six years because of the quality food they offer – she prefers organic, gluten-free and whole foods to help treat an autoimmune disease. “These days it's very trendy and maybe a little off-putting to be so Goop/Ewhon coded, but at the end of the day, I've always been that way,” she told me. “Health is wealth, and food brings so much joy in every way that it might mean I’m a bit of a hippie and, dare I say, a snob.”

To capitalize on the hype, Erewhon has collaborated with celebrities like Hailey Bieber, Bella Hadid and Sofia Richie to design smoothies. By purchasing a celebrity-endorsed smoothie full of collagen and sea moss, people can signal that they have money to be as healthy as these icons. “I like to call it gentrified food,” Hernández said.

The formula works: Erewhon made an estimated profit of $171 million last year and says it generates average annual sales per square foot that is four times that of other grocery stores.

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As young people look for products that say something about themselves, brands are increasingly embracing this trend. Nate Rosen, author of the Express Checkout newsletter, pointed to the explosion of brands tied to celebrities and influencers that are intended to signal influence. In the early 2000s, Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen advocated for McDonald's and Beyoncé and Britney Spears supported Pepsi. Now Nina Dobrev and Shawn Mendes support SmartSweets and Hailey Bieber support the chocolate brand Hu Kitchen. Health-conscious niche brands that cater to the diverse tastes of Generation Z are popping up everywhere. As the appetite for healthy foods grows, more brands are positioning themselves as healthy options – regardless of whether they actually are.

The beverage world is a good example. Prebiotic sodas, Generation Z's favorite drink, are giving old-fashioned soda giants Coca-Cola and Pepsi a run for their money. Brands like Poppi and Olipop are leveraging stars like Camila Cabello, promoting prebiotic benefits and lower sugar content, and packaging their drinks in soft pastel tones with bubbly fonts. Everything is carefully designed to attract the attention of Generation Z who want to flaunt something healthy. The fact that Poppi is facing a consumer fraud class-action lawsuit for misrepresenting the drink's gut health benefits is beside the point for many fans. In a TikTok, Lily drank her Poppi behind a text that read: “I'm just a girl (I don't know it's a class action lawsuit, I'll still drink my Doc Pop Poppi no matter what).” In June, Poppi told the Associated Press“We believe the lawsuit is without merit and we will vigorously defend ourselves against these allegations.”

Are you a cold-pressed juice and Lemme gummies kind of girl? Or a fish-woman type who uses canned seafood and biodynamic wine?

Liquid Death's success is another example of young people's willingness to spend money on a product to say something about themselves. The Los Angeles-based brand, which is essentially water in a can, was last valued at $1.4 billion, doubling its value from $700 million in 2022. It is also considering an IPO. These drinks, Rosen said, are not just food, but an expression of identity and values. A Liquid Death drinker could be a young festival-goer or a 30-year-old who recently got sober but wants to keep his edge. A Poppi girl, on the other hand, likes to have fun but also cares about her health. She orders a Caesar salad – with fries on the side.

Much of this signaling occurs on TikTok, which provides consumers with the latest trends. For example, cottage cheese is having a moment due to people's insatiable appetite for proteins. There are more than 100 million TikToks about the lumpy cheese, and brands have capitalized on its popularity. Good Culture, a cottage cheese brand, was already targeting younger people with its sustainability-focused branding when its product launched. Good Culture told Fast Company that the company expected volume growth of 35% last year, but ended up growing 80%.

With more brands to target – keto, carnivore, gluten-free, plant-based – there are more markets for brands to conquer. That's partly why the number of options at a grocery store has skyrocketed. In the 1990s, grocery stores carried about 7,000 items; now it's more like 50,000.

“When I was younger, there were some brands like Five Gum, Trident Layers, Lunchables — those were brands that showed a certain status,” said Rosen, 28. “People will always use products as signaling devices. This won't go away. They will just be different products.”

These days, people have far more options at their disposal to signal their priorities. There are also more ways to share these decisions. Before social media, displaying food preferences was limited to the dinner party. Nowadays, refrigerators, pantries, and grocery hauls are the main topic of social media.

“All these things that used to be private are now public,” Paharia said. People can carefully curate all types of consumer decisions for an engaged audience. Are you a cold-pressed juice and Lemme gummies kind of girl? Or a fish-woman type who uses canned seafood and biodynamic wine? I just have to check out your Instagram story.

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Eve Upton Clark is a feature writer about culture and society.