Thread by @berkun

1. I've been thinking about how food is designed.

In particular, how certain foods have branding *on* the food itself. Exhibit A: the Shula burger in Fort Lauderdale Airport.

It's a strange thing to do, isn't it? I know where it's from: I just ordered it.

2. Of course the first thing I thought of was candy and cookies which often do this. Exhibit B: the Oreo.

It's often done to highly processed things (it's all unnatural, so why not), but I can't recall having seen it done on a bun or on the food itself before (Exhibit A).

3. There's an interesting line these sorts of things cross between a) food as functional sustenance from the natural world, and b) food is a manufactured product like all others that signifies status, image and branding.

4. In the case of Exhibit A (the burger bun), it made me think about how they did it. How much did that cost? Where in the bun factory process line does this happen?

I was distracted away from the "food as sustenance" experience, and towards "how is this product made?"...

5. But in a way that the OREO logo doesn't do when I eat one. Perhaps I already disassociate cookies and candy from "food" so the flourishes of manufacturing tricks don't seem so strange?

6. I realize this is esoteric, and the kind of thing only someone writing a book about design is likely to notice, but I did wonder:

What was the person at Shula Burger who made this decision thinking?

Maybe "novelty implies quality"? But sadly the bun was a bit old :(

7. If other interesting "brand integrated into the product, especially if it's food" examples come to mind, let me know.

Curious if seeing more examples will go anywhere interesting. More of a lark than a deep research question. /FIN

8. And of course, today anyone can brand any food they like it seems:

"we print logos on produce!"

brandedfruit.com