How Companies Turn Ordinary Foods Into Must-Have Products

Some foods seem to appear out of nowhere and are suddenly everywhere. A fish nobody wanted, a bag of carrots, a pasta recipe with a block of cheese, a chocolate bar that sold out in stores worldwide.

Behind each one is usually a deliberate choice: a new name, a new shape, a new moment. A few well-documented cases show how it works.

A Better Name

Patagonian toothfish was a throwaway catch for fishermen in Chile, partly because the name did nothing for it. In 1977, American seafood merchant Lee Lantz tasted it and decided it needed something more appealing.

He chose “Chilean sea bass,” even though the fish isn’t a sea bass.

The rebrand worked so well that landings grew more than thirty-fold by the mid-1990s, and the FDA accepted the new name as a market name in 1994. Success had a cost, since overfishing followed, prompting boycotts and stricter management.

A Better Shape

Baby carrots are not a separate type of carrot. They are regular full-size carrots cut and shaped into small, snackable pieces, an idea credited to California farmer Mike Yurosek.

His goal was to reduce waste from carrots too crooked or broken to sell whole.

The change made carrots a grab-and-go snack, and major carrot companies followed. It’s a reminder that convenience can turn a staple into a product with its own bag, brand, and shelf space.

A Better Season

Starbucks launched the Pumpkin Spice Latte on October 10, 2003, in about 100 stores. The idea came after strong peppermint mocha sales the year before, which made the company look for another seasonal drink.

A consumer group scored the pumpkin concept low for likelihood to sell.

Even so, it rated high on uniqueness, and the team developed a pumpkin sauce that matched the heavy body of pumpkin pie. Co-creator Peter Dukes has said the team knew within two days that it was a hit, and the drink’s tie to fall helped it grow each year.

A Borrowed Recipe

In early 2021, a baked feta pasta recipe from Finnish food blogger Jenni Häyrinen spread across TikTok. Videos under the hashtag drew hundreds of millions of views.

Grocery shelves felt it quickly.

Retailers including Kroger reported a sharp jump in feta sales, and some stores in Charlotte sold out of it in February 2021. Strictly speaking it was a demand spike, not a formal shortage, but it showed how a single recipe can move a whole product category.

A Viral Video

The Dubai chocolate bar was launched in 2021 by an Emirati chocolatier, Fix, combining milk chocolate, shredded kataifi pastry, and pistachio cream. It was sold only in the UAE.

In 2023, a food reviewer posted a video of herself eating it.

That video passed 124 million views and set off a craze of taste tests, imitations, and homemade versions. The attention was enough to push pistachio prices up, from about $7.65 to $10.30 per pound in a year, according to one nut trader.

A Wave of Copycats

Once a trend is proven, other brands rush in. After the Dubai chocolate boom, chocolate makers such as Läderach and Lindt released their own pistachio-filled products, and a cookie chain was reported to be developing Dubai-inspired flavors.

Imitators extend a trend’s life and put it in more stores.

They also bring risks. Fake websites claiming to sell the original bar appeared, and some stores limited how many each customer could buy, which only made the bar seem more desirable.

What Shoppers Can Notice

Once you know the pattern, it’s easy to spot. A familiar ingredient gets a new name, shape, season, or story, and scarcity or social attention does the rest.

Fashion and flavor trends are not the same thing as quality.

It helps to ask whether a product is actually different or only newly packaged. Sometimes it is a better product, and sometimes the buzz is the main ingredient.