We all love food and we all love the latest in fashionable clothes. That’s why many food brands have branched out to clothing lines to market their brands. These merchandises are all for branding purposes but it turned out the demands for this merch have grown and so these food brands can’t stop making more merch.
Read also: Tips When Starting a Food Truck Business
Food Brands That Open Their Merch Stores
Taco Bell
Taco Bell is a Mexican-American fast-food restaurant chain with over 6,000 locations worldwide. It serves tacos, burritos, quesadillas, and other Mexican-inspired items in more than 26 varieties of sauces. The business of Taco Bell is the company’s owner Yum Brands Inc., which operates through its wholly-owned subsidiary Taco Bell Corp. Taco Bell recently opened its very own Taco Shop that sells a variety of merch items featuring their brand, Taco Bell.
McDonald’s
McDonald’s is an American fast-food restaurant chain that sells hamburgers, french fries, soft drinks, and desserts. Founded by Ray Kroc in 1948 in the U.S., McDonald’s became popular worldwide with locations in 119 countries as of December 2017. In 2012, the company rebranded itself with a new logo and a new slogan — “I’m loving it! McDonald’s partnered with Golden Arches Unltd. to present a wide array of merch items for lovers of BigMac and other McDonald’s products.
Coca-Cola (Coke)
Coca-Cola is a global brand with over 1 billion consumers. The company has a strong presence in the world of consumer goods. Even before the boom of the internet, Coke has already started their merch items from limited bottle collections, t-shirts, keychains, bottle openers, and a whole lot more. Today, with almost all businesses on the internet, Coke has its own website for its merch items.
In this post, we have mentioned the top three brands that have good ROI on their merch shop. But there are more food brands out who are on the same ride as Taco Bells, McDonald’s, and Coke. There is Wendey’s, Hershey’s, M&M’s, you name it and they have their very own brand on a t-shirt.
Why do Food Brands use Merch Items?
Many brands and not only food brands are using merch items as part of their promotional strategy. These companies mainly use it for branding purposes. People love to have free items and if it’s not free, they want to have collector’s items that they can keep and show off one day. There are many reasons out there but the primary reason is for branding, to reach out to as many consumers as they can so that they could connect better with their target audience.
This marketing and promotional strategy work as it worked many decades ago. There’s no reason that it’s going out of fashion as people are embracing the idea and are asking for more. People who embrace these branded clothing may categorize this under alt style clothing or an alternative style of clothing. You wear it and you are still fashionable in a lot of sense.
These days, alt style clothing is also getting into the trend of boosting its sales by partnering with famous brands. Alt style clothing and indie aesthetic clothes are also a growing trend as they embrace sustainable and eco-friendly clothing, which could be the path of the next fashion trends.