Why Foodie Culture is Embracing the Emoji

Emoji food language has drastically changed the way we experience foodie culture. Restaurants, customers, food social media account operators, and food lovers everywhere have a fresh new method of communication and interaction. As emoji technology continues to advance, it opens up new ways to share our thoughts, express our emotions, and exchange information.

Emojis began as a way to add tone and personality to written text, and their use remained largely unchanged for decades. We’ve all had tons of fun sticking out our virtual tongues at each other. The silliness, of course, is not going anywhere, but it’s time to expand into more practical uses. It’s exciting to think about where we are now and what’s in store for the future. Let’s take a peek.

Allergy Warnings

Allergies are one of the more serious realities in the otherwise wonderful world of food. This is one area that will see some of the most positive advancements as emojis continue to expand.

It’s not exactly a new concept to label menus and packaging with allergy warnings, but implementation is far from ideal. Occasionally you’ll see an asterisk near an item name, which corresponds to some fine print pointing out that nuts are contained within. You’ll sometimes even find little peanut symbols on product packaging to relay that information.

Source: ABCNews

That’s really as far as it goes at this point. Standardization is needed and is something that’s being pushed as we speak. Although the emoji alphabet continues to grow, many problematic foods still are not represented. It’s a slow process because all emoji symbols are decided by a central organization, the Unicode Consortium.

While symbols of the actual ingredients might initially seem like the obvious solution, things might end up going in another direction. Some researchers are suggesting a focus on the allergic reactions themselves — a swollen face or a person with red dots to represent hives – that sort of thing.

Whatever the final result, it’s great to see there are people out there tackling this issue. Too many unfortunate events could easily be prevented.

Marketing

Marketing works best when it’s effective for the business and also fun for the consumer. Picture a restaurant putting on a contest where you have to describe your perfect meal using nothing but emojis. It will get people engaged and talking about your brand. That’s just one example of what our Flujee brand is setting out to accomplish, but emojis are so versatile there are endless creative ideas for a clever marketer to think up.

Search is another area where emoji use is set to explode. It’s still in its infancy, so business owners should take notice As of right now, you can plug an emoji into Google, and it will actually search the emoji itself. So if you use the pizza emoji, it will search the pizza emoji, not the word pizza.

Some companies are taking advantage, but it’s still a largely unknown concept. As more businesses learn to populate their websites with emojis, it will ultimately benefit foodie culture and all restaurant customers in general. Eventually it will probably become the default way to search for food online. Why would you want to type “barbecue pulled pork” when you could save time by entering the emoji equivalent? Plus, it’s fun!

Emojis are no strangers to campaign promotions… others have tried to incorporate them.

Communication

An essential part of the relationship between a business and its customers is communication. Imagine what it would be like to be a traveler in a place where you don’t understand the language. You find a nice looking restaurant, but none of the food looks familiar. You have a serious allergy but don’t know how to ask which items contain the harmful ingredient.

That is a frightening thought. Sure, preventing yourself from getting in this situation in the first place is ideal but not always possible. Think about how great it would be to have the ability to point to a symbol and have everyone know exactly what you mean. Standardization ensures emojis are a truly global language that people everywhere can understand.

Don’t forget about those food social media influencers. Foodie culture loves its Instagram pics. Speaking of Instagram, did you know they let you use emojis as hashtags? That’s right; search for a carrot emoji hashtag, and you’ll be presented with pictures featuring carrots. It’s quite a new feature and a real game-changer. It opens up limitless possibilities as a content creator to grow your audience. As a user, you’ll have an exciting new way to find content that you enjoy.

Final Thoughts

Much of what we’ve discussed still has a long way to go, but the foundation is there, and it’s getting built upon every day. It’s fascinating to think about how human language has remained virtually unchanged for so long, and now we have a brand new method of communicating. A method that’s evolving faster than any other that came before it.

Emojis are working hard to solve problems and bring people closer together than ever before. It’s hard to say where foodie culture will end up in regards to emoji usage, but the future is looking bright.