wn as deli containers, first entered the zeitgeist with FX’s television show “The Bear” about a chef and the restaurant he takes over. The show depicted characters drinking iced water and eating leftovers out of quart containers, a common occurrence in the hospitality industry. But it was the viral cucumber salad by TikTok creator Logan Moffitt that put quart containers on the map and straight onto Amazon’s ‘best seller’ list. In Moffitt’s recipes, he uses a mandoline to slice up his cucumber straight into a quart container before adding a variety of seasonings and sauces. This ‘entire cucumber’ salad took over TikTok and subsequently legacy media’s online cooking publications – it wasn’t just Moffitt’s videos finding virality but also other TikTok creators who attempted to recreate or spin off the cucumber recipes. Moffitt, who appropriately earned the nickname ‘cucumber guy’, is an influencer in the truest sense of the word, shaping not only people’s eating habits but also their purchase behaviour. He set up an Amazon storefront listing all of his ‘cucumber salad supplies’ including the exact mandolin he uses, the ‘OXO Good Grips Handheld Mandoline Slicer’. In case anyone was still questioning the ability of organic content to catapult retail sales, kitchen tool company OXO reported a dramatic increase in sales when the cucumber salad was at its social peak. “[Our mandolin slicers] have seen noticeable boosts in demand on our assortment ranging from sales lifts of 30 per cent to almost 600 per cent depending on the product,” Nicole Rivera, vice president of marketing at OXO, told Forbes. Now, the first recipe suggestion that OXO makes in the handheld mandolin slicer’s product description is cucumber salad. But it’s the generic quart container that Moffitt assembles and eats his cucumber salads in that is the key ingredient and is the continuous thread across almost all his recipes. The Gusto plastic deli containers with lids that Moffitt recommends in his Amazon storefront have risen to be Amazon’s number one best-selling product in the ‘disposable food storage containers’ category and have over 12,000 reviews. TSA trays Travel content has always been king across social media but it would have been difficult to predict a trend called ‘airport tray aesthetic’ would be dominating this year’s algorithm. The digital flex involves tourists carefully curating their belongings in a TSA security bin into the perfect flat lay to capture and share across their socials.  Brands too have been quick to fall in line and jump on the trend to position their products in an aesthetically arranged airport tray. Everyone from luxury fashion retailer Ssense to smoking cessation brand Blip to book publisher Faber has used the viral content concept to represent different customer personalities and niches. US luggage brand Béis’ latest out-of-home marketing campaign looks to capitalise on this travel trend with its branded TSA trays – it took to Instagram to announce the security bin-sized billboards with a picture captioned “Tag us when you see us at LAX”. In a span of weeks, security checkpoints went from being the most inconvenient part of holiday travel to the most Instagrammable – ‘”TSA tray aesthetic” now has over 16 million related posts. “As long as the staged glamour photos are not causing delays or issues with other passengers in the checkpoint, there are no issues,” a TSA spokesperson told ABC News. However, the security check turned photo opp has prompted an unexpected consumer behaviour – people are buying TSA trays to get the ‘airport tray aesthetic’ at home. Plastic security bins, too, have risen to Amazon’s best-seller lists as people look to recreate the content concept minus the line hold-up and the cost of airfares.