Wearing an “I ♥️ Pickles” shirt and a headband adorned with a giant pickle, influencer Serena Neel was on a mission. The goal? Take a swim with 50,000 Josh’s Pickles in her pool. Aided by a team of pickle enablers, she fills wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow with pickles, ceremoniously dumping them into the pool. In the end, a bobbing sea of green pickles completely obscures the pool’s chlorinated water.
After the last pickle is in place, Neel dons goggles and a swimsuit to cannonball into her pickle-filled pool. Someday our pickle obsession will go the way of mason jar salads, cronuts, boutique cupcakes, and the like. For now we’re still in Peak Pickle.
Lately nothing has been safe from getting the pickle treatment. You can munch on any number of pickle chips, take a swig of pickle beer, roast pickle marshmallows (ostensibly to make pickle s’mores), or slather your crackers in pickle-flavored spreadable cheese. That’s just a taste of the consumables. There’s also pickle-inspired lube, lip gloss, perfume, purses, shirts, and even a $2,000 pickle ring.
The proof is in the pickle. Last November, FoodNavigator, a food and beverage trade publication, reported that pickle-flavored product sales were up nearly 34%—about $490 million—from the year before. Mark Luker, chief commercial officer at Grillo’s Pickles, says the trend is only growing. “We keep saying, okay, this is the last year of the craze, and every year it seems to get bigger.” Pickle expert Karen Solomon, who wrote Pickles, Illustrated, suspects social media is one of the key reasons pickles are so popular right now. “Thank you, Instagram,” she says
She also points out that food manufacturers often follow trends looking for the flavor du jour. “Remember for a while, all chips were blue,” she says, “and when Takis came out everything started to be super ultrahot, fiery, and spicy, so yes, I do think the [pickle flavor] is a bandwagon thing.”
It might be the bandwagon effect, but the boom is also spurring new and innovative ways to consume pickles—cocktails among them.
“Pickle juice already has the salinity, vinegar-forward acidity, and garlic character built in, so it cuts sweetness and adds a savory depth,” explains Ly Costales, assistant director of food and beverage at Hotel del Coronado in San Diego, of pickle’s power for drinks. Just as olive brine balances a great dirty martini, so too does pickle juice. Costales started selling a pickle margarita over a year ago at the bar, and it’s been one of the bar’s top sellers since it launched.
Trick Dog in San Francisco recently debuted a dirty Manhattan with pickle juice—the cocktail combines rye whiskey, brine from house-made bread-and-butter pickles, and a tamarind-infused vermouth. “Once we started using vinegar and vinegar-based ingredients [at the bar], it unlocked a whole new section of ingredients,” he says.
But even the pickle boom has its limits. Recently, a viral reel claimed frozen pickles belong in Sauvignon Blanc. There’s no explanation for how it tastes, just a cheery chef’s kiss at the end. Same for this creator and this one, where the message seems to be that this is a drink you should try ASAP, without any context or tasting notes.
The proverbial bandwagon at its finest.
These creators are smart. They’re riding the wave of pickle’s popularity, perhaps assuming their audiences will be into pickles because they’re so hot, and throwing out a slightly unhinged combination, which is more likely to get views.
