Food and color psychology. How can Food Trucks use it to their advantage?

Posted on 11/10/2021 by FTB

While many of us prefer to think we're immune to deception, our sense of taste is frequently misled by our sense of sight. That’s why the phrase ‘we eat with our eyes’ exists. Color plays a really important role in how we perceive and experience our food. How does this happen? And how can you as a Food Truck owner use this to your advantage?

EATING WITH YOUR EYES

The four main groups of flavor are sweet, salty, sour, and bitter, and your taste buds play a significant role in distinguishing them. Your taste buds send messages to your brain to evaluate flavor when they come into touch with food. However, when we gaze at our meal before eating, our eyes transmit messages to our brains long before our taste buds have an opportunity to respond. This can influence how we perceive the taste and flavor of the food we're about to consume. When it comes to the appearance of a food product, color is frequently the first thing that people notice. From birth, humans learn to identify specific colors with different types of meals, and they continue to associate these colors with specific tastes and flavors throughout their lives. For example, red is connected with sweetness, yellow and green with sourness, white with salt, and brown and black with bitterness. If the color of a food product does not meet our expectations, we may have a different perception of its taste and flavor — a psychological phenomenon that certain food firms utilize.
HOW TO INFLUENCE YOUR CUSTOMERS

Food and color psychology is fascinating and we can use it to our advantage. The most used color by restaurants and food chains is the color red, closely followed by yellow and orange. Red is associated with passion, while yellow and orange make people feel hungry. So if a person sees red combined with yellow or orange, they become passionately hungry. Mac Donalds is a great example. How do we also get extremely hungry and tempted to get a Big Mac when we see the enormous yellow “M”?

Green and earthy tones are typically associated with environmental friendliness, natural, organic, and healthy eating options. These colors are appealing to folks who are concerned about eating well. So if you have a hot dog and meat Food Truck, you might need to reconsider your green colors. Although black denotes elegance, it is unappealing. Dark brown is a good choice if you want to employ a dark color. However, using utterly unexpected food colors to attract attention and increase sales is also a common marketing strategy. An amazing example is Burger King's all-black Halloween burgers.
HOW ABOUT BLUE?

What color makes us lose our appetite? It’s blue! This is due to the scarcity of meals in that color. Our minds are put off by it because it is rarely a natural hue for food. It's even utilized as an appetite suppressor in weight-loss programs!

However, blue is very appealing for beverages. When you're thirsty on a hot day, which beverage, presuming they're both in a clear container with no ice, looks more thirst-quenching to you — a brown liquid or a blue liquid? Because pools are frequently painted blue, seeing a blue liquid on a hot summer day reminds you of swimming in a refreshing pool. Moreover, blue is an outstanding choice for an ice cream Food Truck.

So what color should you use for your Food Truck? It all depends on what message you want to send and what foods you sell!