Anna Harman, co-founder of the ear piercing studio Studs, was walking near her apartment in New York City in January when she noticed a long line of people waiting outside a store. It was below freezing, she said, but dozens of customers had shown up to buy hot cocoa from Glace, a café that opened the previous June.
The wintery drink, complete with a s’mores top, had gone viral on social media like TikTok and Instagram, and its popularity gave Harman and her team an idea. In March, Studs partnered with Glace to give away free lemon meringue hot chocolate (inspired by Studs’ signature yellow hue) outside of Studs’s Flatiron store in New York City. Lines similarly snaked around the block, and Studs published three Instagram posts about the partnership that racked up 500,000 views.
Studs’s work with Glace is emblematic of Studs’s food-centered partnership strategy: find a buzzy bakery, chef or food brand that’s become popular on social media, team up with them on a product or experience and hope to go viral, too.
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