Many consumers are familiar with ways to use fresh produce besides eating it.
Holiday shoppers buy pretty produce to line the center of their dinner tables for beautiful centerpieces. And we know how often people buy that big orange gourd for Halloween with no intention of savoring a scoop of flesh. And savvy kitchen cleaners use sliced lemons or orange peels to reduce rank odors in the garbage disposal.
But do your shoppers — let alone, you — know of the “shower onion?” No, it’s not a bathing-snack suggestion. (But no judgment if you like some grapes with your bubble bath. You do you.)
Shower onions are a housekeeping trick to reduce undesirable bathroom smells. Apparently, the biting vegetable absorbs odors. Some people keep a bowl of onions on the back of the toilet for maximum effect.
The home remedy got a big boost after Karalynn Dunton’s 2021 TikTok post shows her pretending to inspect the bathroom of a guy she met on Tinder. Among other impressive touches, her crush has shower onions: “omg you guys I think I’m in love,” she writes.
The post earned 1.6 million likes, 13,700 comments and an article on BuzzFeed. The hashtag #showeronions has become enough of a trend for Food Network to write about it. “That’s because onions act as a natural deodorizer, meaning they can basically absorb smells, unpleasant and otherwise,” Samantha Le er writes.
All this to say, think of your onion merchandising options in a new way. You could even, dare we say, place some onions in the toilet paper aisle with some clear signage — because with that bold move, you will have some explaining to do.
Hop on these social media trends with viral hashtags and videos on your signs. Cross-merchandise accordingly. Trends and long-term tricks such as shower onions can be used in advertising and your own store’s social media posts. We know onions are a staple, in a similar way that toilet paper is. More people are cooking the last couple years, and almost every home cook has some onions, a backbone of most flavor profiles.
This now-trendy trick is yet another layer of the onion that many of us had yet to appreciate. It almost brings tears to our eyes.
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