National Food Holidays are crazily taking over everyone’s calendars. If you search for just about any food, there is probably a holiday for that!
Every media outlet talks about these days and everyone is sharing them on social media. There is a food holiday on every day of the year and what we wanted to know is how these days got started.
Most people think it started with the internet, but celebrating daily food holidays started long before. Big brands and businesses used the calendar dates to set them apart and market a day of the year devoted to their food or brand. Some days simply started off as an event that became an annual event and just caught on while others originated from a historic happening. An example is 7-11, a convenience food store started offering free slushies on July 11, and thus, 7/11 became free slushie day.
It wasn’t until the early 2000’s when sites like HolidaySmart.com started creating and posting about these fun foodie days, and by 2010, there were lots of Holiday sites following their lead. Sites like Foodimentary and National Day Calendar started seeing the potential in social marketing with holidays and created a buzz that made these days popular for marketing and media.
Patti Jewel, who founded HolidaySmart.com simply wanted to create a fun way for people to celebrate. When she started in 1999, there was a day called “Talk Like a Pirate Day”, and she figured, why not create some more fun days?
As founder of CheesecakeDays.com and ChocolateCakeDay.com, she has created over 100 daily holidays, some of which are international food holidays celebrated around the world. Foodimentary and National Day Calendar have also been creating new daily holidays over the past 10 years and the calendar is starting to overflow.
Patti Jewel told us that when she first posted days like Chocolate Cake Day and Cheesecake Day, it was easy for them to catch on because there were not alot of food holidays and these were two delicious desserts that people were excited to have a day to eat!
Today there are 100’s of Holiday websites adding new holidays everyday and many think it is out of control! Jewel told us that there are now over 3000 daily fun and awareness holidays on her site and the number just keeps growing. And with so many websites adding new days, there are some foods and celebrations that end up on the calendar more than once and it gets confusing.
Jewel told us that it is not about the quantity or the exact date, but the idea of the celebration. Her website focuses on uniting people through holidays. “Chocolate Cake Day just brings people together in a shared passion.”