How many special events have you been to where a photo booth was present? It’s a great way to take home a memento from the night, do something fun at the party, and break the ice with new people. They are a staple at events and really tie into our culture’s fascination with photography. Since the development of the smartphone we have seen the general population take more photos than ever before, 1.7 trillion this year in fact, and sales of smartphones are at their highest. Everyone loves a good selfie, especially millennials. This socially-networked generation is expected to take over 25,000 selfies in their lifetime.
Photos also branch directly into the use of social media and the language of millennials, 70% of Facebook posts are now based around an image. One category which has been photographed like never before is food; the hashtag “#food” on Instagram boasts 245 million posts and counting.
This see-and-be-seen era created the perfect environment for NYC based food and tech startup Selffee: the edible photo booth, which fuses selfies, photo booths and food together. Snap, Print, Selffee.
Guests take a selfie with the company's app loaded on their phone, using FDA certified edible ink and their Selffee machine which prints the image directly on the food or beverage, without the use of any sugar paper. And voila, guests can enjoy their edible selfie treat. The company’s eye is set to replace photo booths with their edible version, creating a more immersive photo experience. Their proprietary technology allows printing onto different food and beverages live at events. The type of edible selfies they have range from cookies, iced lattes, cocktails, marshmallows, and more.
Selfies were considered narcissistic at first, now they’ve become mainstream and an everyday occurrence. Millennials spend about an hour a week taking selfies. Having your face on a cookie exemplifies this and eating your face may lean toward cookie cannibalism. However, you interpret it, selfies are in our dictionary, and millennial or not, everyone is participating globally. Do we have an addiction to vanity? Does consuming our narcissistic tendencies of a selfie satisfy the mind and the body? The edible photo booth is definitely a crowd favorite at every event they have landed at. Whether guests photograph their edible selfie before consuming it or do they decide to not even consume it, the most certain thing is that it’s going on social media.
The events industry is a massive business that generated $280 billion in spending last year in the United States. Event planners are constantly looking for tech-rich additions to make their programming stand out from the rest. Allowing event-goers to take away a cookie with the group photo they just took a few minutes before is a lot funnier than a photostrip, making Selffee a popular addition to any event, whether it be a corporate event or a wedding.
Selffee is headquartered in New York City, with an outpost in LA. They have done events across the nation and are set to expand into Texas, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Canada, and Australia in early 2018. They have created the category of edible selfies in the event world, and have been featured at Bizbash.
It’s a relatively new startup founded by Farshad Kanji and David Weiss who met at a silent meditation retreat in Northern Thailand. The duo come from different backgrounds, Dr.Kanji built a multi-disciplinary health center, and a menswear clothing label, Hors de Combat. While Mr.Weiss built a tomato farming business and was in fashion sales.
“Edible selfies are going to be a trend and not a fad, there are a lot of photo booths to replace,” says Kanji.