We Didn't Give Up the Little Treat. We Learned How to Manufacture It.

The little treat survived. We just moved production into the kitchen.

That may be one of the more interesting consumer adaptations to the current squeeze on everyday spending. When a coffee, lunch, manicure, cocktail or other small indulgence starts feeling expensive, the obvious assumption is that people will simply buy less of it. Sometimes they do. But social media has introduced another option: keep the ritual, study the process and learn how to manufacture a recognizable version of the experience yourself.

Florida State University highlighted that shift this week through the work of Jonathan Jackson, an associate lecturer in the university's Dr. Persis E. Rockwood School of Marketing. As everyday costs have risen, FSU notes, TikTok DIY content has become an increasingly accessible alternative for consumers. One of the clearest examples is coffee.

Citing 2026 Mintel research, FSU reports that one-third of consumers say they are making more coffee at home in response to price increases. Among Gen Z, 49 percent say they learn about coffee and coffee-related topics from TikTok. Mintel has described the broader change as coffee's emerging "fourth wave": specialty drinks that were once defined largely by the cafe increasingly being recreated, customized and displayed at home.

That is more interesting than a simple story about saving money.

If consumers were merely retreating from an expensive habit, the behavior would look like subtraction. Skip the latte. Drink whatever is in the office pot. Accept that the fun version belongs to a more comfortable budget. But CoffeeTok and the larger DIY economy offer a different proposition: do not eliminate the experience. Reverse-engineer it.

Jackson points out that creators are persuasive during economic shifts because they provide social proof, credibility and relatability. A creator is not simply announcing that an at-home iced coffee costs less. The creator demonstrates how to make it, what glass to pour it into, what syrup to buy, what machine sits on the counter and what the finished drink should look like in the morning light. FSU quotes Jackson describing the tutorial as both instruction and inspiration: the viewer is being shown a lifestyle that can be imitated and personalized.

That distinction explains why the little luxury can survive even when the original purchase becomes harder to justify.

The consumer may stop buying a $7 drink five mornings a week without surrendering the identity attached to it. The cold foam can still happen. The clear glass can still happen. The flavored syrup, the nice straw, the espresso shot and the tiny moment of ceremony can all remain. What changes is who performs the labor.

This is the part of social media's influence that gets less attention than the endless conversation about what the platforms make people buy. TikTok is also an enormous informal vocational school for things consumers have decided they might rather make themselves.

The lesson can be thirty seconds long. Here is the ratio. Here is the tool. Here is where you bought it. Here is the shortcut. Here is what mine looks like when it is finished. Watch three more people do it and the process begins to feel less specialized. Watch thirty and the once-mysterious thing starts looking like a routine you simply have not learned yet.

That is a meaningful change in the relationship between consumer and service provider. For years, part of the value of many small purchases was that someone else knew how to produce them. The barista had the machine and the technique. The bartender knew the proportions. The salon had the tools. The restaurant understood the preparation. Expertise created distance between the experience people wanted and what they could reliably make at home.

Short-form video compresses that distance. It does not necessarily turn the viewer into a professional, and it certainly does not make every hack good advice. But it can make a process legible. Once the consumer can see every step, the purchase begins to separate into components: ingredients, equipment, technique, presentation and time. Then a different calculation becomes possible. Which parts am I actually paying for, and which of them could I reproduce?

That calculation becomes particularly attractive when prices rise but desire does not disappear.

Economic pressure is often described as if consumers have only two settings: buy or do not buy. Actual behavior is messier. People trade down. They buy less often. They switch brands. They reserve a purchase for weekends. They invest once in equipment to avoid paying repeatedly for labor. They preserve the ritual while changing the supply chain.

TikTok gives that last strategy a cultural infrastructure. It supplies teachers who feel more like peers than instructors, an endless library of demonstrations, proof that other ordinary people can do the thing, and an aesthetic that keeps the homemade version from feeling like a consolation prize. The point is not merely, "Here is how to save money." It is, "Here is how to make the cheaper version still feel like the thing you wanted."

That is why decorative glassware and espresso machines matter to the FSU example. From a strictly economic standpoint, the cheapest possible coffee solution would not require a curated home coffee station. But consumption has never been strictly economic. The ritual, presentation and identity around the purchase are part of what people were buying in the first place.

So the DIY version often develops its own shopping ecosystem. Spend less at the cafe, perhaps, but buy the frother. Buy the beans. Buy the syrup. Buy the glass. Buy the small appliance that promises better foam. Brands do not necessarily lose when consumers become more self-sufficient; the money can migrate from the finished experience to the tools and ingredients required to perform it at home.

Jackson notes that this creates an opening for beverage and home-goods brands, particularly when products appear naturally inside creators' routines rather than as obvious insertions. Smaller creators can be especially useful because repeated appearances across different routines and communities can make a product feel less like an advertisement and more like part of the emerging method.

Which means the same platform teaching consumers to stop paying someone else for the finished product can simultaneously teach them what to buy in order to make it themselves.

That is wonderfully circular.

The cafe loses a transaction. The appliance company gains one. The syrup brand gains another. The creator gets engagement. The consumer gets a little project, a little savings and perhaps the satisfaction of becoming competent at something that used to arrive across a counter.

Maybe the new status symbol is not always being able to buy the expensive thing whenever you want it. Sometimes it is knowing how to reproduce the thing convincingly enough that you no longer need to.

There is something very current about that. We are living through a period when consumers can feel financially constrained and aesthetically ambitious at the same time. Social media is unusually good at serving both impulses. It can make people want an experience and then, almost immediately, teach them how to build a version of it within reach.

So perhaps we did not give up the little treat after all. We watched the tutorial, ordered the supplies, cleared a corner of the counter and learned how to manufacture it.

SOURCE NOTES

• Florida State University News - 'FSU marketing expert explains how viral TikTok trends are shifting consumer habits,' Sept. 17, 2026
• Mintel - 'Coffee's Fourth Wave: What It Means for Retail & Foodservice Coffee Brands,' updated March 2, 2026