Avocado toast isn’t going away, and thanks to the Internet in 2017, it is increasingly becoming linked to…buying a house.
Strange, but that’s not stopping anyone from capitalizing on the food trend synonymous with hipster millennials.
SoFi, an online personal finance company geared toward younger moneymakers, is tapping into that fervor with a cheeky new promotion coming up. Announced on Thursday, people who buy a home with a SoFi mortgage next month will receive a month’s worth of avocado toast delivered to their doorsteps.
But it’s not just avocado toast taking over Instagram feeds and Pinterest boards that inspired this limited-time perk.
In May, Australian millionaire and property mogul Tim Gurner sparked clicky headlines worldwide when he hinted wild spending on avocados was why many members of the millennial generation couldn’t afford to buy their own homes.
“When I was trying to buy my first home, I wasn’t buying smashed avocado for $19 and four coffees at $4 each,” Gurner told Australian news program 60 Minutes at the time.
While that’s a simplistic viewpoint, it’s not entirely without merit. A Bank of America Merrill Edge study published shortly thereafter found most people between the ages of 18 and 34 are more likely to budget for travel, health and fitness, and dining (thus, where the avocados fall) over their financial futures.
Joanne Bradford, SoFi’s chief marketing officer, concurred that avocado toast isn’t the villain here.
“Pundits have unfairly besmirched avocado toast as the reason younger Americans aren’t buying homes,” Bradford said in a statement. “We know that’s wrong—it’s because the traditional mortgage product hasn’t evolved.”
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SoFi is apparently trying to satiate a wide swath of millennials, promising the option of regular or gluten-free bread—but recipients will still need to toast the bread themselves.
At least the new homeowners will have something to eat while paying off the mortgage that first month.
“In addition to offering a mortgage with 10% down and no borrower-paid private mortgage insurance required, we wanted to help people have their avocado toast and eat it too,” Bradford said.