June 4, 2019
– Ryan Leutz
We have seen rappers with fast cars, expensive jewelry, and exotic animals, but it seems that novelty sodas and snacks have become the latest weird flex in the hip hop community. Rappers like DaBaby, Young Thug, Lil Wayne, Drake, and Travis Scott have been toting excessive amounts of novelty sodas and snacks, often spending tens of thousands of dollars doing so. Lil Pump reportedly paid $10,000 on his own soda machine, stocked with rare exotic flavors of sodas like Fanta, Faygo and Sprite.
With so many rappers cashing out on snacks and soda, some were bound to cash in. Lil Durk, for instance, is the first rapper to have his own cereal, Durkios, in partnership with SoFlo Snacks. Durk and SoFlo worked together closely on the product, designing and crafting his delicious vanilla O’s cereal and collectible packaging from scratch before his unfortunate incarceration last week.
“We had no expectations, we kinda just went for it,” says Kia Amini, owner and co-founder of SoFlo Snacks. SoFlo released pre-orders for Durkios at 3pm on April 12th and by midnight, according to SoFlo, they had logged $30,000 in sales.
“3pm goes by, and I’m getting out of the shower, and I just hear my phone going crazy. I’m just scrolling and scrolling through pages and pages of orders and all of a sudden, my phone crashes. Literally, for four days I had to turn off my notification for Shopify… it was nonstop. We are really grateful.”
Upon the immediate release of Durkios, SoFlo recorded $10,000 in sales in 30 minutes, before their website crashed from the influx of new customers. “We have some more crazy collabs coming, but I can’t say much because of NDAs we signed,” he said.
SoFlo has many other unique products in addition to Durkios, like Mango Fanta, Coke Peach and Frosted Flakes Banana Creme. “I pay a lot of attention to social media nowadays,” Kia said when asked about SoFlo’s soda and cereal selection process.
“I keep my eye out on Instagram. I contact a lot of people from Kelloggs and other brands just to see what’s in the works and what they have on the way. Like I said before, I only sell things I would buy myself.. I live by this sh*t, cereal is my life *laughs*. If I see something and I’m like, ‘oh shit that’s fire, I’d put that in my room,’ then I start selling it.”
With so many different cereals on the SoFlo website, I had to ask Kia what his favorite cereal of all time is. “Maybe Cinnamon Toast Kith, it’s one of my inspirations as far as cereal in general. It’s a mixture of regular Cinnamon Toast, Chocolate Cinnamon Toast, and Churro Cinnamon Toast, it’s just the grail. But, I’d say Durkios. Durkios is currently the holy grail of snacks and cereals that you can have in your house.”
Lil Durk is currently being held in Fulton County Jail, without bond, on multiple felony charges, including criminal intent to commit murder and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Durk has maintained his innocence, as stated in a recent interview with WSB-TV.
https://www.instagram.com/p/ByD5uwEnRjG/
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Follow Kia Amini on Instagram
Follow SoFlo Snacks on Instagram and browse their novelty sodas and snacks on their website.
Ryan Leutz 