Okay, so remember when an upside-down pineapple in your grocery cart was basically a dating profile?
Back in 2024, the pineapple dating trend took over TikTok seemingly overnight, and for a hot minute, a routine trip to the supermarket turned into a whole flirting strategy.
If you missed it the first time around (lucky you, honestly), or if you’ve just been wondering whatever happened to it, let’s dive in.
How It All Started
Blame this one on a single TikTok.
Creator and comedian Vivy Lin joked that the best time to flirt at Mercadona, a popular Spanish supermarket chain, was between 7 and 8pm.
That’s it. That’s the whole spark.
And yet, here we are, still talking about it, because the internet has never met a specific place, a specific hour, and a viral moment it didn’t want to run with.
@_anagildersleeve Pineapples are chaning the dating game in Spain🍍❤️ 🇪🇸 Gotta love Spaniards and their way to flirt lol #spanishpeople #spain #dating #datingadvice #flirting #flirt #datingapps #learnontiktok #mercadona #pineapple #fypツ ♬ original sound – Ana Gildersleeve
But this “flirting hour” idea wasn’t even new.
It goes all the way back to 2017, when a contestant on a Spanish reality show mentioned shopping at Mercadona during that exact window specifically to meet people.
It even had its own nickname at the time, the “Mercadona trick.” So really, TikTok just exhumed a seven-year-old dating hack, dusted it off, and gave it a full main character arc.
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Enter the Pineapple
Once the “flirting hour” concept caught fire again, someone (we may never know who, and honestly, we don’t deserve to) added the pineapple twist: place one upside down in your cart, and congratulations, you’re now broadcasting that you’re single and open to being approached.
No app. No bio. No agonizing over the perfect opener. Just a piece of tropical fruit, doing the emotional labor for you.
Naturally, the visual was too good not to spread.
TikTok filled up with videos of people wandering the produce aisle with a suspiciously placed pineapple, some genuinely trying it, most just filming the chaos for the rest of us.
Mercadona itself confirmed the trend was happening organically in stores, though the company was quick to clarify it hadn’t planned or promoted any of it.
(Understandable. Imagine the meeting where someone has to explain this to corporate.)
At least one location reportedly had an employee quietly wheeling away an entire cart of pineapples during peak hours, presumably before things got a little too “collide carts with a stranger” for the produce section to handle.
Wait, Pineapples Already Meant Something?
Here’s where the trend gets a little spicier, shall we say.
Turns out the upside-down pineapple wasn’t exactly a blank slate to begin with.
In certain circles, it’s long been recognized as a subtle signal associated with the swinging community and ethical non-monogamy, showing up on everything from cruise ship doors to home decor as a quiet way of signaling openness to that kind of arrangement.
So when a whole generation adopted the pineapple as a cute, low-stakes flirting symbol, they were unknowingly borrowing a fruit with an entirely separate history and, frankly, an entirely separate audience.
Most people tossing a pineapple in their cart at Mercadona almost certainly had no idea. Which, in hindsight, makes the whole thing even funnier.
So, Is It Still a Thing?
Short answer: not really, at least not the way it was in late 2024. The trend had its moment (viral headlines, local news segments, the whole cycle), and then it did what basically every TikTok trend eventually does.
It faded as something new came along to replace it.
And something new absolutely did. Scroll through what’s actually trending in dating conversations these days, and you’ll find terms like “clear-coding” and “love-loreing” instead.
Which tells you something: the culture has mostly moved on from cute supermarket gimmicks toward bigger conversations about honesty and being upfront about what you actually want.
Growth, I guess?
The pineapple trend didn’t disappear because it flopped. It disappeared because that’s just how these things go.
It had its moment, gave everyone a solid laugh, and made grocery shopping briefly feel like a rom-com meet-cute. Not every trend needs a sequel to have been worth it the first time.
The Legacy Lives On (Sort Of)
Nobody’s actively pineapple-shopping for love anymore, but the trend still pops up as a cultural reference point every so often.
It’s the kind of thing that resurfaces in “remember when” conversations, gets a nod in dating trend roundups looking back at recent internet history, or randomly crosses your mind while you’re standing in the produce aisle for entirely unrelated reasons.
So next time you spot a pineapple at the grocery store, you’ll know exactly what it almost meant. And maybe feel a little nostalgic for the two months when TikTok convinced everyone that fruit could fix their love life.