Swedish media outlets are reporting a strange food shortage: pink milk.
The strawberry-flavoured milk was released by Arla on April 7th and became a TikTok sensation shortly thereafter, with Swedish users of the platform rushing to film themselves trying rosa mjölk (pink milk).
The trend went viral so quickly that eager social media users rushing to their local supermarket were often left disappointed by a gap in the shelf: other people had got to the rosa mjölk first.
Swedish newspaper Expressen interviewed one 21-year-old Swedish TikTok user named Dima Badwi who explained her interest in the new milk by telling the paper that she suddenly began seeing videos of rosa mjölk all over her feed. "Then I felt I just had to try it," she said.
It's taken the company who makes the milk by surprise.
"It's only been on the shelves for a week, so we were surprised by the huge hype" Max Wallenberg, press contact for Arla Sweden told The Local. "It's not every day milk gets rock star treatment. We're really happy, of course, we believed in the product, but we weren't expecting this super demand. It sold out faster than we could say 'pink'."
Although the dairy cooperative has farmer owners in seven North European countries and sells its products in many countries, Wallenberg said the rosa mjölk is currently only in Sweden, where the company brought it out of retirement as a special summer product.
The pink (or strawberry) milk was also sold by Arla about a decade ago, Wallenberg said, but was discontinued – presumably, he said, because sales weren't high enough.
This time, the company is racing to meet the elevated demand.
"Our dairy in Linköping is working around the clock," Wallenberg told the Local. "We're doing all we can to level up fast."
In the meantime, consumers might get lucky this week at their local grocery store.
"Yesterday we had a quite a big batch going out to stores around Sweden," Wallenberg said, adding that both the grocery stores he usually goes to in Stockholm had the milk yesterday.
But if the milk is sold out near you – or simply hasn't yet reached the shelves, as is the case in my local supermarket in Umeå – and you're itching to try it, you'll have to live with your FOMO a bit longer.
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