Venmo and Aldi's Turkey Hand Emoji Lets You Donate Meals to the Needy
European supermarket chain Aldi continues to expand its discount grocery reach across America, but through a new partnership with Venmo, it's feeding America at an even bigger discount thanks to a brand new, custom-designed emoji.
The Turkey Hand Friendsgiving Emoji, inspired by the classic arts and crafts project you may remember drawing around your hand as a child, is the latest food-inspired emoji to following last month's massive food emoji rollout, but compared to your average hamburger, this one is for a very worthy cause. Because each time you share the Turkey Hand Friendsgiving emoji in a Venmo payment note during the month of November, Aldi will donate ten meals to the country's largest domestic hunger-relief organization, Feeding America.
The design is Venmo's first custom emoji to be created with a partner, and "symbolizes the spirit of giving," according to the companies. By creating the first-ever Friendsgiving emoji and teaming up with Aldi," says Venmo spokesperson Josh Criscoe, "Venmo is happy to help feed hungry families in America while celebrating the season with friends and family."
All you have to do is either select the Turkey Hand emoji icon from the emoji picker, or type "Friendsgiving" into autocomplete in a Venmo transaction, to get those meals donated, up to a million total. Plus, if you set your transactions to public, you can show all your Venmo friends just how many meals donations you yourself are behind.
This more altruistic food emoji news is a welcome change from more recent food emoji news trends, which have had a more controversial tilt. The topping order and bun style of various cheeseburger emojis have sparked a heated online battle, while Butterball has petitioned for a "Thanksgiving Turkey" emoji that would portray a cooked turkey, rather than the live turkey currently offered, but, so far, to no avail. Maybe they should have asked for a Friendsgiving turkey instead?
