TikTok helped foster a community of home chefs eager to experiment with new recipes. But demand for a trending ingredient sometimes led to out-of-stocks at retail.
It also equatted to opportunity for specialty food brands. Scott Zoeller, ex-buyer and founder of Many Minds Consulting, explained that the TikTok pasta and feta dish, “put so much pressure on the feta industry…when [product] came in it flew out,” compelling him to find other feta cheese brands with enough inventory to fulfill the customer demand.
To interact with the TikTok community, and get ahead of trends, companies like Instacart and Walmart took measures to facilitate the shopping experience through innovation. Instacart, for example, partnered with TikTok to allow select food creators to input “shoppable recipes” in their videos. A carrot-shaped button visible on the video can be used to add the required ingredients to the user’s Instacart cart. Because of Instacart’s user interface, customers are readily able to shop at local markets and quickly see if items are in stock.
In May, Top 10 Prepared Meal Delivery analyzed the top food trends on TikTok by video views and found that Cloud Bread was most popular with 3.2 billion views, followed by dalgona coffee with 2.8 billion, and pancake cereal with 1.6 billion. Nine out of the top 10 trends were vegetarian, and many had prominent vegan alternatives, signaling a larger interest in these lifestyles.
Over the summer, content creator Chef Pii captivated audiences with her “Pink Sauce,” a pink-colored sweet and savory condiment that hit production snags soon after launching. Dave’s Gourmet collaborated with the creator to bring the product to market.
As the fall and winter holidays commenced, so did parties and younger consumers, who had honed their cooking skills during the pandemic, were ready to entertain. The viral butter board trend, where people would pair specialty ingredients with butter spread out on a cheeseboard spread to retailers, restaurants, suppliers, and consumers.
Retailers have leveraged the popularity of the trend to promote not only their butters but many of the mix-ins that make the butter boards flavorful and visually appealing to Instagram and TikTok users.
“Clearly, the possibilities are endless, and as we approach the busy holiday season, we expect that butter boards, with their show-stopping potential, are going to be on the menus of many celebrations,” said Beaverton Farmers Market of Beaverton, Oregon.
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