Just about every night, while I’m watching TV or reading in bed, something on her phone will inevitably make my wife giggle. Or crack up, laughing. We share a similar sense of humor, so eventually I cave and ask, what’s so funny? Check your phone, she’ll respond. I’ll click on the notification and, even though I’ve told her many times that I don’t have that app, it will be a link to a TikTok video. Should I just download it, already?!

TikTok has grown to be more than just funny dance videos, of course. It’s a marketing machine. Despite the threat of being shut down in American, marketers can’t ignore 150M monthly active users. This is especially true for businesses in the food industry. A whopping 48% of people between the ages of 18-29 use the app for creating, watching, and sharing short viral videos (Quesenberry, 2025, pg. 186). For this demographic, cooking and recipe videos are among the most popular. Ever hear of TikTok Pasta?

On January 28, 2021, food blogger MacKenzie Smith, @grilledcheesesocial, posted a 30-second how-to video featuring an easy baked pasta dish using fresh cherry tomatoes, basil, and feta cheese. Smith quickly gained over 40,000 followers and, within 24 hours, her video had a million views (Taylor, 2021). The TikTok Pasta phenomenon was born, and grocery stores took note. In a Vogue article that March, “What Makes a Food Go Viral? Inside the Explosive Popularity of TikTok’s Feta Pasta,” author Elise Taylor points out that, after the video went viral, demand for feta cheese skyrocketed by 200% at Harris Teeter grocery stores (2021).

Restaurants, bakeries, cafés, delis, grocery stories, and any business involved with food would be doing their business a disservice by not joining TikTok. According to Hootsuite, short-form videos can drive brand awareness and bring products to life for the intended audience (Isreal, 2023). Who’s the audience? People like my wife — self-proclaimed “foodies” that do most of household shopping and cooking. TikTok can both educate and entertain this highly-engaged audience. 

Sure, TikTok is the ideal platform to showcase unique process and delicious products, but the platform also makes it extremely easy to advertise. TikTok One, their creative platform tool, provides an intuitive way to inspire marketers and find potential collaborators. Social media influencers love TikTok. In fact, 68% of social media influencers use Tik Tok, making it the third most popular app choice behind Instagram and Instagram stories (Quesenberry, 2025, pg. 141). In addition, advertisers can discover important engagement metrics without having to pay for services like SproutSocial, Rival IQ, or BuzzSumo. 

As a creative professional that works with several businesses in the food and retail sectors, it may seem odd that I don’t have TikTok. At the very least, I should be following trends! Still, every time my wife sends a new link, I ask to watch it on her phone. I can’t help it — the videos are irresistibly engaging. It would be easy to just download the app on my phone. I suppose the same could be said for so many food service professionals. Maybe they just need a better understanding of how TikTok can help their business. Perhaps the better question isn’t should we download TikTok, but when.

References

Israel, S. (2024, December 29). 7 types of social media and how each can benefit your business. Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard. https://blog.hootsuite.com/types-of-social-media/ 

Quesenberry, K. A. (2025). Social Media Strategy: Marketing, advertising, and public relations in the consumer revolution. Rowman & Littlefield. 

Taylor, E. (2021, March 1). What makes a food go viral? inside the explosive popularity of TikTok’s feta pasta. Vogue. https://www.vogue.com/article/what-makes-a-food-go-viral-inside-the-explosive-popularity-of-tiktoks-feta-pasta#:~:text=As%20of%20March%201%2C%20%23fetapasta,now%20also%20vegan%20feta%20pasta.