How food brands can win on TikTok

“With every brand jumping on the celebrity meal trend, we wanted to ensure we were differentiating ourselves from the category,” said Sean Donnelly, senior social strategist at Anomaly who helped Denny’s execute the campaign. “Instead of picking a big-name celebrity and repackaging existing menu items, we enlisted our creators to make their own menu item with the help of our culinary experts. As a result, we’ve been able to engage with niche communities in a deeper, more impactful way.”

One of the creators engaged by Denny’s, Kelz Wright (@kelz), is establishing himself as a food entrepreneur after building 5.8 million TikTok followers through food reaction videos and other kitchen content. He launched a line of hot sauces called Flava’s through Cura, a platform for social influencers to launch food brands.

Virality is always a possibility 

“There’s no denying that viral moments on TikTok have a direct effect on packaged food brand sales,” said Peter Kennedy, founder of the social influencer platform Tagger Media. When the baked feta pasta trend went viral on TikTok, Kennedy noted, Instacart released data that showed sales of feta cheese were up by 106%.

According to Weidner, TikTok’s relatively smaller user base vs. other social platforms can enable posts to go viral without paid media. “I remember 10 years ago, clients being like, ‘I wanna go viral on YouTube’ and we were like, ‘Well, that’s not a thing–we have to put paid media…