From freeze-dried candy to fish: The opportunity for food brands on TikTok Shop

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Since TikTok Shop’s launch two years ago, brands large and small have worked to turn the platform’s 170 million U.S. users from scrollers into shoppers. Increasingly, that’s included more food brands, offering products ranging from limited-edition Doritos and trending Swedish candy to fresh halibut.

TikTok Shop continues to gain traction, with overall sales up 120% YoY, and the food category’s growth more than doubling, according to Amanda Parker, head of food at TikTok Shop. While beauty has led the way, food is the second biggest category on the platform, accounting for nearly 14% of sales, according to Capital One Shopping.

And it isn’t just a place to find smaller, digitally native brands. Big CPG players like Frito-Lay, OLLY, Cholula, and Keurig now sell on the platform, too—even grocer Lidl joined the platform in the UK this year—along with a slew of emerging brands, like Waterboy, Drizzilicious, and Hormbles Chormbles, gaining in popularity.

While the level of brand recognition may vary, the novelty of TikTok Shop for food presents a sort of level playing field for brands on the platform as they vie for the piece of the pie.

Leaving no crumbs: While the term “social commerce” has emerged to denote social platforms that’ve added e-commerce capabilities, Parker refers to TikTok Shop’s experience as “discovery commerce.” Often, the platform is driving first-time purchases, and in food, products like bundles or variety packs (as seen with brands like Poppi, whose 6-pack variety pack is its only direct TikTok Shop offering), tend to do well. Some brands, like viral Swedish candy maker BonBon, offer TikTok-exclusive products. For nonexclusive items, after that initial purchase, consumers might turn to TikTok Shop just to buy the one flavor they like from the pack, or to another platform to continue buying it. In that sense, TikTok Shop is “a feeder for an omnichannel business,” Parker said.

While it started rolling out a subscribe-and-save feature earlier this year to boost repeat purchases—used by brands like Hormbles Chormbles—Parker said “it’s squarely in that discovery of commerce zone that we definitely are excelling.”

TikTok Shop utilizes what they call an ACE framework (assortment, content, and empowerment) for partnerships, but this approach differs from brand to brand. Some, like native DTC brands, want to “accelerate” what they’re already doing well, and will work with cross-functional content teams to capitalize on trends and viral moments.

“We’ve seen some that have gone from zero to wild amounts of revenue on TikTok Shop really alone, and they’ll have a very different mechanism for partnership than, let’s say, a Mars or a big CPG player,” Parker said. DTC brand EZ Bombs (which makes bath-bomb-like seasoning “bombs” for recipes like birria) was a standout on TikTok Shop and found success through live shopping, Parker noted, and has since gained distribution at retailers like Walmart, Target, and Albertsons.

Those giant players, meanwhile, approach the platform more as an “offshoot” of a larger marketing push, and will work with TikTok’s ads team, she noted. While these big CPG brands will be making the bulk of its sales in retail stores, they’re still turning to the platform to test new flavors, identify trends, and attract new shoppers. Mars’s Skittles, for example, leaned into the freeze-dried candy trend last year with Skittles Pop’d, which it launched on TikTok Shop before it hit retail shelves.

For brands both large and small, the bulk of revenue is driven by affiliates, Parker said, which ultimately “democratizes” the opportunity for brands.

“At the end of the day, you can have all the budgets in the world or all the brand recognition off platform in the world, and the reality is that a small brand like EZ Bombs may have just as much success, if not more so, than a larger brand fully based on how they lean into all of the levers we have,” she said.

What’s next: Successful products on the platform have “combination of uniqueness”—flavor, appearance, exclusivity—and categories like puffed snacks, jerky, protein bars, and, of course, Dubai chocolate, have been recent standouts. But this year, TikTok Shop has been experimenting with offering fresh and frozen perishable products as well. This summer, it partnered with Pike Place Fish Market, a Seattle-based farmers market known for its fish-slinging to live-sell fish on its platform. The effort drew “quite a crowd,” she said.

TikTok Shop is still in the “early stages” of selling these types of products, which are currently only allowed on an invite-only basis on the platform, but as large players like Omaha Steaks have also recently joined the platform, Parker said these foods could present “interesting gifting opportunities” this holiday season.