TikTok takes on Deliveroo: Video app launches TikTok Kitchen food delivery service where users can order viral recipes including feta pasta, corn ribs and pasta chips
- TikTok Kitchen is bringing bizarre food dishes to US customers from March 2022
- Dishes on the menu are those that were created by users before they went viral
- It will be a virtual restaurant – one without physical buildings for people to dine
TikTok is taking on Deliveroo with a new food delivery service called TikTok Kitchen that has menu items based on viral videos.
Set to launch in the US in March 2022, TikTok Kitchen will let customers order dishes that were originally created by TikTok users in their short video posts.
These include baked feta pasta, corn ribs and ‘pasta chips’ – cooked pasta shapes coated in cheese and air-fried, perfect for dipping.
TikTok Kitchen will be a ‘virtual restaurant’ that serves customers exclusively by delivery and pick-up from orders placed online and over the phone.
The ‘viral’ menu items include baked feta pasta, corn ribs and ‘pasta chips’ (left) – cooked pasta shapes that are cheese coated and air-fried
TIKTOK KITCHEN
TikTok Kitchen is a new food delivery service for US customers in 2022.
It will let customers order dishes that were originally created by TikTok users in video posts.
These include baked feta pasta, corn ribs and ‘pasta chips’ – cooked pasta shapes coated in cheese and air-fried.
TikTok Kitchen is a virtual restaurant – it serves customers exclusively by delivery and pick-up from orders placed online and over the phone.
Other virtual restaurants include WingSquad, MrBeast Burger, Barstool Bites and Pauly D’s Italian Subs.
It’s unclear if TikTok Kitchen will be separate from (or feature as an option within) the standard TikTok app, which lets users make clips to share with their followers.
TikTok has teamed up with Virtual Dining Concepts, an Orlando, Florida based marketing firm, for the service.
‘The menu is inspired by the hottest food trends on TikTok,’ Virtual Dining Concepts says on its website. ‘The dishes celebrate food trends made famous by TikTok creators.’
TikTok is used by more than 1 billion people worldwide on a monthly basis and provides a space for a wide range of creators to post videos featuring recipes and food hacks.
These culinary trends have made the food space explode, Virtual Dining Concepts says.
TikTok and Virtual Dining Concepts will initially open around 300 US locations to cook up TikTok Kitchen menu items for delivery, British-born Virtual Dining Concepts founder Robert Earl told Bloomberg.
However, there are plans to expand this number to around 1,000 US locations by the end of 2022.
MailOnline has contacted TikTok for comment. The firm is yet to reveal plans to bring TikTok Kitchen to other countries, including the UK.
Thanks to TikTok, pesto eggs, mozzarella doughnuts and pasta chips are proving a hit with young Britons, who are turning to the social media app for cooking tips.
The video clips, as part of the social media trend viewed by millions, also include recipes such as whipped lemonade and feta pasta.
The trend to turn to TikTok for food ideas was identified by the Waitrose Food and Drink report earlier in 2021.
Read more: TikTok recipes are a hit with Brits who turn to social media for cooking tips
Other successful virtual restaurants – which have no bricks-and-mortar locations for letting customers dine in unlike industry giants such as McDonald’s – include WingSquad, Barstool Bites and MrBeast Burger.
Meals are prepared in commercial kitchens or shared kitchens before being delivered locally by services like Deliveroo and UberEats.
Menu items on TikTok Kitchen are likely to reflect the passing nature of trends on the social media app, which regularly come and go.
So if a dish becomes viral, it will likely be added to the TikTok Kitchen menu.
On TikTok, a multitude of bizarre and random videos gain traction when they’re viewed by more and more people, before becoming ‘viral’.
Any TikTok user can create a food trend – presented in a short step-by-step video recipe, for example – that takes off and becomes famous.
Despite this, names of the original dish creators will not be credited for their creations, according to Bloomberg.
‘It isn’t clear how TikTok will determine the authorship of certain viral dishes, which sometimes belong to more than one person, or what revenue it expects to generate and distribute, the site reports.
However, it does plan to devote profits from TikTok Kitchen to the creators of the menu dishes and ‘support promising culinary talents’.
TechCrunch received confirmation from TikTok that creators will be receiving credit for dishes on the menu and ‘will be featured prominently throughout the partnership’.
‘Proceeds from TikTok Kitchen sales will go to both support the creators who inspired the menu item and to encourage and assist other creators to express themselves on the platform in keeping with TikTok’s mission to inspire creativity and bring joy to its users,’ TikTok said.
TikTok also clarified TikTok Kitchen is more of a campaign to bring TikTok food to fans, rather than TikTok’s venture into the restaurant business – even though that’s precisely what it is.
WHAT IS TIK TOK?
TikTok is a Chinese social media app where users can live stream, create short videos and music videos and Gifs with a host of functions.
TikTok’s tagline is ‘Make every second count’.
It was the most downloaded app in the US in 2018 and the world’s fourth most downloaded app in 2018, ahead of Instagram and Snapchat.
TikTok is known in China as Douyin where it was launched in 2016 and then made more widely available around the world in 2017.
Douyin is still the version of the app used in China, available to download separately to TikTok.
The app was merged with popular music video lip-syncing app Musical.ly, also with headquarters in China.
Most children use the app to film themselves lip-syncing to chart hits.
It offers users a raft if colourful modification and editing tools including overlaying music, sound, animated stickers, filters and augmented reality (AR) for creating short videos.
The Beijing based social network has more than 500 million active users and the company is now worth more than $75 billion (£58 billion).
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