TikTok to Launch 300 Delivery-Only Digital Restaurants Across U.S.
Bloomberg reported on December 17 that popular short video sharing platform TikTok will cooperate with Virtual Dining Concepts to launch TikTok Kitchen, to provide food delivery services in the United States from March 2022. TikTok recently reported that more than 1 billion people use the platform every month globally.
The to-be-launched TikTok Kitchen will select the most popular recipes from TikTok’s food videos, then deliver these ‘viral dishes’ to offline users through food producers and cooperation with food delivery platforms, thus opening up a new channel to generate profits for creators who provide cooking videos on TikTok.
The TikTok Kitchen service will be launched in cooperation with Virtual Dining Concepts and food delivery platform Grubhub. The service scope is limited to select parts of the U.S. and is expected to be launched in March 2022. This service is limited to online ordering and operates in the form of an online restaurant. It is estimated that there will be 300 delivery points at the initial stage, and the number will increase to 1,000 by the end of the year.
The recipes provided by the service will be selected from the most popular food videos on the platform. At present, the initial menu will include baked goat cheese pasta, smashed hamburgers, corn ribs and pasta chips. Among them, baked feta pasta gained incredible traction in 2021 – Google reported it was the most-searched dish of the year after it gained immense popularity on TikTok. The menu offered by TikTok Kitchen is to be updated quarterly.
However, TikTok said that the new service is mainly for fans to try the experience of ordering from online to offline, and that it will not maintain this business for a long time. TikTok did not elaborate as to precisely how long this service will last and how to order.
