Cucumbers, cottage cheese, and probiotic soda: TikTok’s impact on grocery store shelves

With $100 million banked just on Black Friday, TikTok has proven its ecommerce hub TikTok Shop can sell, sell, sell. But the sales TikTok drives extend beyond its own digital shelves.

We’ve written before about how TikTok food hacks have become popular in the fast food world—enough that some restaurants have officially partnered with influencers to introduce new menu items based on their viral eats. (And enough that TikTok launched its own dining concept where people could get creators’ inventions delivered.) But in 2024, TikTok’s food trends measurably pushed consumers toward specific foods in grocery stores, too.

According to data from grocery delivery service Gopuff (reported by Fast Company), creators like Logan Moffitt and Addison Rae and trends like the “sleepy girl mocktail” and the “hear me out cake” boosted searches and sales for items like cucumbers, cottage cheese, and Diet Pepsi.

@logagmThe original best way to eat entire cucumber♬ original sound – Logan

• The “hear me out cake” trend (where people confess fictional characters they’d do the do with) went viral in October. That month, Gopuff saw cake mix sales jump 24%.
• Cottage cheese is having a moment with culinary creators, and it’s reflected in grocery sales: Since January, Gopuff has seen a 166% increase in orders for the ingredient, which foodfluencers often use in high-protein recipes.
• Rae’s song “Diet Pepsi” released in August, and since then, there’s been a 10% increase in orders for the soda on Gopuff. It’s possible this is more correlation than causation, but “Diet Pepsi” was named one of TikTok’s top songs of the year, so lots of viewers were hearing it in the background of videos.
• Josh Cellars, a cheap-ish wine brand that went viral in 2023 for its memeable name, saw that momentum carry over into 2024, as sales in January were up 35% year-over-year from January 2023.
• Moffitt (embedded above) has been making Korean food content on TikTok and Instagram for a couple years now, but blew up this summer with his “sometimes I want to eat a whole cucumber” recipes. Gopuff attributes the rise in searches for cucumbers on its platform since August to Moffitt’s cuke enjoyment.
• And last up, searches for cherry juice, probiotic soda Olipop, and magnesium supplements were up 111% year-over-year this past January thanks to the “sleepy girl mocktail” recipe, which includes all three ingredients.

Gopuff says that while TikTok has sale-driving power, not all trends are checkout counter winners. Its SVP of Business, Daniel Folkman, told Fast Company that (perhaps unsurprisingly) foods which are visually appealing and not too off the beaten path lead to “huge sales.”

But foods that don’t look great on a plate and/or are a bit more out there can struggle to catch on with consumers. Gopuff found that the “dirty soda” (a mix of Dr Pepper and coffee creamer) and the cheese-and-pickles trends didn’t jumpstart sales significantly. And in the wake of Dua Lipa sharing her “Spicy Coke” recipe, with jalapeños, pickles, and Diet Coke, both orders and searches for all the ingredients actually went down on Gopuff’s platform.

Now, again, that could be correlation instead of causation. But one thing is clear from this report: like fast food chains and booksellers before it, Gopuff is paying attention to TikTok and the commercial power it holds.

As Folkman said, “It’s important to have a great social media team that is tuned into what is going on, because what happens online can directly impact your bottom line.”