TikTok Proves Potent Marketing Channel For Some Restaurants

Ever heard of Charli D’Amelio? 

If you’re not on TikTok—the fast-growing, video-based social media platform—chances are you haven’t. At least not prior to Sept. 2, when Dunkin’ launched a collaboration with the 16-year-old TikTok megastar—and immediately broke its record for daily active app users. 

“On launch day, we saw a 57% increase in Dunkin’ app downloads in comparison to our previous 90-day average,” said Drayton Martin, vice president, brand stewardship, for the Canton, Mass.-based coffee chain, in an email.

D’Amelio, a dancer and New England native, has more than 90 million TikTok followers, making her the most-followed account on the platform. The centerpiece of her partnership with Dunkin’ is a new drink called The Charli: cold brew with whole milk and three pumps of caramel swirl—D’Amelio’s go-to order and a fixture in many of her videos. Dunkin’ sold “hundreds of thousands” of them in the first five days; cold brew sales rose 20% on the first day and 45% the next, Martin said. 

The eye-popping results highlight the potential marketing power of TikTok, now one of the most downloaded mobile apps in the world. It has about 800 million monthly active users worldwide, an 800% increase since Jan. 2018, according to the company. And a significant portion of those users are teenagers: As of June, nearly a third were between the ages of 10 and 19, according to Statista.

The app is young, having been introduced in the U.S. in 2018, and still relatively small compared to other social media giants such as Facebook, with 2.7 billion monthly active users. It has also faced concerns over privacy and national security in the U.S. Most recently, President Trump threatened to ban TikTok unless Chinese parent company ByteDance divested from its U.S. operations. (That doesn’t seem to have stopped people from using it, though.)

All that could be part of the reason restaurants have yet to take to it in earnest. Chipotle Mexican Grill was the first major restaurant brand to launch a TikTok account, in May 2019. Dunkin’ joined last October, and Wendy’s, Taco Bell and Little Caesars also have accounts.