TikTok food trends are fleeting, but in 2024 they had real sales impact

These days, scrolling through TikTok can make you hungry. Between dance videos and stand-up comedy, you’re likely to get content related to a new, bizarre food trend.

In 2024, some of the greatest hits were: The sleepy girl mocktail, a drink infused with magnesium designed to help you sleep soundly; cottage cheese on everything from toast to cookie dough; and cucumber salad thanks to cucumber-obsessive content creator Logan Moffitt.

For many retailers, the big question is whether these trends actually spur consumers to eat these foods. A new report from Gopuff, an on-demand delivery service that offers groceries, suggests that TikTok does, in fact, influence what we eat. As the company crunched the numbers from 2024, it found that some food trends did influence sales. But others did not.

Gopuff’s social media team is constantly on the lookout for trends, partly to create their own content around them. But they also want Gopuff to have enough inventory of items going viral. “Unlike some other platforms, we carry inventory,” says Daniel Folkman, SVP of business at Gopuff. “And we can stock our warehouses quickly.”

Sufficient inventory is important, because if the platform has the goods in stock, it’s then uniquely suited to react to social media trends, according to Folkman. “We can get deliveries to customers in half an hour, so someone can see something that looks interesting on TikTok and have it at their door within minutes,” he says.

This model brings a whole new level of instant gratification to impulse purchases, and allows platforms like Gopuff to nearly instantly flip an algorithm-induced trending topic into a sales conversion.

Over the past year, Gopuff saw some products spike right after they started bubbling up on TikTok. And Folkman says that in some cases, sales were elevated for months after the trend went viral, before eventually petering out.

• Sleepy Girl Mocktail: The mocktail consists of cherry juice, the probiotic soda called Poppi, and magnesium. In January of 2024, searches of these ingredients were 111% higher than the previous year.
• Josh Wine: This wine brand went viral because of its name at the start of last year. It became the best-selling wine last January with a 35% year-over-year sales increase.
• Cottage Cheese: TikTok was flooded with recipes with this ingredient because of its high protein content. Across the whole year it saw a 166% increase in Gopuff orders.
• Cucumber Salad: Over the summer, Logan Moffitt created recipes teaching people how to use the whole cucumber. Searches for “cucumber” have been elevated since August.
• Diet Pepsi: Addison Rae released a song called Diet Pepsi, which was frequently used on TikTok. This appeared to have a subliminal effect on users. Gopuff saw a 10% increase in Diet Pepsi orders since the song came out.
• Hear Me Out Cake: In the fall, there was a delightful trend of people placing cutouts of fictional characters on cakes, then sharing their deepest secrets with them. In October, orders for cake mix increased by 24% compared to previous months.

But these were just a few of the many food trends that went viral this year. There were other trends that bubbled on social media that did not lead to large spikes. It’s hard to say exactly why, but Folkman has some theories. “Foods that looked visually appealing led to huge sales,” he says. “On the other hand, people didn’t rush out and get foods that were a little less attractive.”

For instance, there was a trend around “dirty soda,” which is Dr Pepper combined with coffee creamer, as well as “cheese and pickles.” In both of these cases, there was just a moderate increase of under 10% in sales, compared to the previous year. Dua Lipa posted about how she liked Spicy Coke, which is a combination of jalapeño, pickle, and Diet Coke. In the aftermath of this, orders and searches for these ingredients actually went down compared to the previous years’ average.

So what does 2025 have in store for us? It’s hard to say, Folkman points out. But food trends are likely to continue to go viral on social media and continue to influence grocery purchasing decisions. The key for companies like GoPuff and other grocery retailers is to remain nimble and prepared for possible viral moments. “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,” he says.