As Potential TikTok Ban Looms, What Will Happen to the Platform’s Food Creators?

Whether you cherish your morning TikTok scroll or the mere mention of the video platform sends you shrieking into a sensory-deprivation pod, there is no denying that the app has fundamentally transformed culinary culture in the United States.

The app has saved restaurants from closing, helped strangers form tight-knit communities and occasionally made Americans feel a little less alone. And for recipe developers, chicken-tender reviewers and everyone in between, TikTok has presented the opportunity to build a substantial livelihood somewhat casually using the app’s creator fund, which pays users directly based on video views, as well as through sponsorships with brands. If the new American dream is to go viral, then clicking “post” on TikTok is the modern equivalent of punching in at 9 a.m.

Last year, President Biden signed a bill into law that could lead to a ban of the app in the United States on Jan. 19. Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments from both sides of the debate. As a potential ban looms, we spoke to 11 influential TikTok food content creators about what is at stake. Their responses have been edited for length and clarity.

Ed Kim: When we started TikTok, mom really had no retirement in sight — she was going to work 40 hours a week at a casino until her body physically couldn’t do her job anymore. I have hundreds of thousands in student loan debt. So when TikTok came up and we started to see we can make a decent amount of money to pay the rent, that’s when it clicked: This is real.

There have been really cool opportunities not only money wise, but opening her eyes to different food and cultures, and then we get to spend a lot of time together, too. The thing mom says is that it’s like her second life. She never really expanded outside of McDonald’s breakfast, or things like that. It’s a whole new world — trying Indian food for the first time.

Jane Kim: When I heard of the ban, I feel so sorry and sad and down, because I learned a lot of things through TikTok.

Favorite TikTok food trend: Wrapping ice cream with a fruit roll-up

Least favorite TikTok food trend: Taste-testing Jeppson’s Malört

Ivan McCombs, 35, Los Angeles

@rkihd, 11.2 million followers

It just really sucks that, as Americans, we finally got something that could pay the bills. So many people couldn’t pay the bills, and a lot of people hated their 9-to-5s. TikTok came along, and they got encouraged to just post something, and they did and they found their group of people. With the money they were making on TikTok, they were able to quit their 9-to-5s, which were making them miserable and not mentally well, and do something they loved.

That’s what sucks most about the bans — it’s not about people losing tons of money, it’s that it gave people a place to belong. I built a huge community of like-minded individuals, and before I didn’t know they existed.

Favorite TikTok food trend: Ramen lasagna

Least favorite TikTok food trend: Feta pasta

Soy Nguyen, 33, Los Angeles

@foodwithsoy, 1 million followers

TikTok has always been where the people are — where actual, everyday people are. I’m an everyday person. TikTok is one of the biggest search engines in the world. You’re going to search on TikTok before Google these days. It changed how people view food, more than just hearing from critics and Michelin guides.

There’s this African dish called fufu. I really liked when everyone was going out to try it, because I also learned how to make it, I learned the history of it. When I was growing up, I watched a lot of Food Network and I learned about the history of stuff, but I never learned about African food. If I had TikTok growing up, this would have continued to open my mind on what food can be.

Favorite TikTok food trend: Everyone trying fufu

Least favorite TikTok food trend: Nature’s cereal

Audrey Jongens, 26, and Meg Radice, 26, New York City

@theviplist, 458,000 followers

Ms. Jongens: TikTok made the restaurant review much more approachable to younger generations — our generation isn’t really going to the newspaper to read a review. So to see someone your age telling you if they like the overall experience of a restaurant is much more relatable.

Ms. Radice: And you have receipts. Say we roasted a place, and the place is like, “They’re lying, it wasn’t that bad.” We have the videos.

Ms. Jongens: Everyone is so focused on how the creators are going to move forward if the app is banned, but what needs to be recognized is a lot of restaurants have gotten their start on TikTok. It has helped them create a platform to get people in the door as soon as they open. And that’s something that’s going to be lost. I wonder if without TikTok, newer restaurants will see a decrease in sales.

Ms. Jongens: Where am I going to get my news?

Favorite TikTok food trend: Cucumbers, the tables full of nachos and caviar

Least favorite TikTok food trend: Feta pasta

Justine Doiron, 30, Brooklyn, N.Y.

@justine_snacks, 2.3 million followers

I was built on TikTok, so I know the power the app has, but personally I’m not as concerned about a ban because everyone is interpreting it differently, and my platform is diversified. What I am concerned about is the small business owners who have built their livelihood on either the creator fund for the app, or on using the app to sell the product that they’re selling.

Conversion rates on TikTok are just so much higher. I “sell” a recipe on my blog — so every video I post is pitching a person to go to my blog to make a recipe, which they don’t pay for, but which inadvertently makes me revenue. For small business owners who are selling a product, they experience that same conversion rate.

Favorite TikTok food trend: Butter boards

Least favorite TikTok food trend: People making ridiculously over-the-top, disgusting recipes for the sake of catering to a sexual kink

Tuệ Nguyễn, 26, Los Angeles

@twaydabae, 689,100 followers

TikTok has given me so many opportunities I wouldn’t have thought in a million years would happen to me. It was how I was able to get my restaurant, and my cookbook deal. My platform grew basically overnight. And growing on TikTok wasn’t necessarily easy, but the platform and algorithm made it easier to be seen and have my content come to the right pages.

Everyone’s For You page is so curated to them. That algorithm helped with bringing my content to people who actually wanted to watch. Other platforms, you’re basically begging people to come watch.

Favorite TikTok food trend: Spicy vodka sauce, a.k.a. Gigi Hadid pasta

Least favorite TikTok food trend: When people take foods that have been around forever and change the names, like when people called agua fresca “spa water”

A few years ago, as a college student with a blog, Mr. Scheck spoke with a prominent cookbook author about his own aspirations to publish a book.

They said, it’s a cute idea, but it’s not realistic to get a book deal. You’re a random 18-year-old kid. The blog was a fun thing for me to track my progress, but there was really no way to reach new people — it was me and my grandma and her friends reading it.

But once Covid hit, I blew up sort of overnight. I started making cooking videos in my dorm kitchen, and then I was at my parents’ house and I made like five cooking videos a day, and I gained two million followers in a matter of months. TikTok was designed in a way that predisposed you to discovering new people.

His cookbook was published in 2023. If the ban is upheld, Mr. Scheck, who moved to Madrid from Brooklyn last year, plans to experiment with Spanish-language videos.

Favorite TikTok food trend: Americans learning about British Chinese takeaway

Least favorite TikTok food trend: Turning everything into a dirty martini

Ms. Molinaro, who left her day job as a lawyer to pursue recipe development, spread her work across platforms early on with a blog, a podcast and a newsletter.

All of a sudden I was reaching into millions and millions of people’s homes during Covid. It’s not that the path is disappearing, but it’s that the path behind me is disappearing. A great piece of advice I got from this guy who blew up on Tumblr years ago was, “Social media is like building real estate on sand.”

You cannot do that. You never know, with laws and regulations and algorithms, whether your business will thrive or fall apart the next day. It’s so important to have something else. Your email list is yours. Nobody can eff with your email list.

Favorite TikTok food trend: Pesto eggs, Gigi Hadid pasta

Least favorite TikTok food trend: “I enjoyed all the food trends! Of course, it’s always upsetting when I see non-Asian people making fun of Asian food, but I don’t think that’s really a trend.”

Nasim Lahbichi, 26, Brooklyn, N.Y.

@lahbco, 574,900 followers

In terms of working with brands, which is my main source of income, they will often want to work you on Instagram versus TikTok, because of that spontaneity of the algorithm. The brands want to make sure they’re reaching your community, not some random person who doesn’t care what you’re saying.

But I worked with a peanut butter brand that I loved growing up, and I was like, I’m not going to post this to Instagram because it feels like such a silly ad, but I’ll do it for TikTok because it can hit random people. It’s kind of like when you feel nervous to perform in front of your friends and family because they know you and they might judge you more, versus a random person, and you’re like, I could never care if I ever saw them again.

Favorite TikTok food trend: Girl dinner

Least favorite TikTok food trend: Feta pasta

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