What happens when a restaurant’s most important marketing channel goes dark?
It’s a question Dave’s Hot Chicken hopes it won’t have to answer anytime soon.
The fast-growing, 200-unit fried chicken chain does a lot of its marketing through TikTok, the short-form video app that is facing a ban in the U.S.
On Monday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order pausing the ban for 75 days.
It followed a roller-coaster weekend during which the Supreme Court upheld a federal law banning TikTok unless its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, agrees to sell it. TikTok went dark late Saturday, only to return Sunday after Trump said he would delay the shutdown.
But it was unclear whether Trump even had the authority to do that, and a potential buyer had not been named.
The ban stems from lawmakers' concerns that TikTok could give China access to Americans' data or allow it to spread propaganda in the U.S.
As of Tuesday, the app's fate remained very much up in the air. And that raises questions for restaurant brands like Dave’s that have built large followings on the app.
The Pasadena, California-based chain began pushing into TikTok in September 2022. Its strategy has been to share content generated by other TikTok users rather than creating videos of its own. Clips of customers raving about its food have become a key part of the company’s marketing. Notoriety on the app has helped pave the brand’s entry into new markets. Today it has more than 3 million TikTok followers, more than any other fast-casual chain.
“It’s been such a fundamental part of our business for the past two years,” said Jim Bitticks, president and COO of Dave’s, in an interview on Friday.
Social media has been part of Dave’s DNA since even before TikTok. Its rise from a tent in an East Hollywood parking lot to a global brand was thanks in part to Instagram. In 2017, when it was still just a scrappy popup, co-founder Armen Oganesyan began posting about Dave’s on Instagram, tagging local foodies and urging them to come check it out. Finally, one of them did. Farley Elliott of Eater LA wrote a glowing feature on Dave’s, and lines started forming around the block the next day. The rest was history.
“That’s our first love was Instagram,” Bitticks said. Today, Dave’s has 1.5 million followers there, which is a lot for a restaurant chain, Bitticks noted. He’s hoping that if TikTok disappears, users will migrate to Instagram, which has a similar product called Reels.
“What I personally think is that consumers will follow the creators,” Bitticks said, referring to TikTok users who create their own content. “So if the creators go to Reels because Reels feels the most similar and works the same way, my guess would be people would go to that.”
Another possible landing spot is Snapchat, he said, a messaging and video app that Dave’s currently does not use. RedNote, another Chinese-owned social media app, has also been gaining American users amid the uncertainty surrounding TikTok.
Wherever people may end up going, Dave’s is prepared to follow. “We’re mostly social media-agnostic,” Bitticks said. “Whatever’s popular, we want to be a part of it.”
But TikTok is a particularly good fit for the brand, which, like Dave’s, tends to have a younger audience, Bitticks said. It has proven to be a valuable platform for a number of restaurant brands, such as cookie-concept Crumbl, which has more than 9 million followers, and Chili’s Grill and Bar. Over the summer, the casual-dining chain’s Triple Dipper appetizer platter went viral on TikTok. Traffic and sales followed.
Of course, TikTok’s viral nature can cut both ways. The app created headaches for Chipotle Mexican Grill last year after influencers such as Keith Lee complained about receiving small portions. A positive review from someone like Lee can turn an unassuming restaurant into a hot spot; a bad one can have the opposite effect.
At the same time, if TikTok were to go away, it’s not as if things would stop going viral. This publication has been writing about the internet’s viral potential since 2006. It was a tweet that sparked the chicken sandwich wars back in 2019. And before TikTok’s ascent, Instagram was a big driver of menu trends.
No matter what happens with TikTok, Dave’s Hot Chicken is comfortable swimming in the fast-moving waters of social media.
“The content and experience at Dave’s is very shareable across all social media,” Bitticks said. “So we’ll go wherever the creators go, wherever the consumers go.”
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