As the go-to source for viral food trends, TikTok has caused ingredients to sell out during recipe frenzies. No grocery delivery service had tapped into this, making it a perfect opportunity for challenger brand Voilà. We filtered and categorized data to hijack food trends, driving both new acquisitions and orders.

We had to identify trends before they went viral. A tool to do this didn’t exist, so we built one. Our bespoke Trend Index predicts what’s about to take off in the food space so we can partner with TikTok creators to drive sales right as recipes hit critical mass.

In Canada, the online grocery and food delivery space is growing dramatically.

Voilà is a relatively new grocery delivery service. Despite having fresher offerings and more efficient delivery, it was hard to stand out against established competitors and other new market entrants amongst our millennial target.

Other online delivery services, such as Walmart, have a head start and larger geographical distribution. In addition to major grocery retailers that deliver, like Metro and Loblaws, we’re also competing against third party services like Instacart or UberEats and meal kit delivery services.

Voilà is only available in select urban areas. With a ‘fresh or it’s free’ guarantee and strong Net Promoter Scores, we found that people who tried the service tended to love it -- so we just needed more people to try it.

We needed a game-changing way to get noticed and drive leads as a challenger brand.

TikTok has quickly established itself as the source of viral food trends, responsible for selling out ingredients during recipe frenzies. The online grocery delivery space is highly competitive and it’s hard to stand out, especially for a late entrant like Voilà. As a challenger brand, how could Voilà use data to tap into TikTok trends to get noticed and drive acquisitions?

If we could predict recipe trends before they took off and partner with foodie content creators to capitalize on the opportunity, we would be able to intercept cultural moments in a way no competitors in Canada had, and acquire new customers with a first-mover advantage.

What if we could use data to make trending recipe TikToks shoppable?

Using Spark Ads and partnering with foodie creators, we could take users from a TikTok video to a pre-populated cart on Voilà.ca in just one click.

A tool to measure food trends didn’t exist, so we built one. Our proprietary, custom-built Trend Index ingests data from TikTok trends, Google insights, Pinterest trends, social listening, culture and content trends, and even Voilà’s first-party search and sales data. These data points are assigned a value based on influence and filtered through our index to generate “trend energy” predictions.

With this data-informed scoring, we partnered with #FoodTok creators to rapidly develop recipes. These TikTok videos drove to pre-populated pages on the Voilà website where shoppers could purchase all required ingredients for delivery.

We targeted Voilà’s key growth audience: tech-savvy Millennials (and older Gen Z) in metro areas who were likely to use an existing delivery service but may not have heard of Voilà. We served them recipe videos based on their content interests making it easy to try recipes they had already been salivating over.

We knew viral recipe videos could drive sales, but to ensure they drove sales for Voilà, we needed to be ahead of the virality. We dissected the lifespan of viral TikTok recipes to extract and act on data at the right moments.

Before a food trend went viral, we identified its potential with our bespoke Trend Index, predicting what trends would hit.

As it was going viral, we served recipe videos and delivery offers as TikTok Spark Ads, in collaboration with popular foodie influencers like @nutrientmatters (1.7m followers). These offers drove users to a shopping cart populated with everything customer’s needed.

And when ingredients arrived at a customer’s doorstep, a follow-up email with the recipe and video was triggered to make the entire experience seamless.

Trending 2 Table tapped into TikTok’s #MadeMeBuyIt behaviour and made Voilà the first grocery delivery brand to tap into viral commerce.

An innovative social-first, data-driven campaign from inception to execution, Trending 2 Table successfully turned social media trends into trials. By taking a thoughtful, insights-driven approach using social data, we were able to drive both new orders and acquisitions with our paid social content and smartly compete with more established competitors.

8x increase in Voilà orders

11x increase in new Voilà customers

Drove 60-80 new users per week (benchmark average of other Voilà ads was 5-7 new users per week)

200%+ higher clickthrough rate

Trending 2 Table has been a great conversion-driver for Voilà. It eliminated the friction between first exposure to a trending recipe and getting it onto your plate and allowed us to turn complex data into dinners, “Just Like That.”