This Wichita food business was struggling during COVID-19. Then a TikTok video went viral
TikTok is a short-form video app that Gen Z loves and the White House wants to ban.
But since the coronavirus pandemic started, TikTok has also been a surprisingly effective marketing tool for a Wichita food business, whose owners say its sales grew by five times over last year once a video it produced went viral on the platform in April.
Kyle Offutt, who in 2018 partnered with his friend Eddie Sandoval to launch a blue corn tortilla business called Pinole Blue, said it all started when he produced a video that gave a quick overview of how Sandoval founded the business, which produces blue corn tortillas, drink mixes and more.
Offutt posted that initial video on April 13, and at the time, videos about how businesses got their starts were having a moment on TikTok.
The video grew popular and appeared on the platform’s “For You” page, which suggests videos viewers might like. It started rapidly accumulating views, and to date, nearly 456,000 TikTok users have watched it.
Though getting “views” is itself a victory for many TikTokers, the video’s popularity translated into something much more for Pinole Blue, Offutt said. People from around the country who saw the video were intrigued by Pinole Blue’s story.
Their intrigue turned into sales, and since then, the business has shipped tortillas, drink mixes and more to all 50 states. Sales since April have been five times higher than what they were for the same time the previous year, Offutt said, and they show no sign of slowing down.
“Our online sales exploded,” Offutt said. “Every week, we’re hitting records, and every week, we’re doing more and more, which has been cool.”
The success inspired Offutt to keep going with TikTok, and since then, the business’s page has been filled with quick videos, some featuring the owners goofing around, some giving behind-the-scenes tours, some profiling Wichita restaurants that use their products.
The followup videos have all gotten thousands of views, and one posted in May about how TikTok had helped grow the business got 709,000 views. Another showing how the tortillas were made got 1.8 million.
The Pinole Blue TikTok page now has 106,300 followers.
It couldn’t have come at a better time, Offutt said. When the pandemic started, Pinole Blue’s restaurant clients stopped ordering tortillas, and the business was struggling to find new clients.
Now, they can barely keep up with production, and grocery stores are knocking on their door, wanting to carry their products.
Offutt said that Pinole Blue’s business model is perfect for TikTok, whose users like entrepreneurial success stories, healthy food and products they can buy online. But he wonders if other Wichita food businesses could also benefit from trying it out.
“I feel like TikTok is a really great platform to get in front of the right people and be able to get discovered by niche audiences,” he said. “You can just really find a group of people who love your stuff, no matter what you’re doing — whether you’re a cosplay person or have a food company like us.”
Pinole Blue isn’t the only local food business to garner attention through TikTok.
An employee at Crafted, the coffee and poke shop at 9730 E. 21st St., also has become popular for his videos focused on making drinks. The account, owned by employee Jason Nguyen, is called justjaycie, and a video he posted earlier this month drew more than 4 million views.
Mike Brotemarkle said that Nguyen’s TikTok popularity hasn’t really translated into a ton of new business for the shop so far. His videos are posted on his personal account, and although viewers can tell they’re filmed at Crafted, Nguyen hasn’t really been advertising the business.
Brotemarkle said he’s recently asked Nguyen to start making videos for the shop’s social media, too.
“They have a fun time doing it,” he said.
This story was originally published August 25, 2020 at 1:33 PM.
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