Qiana Allen, co-founder of Chicago-based Munchiez, is ready to “eat her hat” after doubting that TikTok could be a useful marketing channel for her business. For her store and restaurant, which sells sweet and savory foods, TikTok has been crucial to driving sales.

Allen discussed the power of TikTok at SXSW in Austin, with a panel consisting of two other small businesses, and Becca Sawyer, TikTok’s global head of small- and medium-sized businesses.

Companies like Munchiez, Sani and Bastrop Cattle Company couldn’t be further from Chipotle or Arby’s, which have been held up as major brands flooding into the Chinese-owned app to learn the new ways of social commerce and content. These smaller businesses serve niche fashion, in the case of Sani, which designs Indian and South Indian styles; Munchiez owns a bespoke sweets shop; and Bastrop is a meat wholesaler that sells its products straight from the farm.

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TikTok has been lighting up SXSW with many influencers and creators packing into halls for panels to catch glimpses of what other people are seeing in the platform, and to see if they could figure out what makes it so successful. If TikTok is going to grow into an advertising powerhouse, it will be through onboarding millions of small businesses that learned social media marketing on Facebook and Instagram.

Sani was initially on Instagram, where it posted pictures of catalogs of clothes. “When we got in TikTok, our sister and I, put ourselves out there more authentically,” said Ritika Shamdasani, Sani's co-founder. 

The sisters used TikTok to build a community and talk about Indian fashion, not just show pictures of the clothing. Instead of reaching one segment of a community, Indian brides-to-be, they found a world of people interested in wearing Indian-inspired fashions, Shamdasani said. Now up to 60% of Sani’s revenue comes from organic TikTok marketing, meaning they don’t pay for all the videos they post, and they still generate sales.

“I can’t say the same for Facebook ads,” Shamdasani said.

Shamdasani told a story about a TikTok video that “only” got hundreds of thousands of views, asking for Indian models. They received 1,800 responses within a week.

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Allen of Munchiez had similar stories, saying “TikTok has shot us through the roof.” The videos have turned workers at Munchiez into local celebs, with patrons stopping by to ask to meet the people in the TikTok videos.

“I only thought [TikTok] was for kids that dance,” Allen said. “I was the last one to know.”

Now, Munchiez is studying the audience on TikTok to see where the shop should open its second outlet depending on where it has the most fans, and Allen suggested it could be in Texas.

The SXSW panel was an eye into the growing awareness of TikTok as a marketing tool, one that almost every brand wants to understand. Marketers are all studying which videos get the most interest, how the algorithm works to reach the most relevant audience, and even just what to do in videos.

Sawyer said the businesses represented on the panel, which took place Friday in Austin, were “examples for the biggest of brands, in terms of authenticity and ways of connecting with customers and really building communities.”

Even Texas-based Bastrop Cattle Company, a beef wholesaler, used TikTok to go from selling bulk meats to restaurants to selling directly to individuals, through a little rebranding on the platform. There are niches of TikTok users interested in hoarding meats, and the company turned to TikTok during the pandemic when that urge to stock up grew, said Max Kruemcke, co-owner of Bastrop.

“Our biggest discovery was less that we found a community [anywhere] but the fact that our community was on TikTok,” Kruemcke said.

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