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In the rarefied world of small-batch cheeses, the product closest to widespread fame is Tom colicchio well done for her favorite bloomy crust on “Top Chef”.
That’s why Anne Saxelby, the founder and co-owner of Saxelby Cheesemongers in New York City, was so surprised when a vendor told her that a recipe from the popular video app TikTok sparked such demand for feta that she wouldn’t. get his weekly shipment of cheese.
Ms Saxelby and her feta maker – Narragansett Creamery, a small Rhode Island dairy – had been drawn to the video recipe phenomenon known as baked feta pasta. It’s an extremely easy and extremely creamy baked pasta sauce made with an entire block of feta cheese nestled in a pint of cherry tomatoes, with olive oil, chili peppers and garlic.
The recipe first caught fire in Finland in 2018, after food blogger Jenni Hayrinen made uunifetapasta, Finnish for baked feta pasta. (It was a simplified version of a dish called Prosecco Spaghetti and Baked Tomatoes, prepared by Tiiu Piret, another Finnish food blogger.)
But it didn’t really take off in the US until he started racking up ecstatic fans on TikTok in early January. Videos are just as likely to be made by influencers as they are by teens without large followers. Today, #fetapasta has over 600 million views, not counting spinoffs on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Rachael Ray followers, “Today” and “Good Morning America”.
[Melissa Clark’s first TikTok video was her one-pan version of the #fetapasta]
In mid-February – when feta was the # 1 search term on the Instacart grocery delivery app – The Charlotte Observer reported temporarily empty feta shelves at local stores like Harris Teeter supermarkets. Demand rose 200%, said Danna Robinson, spokesperson for the company, which operates more than 230 stores in seven states.
Narragansett Creamery, which supplies cheese makers in Saxelby and markets like Zabar’s and Eataly with its Salty Sea Feta, is now expanding its weekly production to 10,000 pounds a week, up from 6,000, said Mark Federico Jr., who runs the business with his parents. (That higher figure is how much they were previously producing during the height of the summer salad season, before restaurant sales were destroyed by the pandemic.)
Kroger was also caught off guard, said Walshe Birney, who oversees specialty cheese counters at the national supermarket chain, which owns Murray’s Cheese. Sales of blocks of feta, which cook creamier than crumbles, have increased.
“This is the biggest and greatest interest and increase in sales of a product that I have personally ever seen,” Birney wrote in an email.
While there is no shortage of feta at Krinos Foods, the country’s largest importer and manufacturer of Greek and Mediterranean food products, sales have been stronger than usual for months. Eric Moscahlaidis, the chairman of the company, said Krinos had been successful in persuading some Walmarts and Costcos to start trial sales of real Greek feta in addition to the cow’s milk versions they had already stocked. (In Europe, feta is a protected name product that must be made in parts of Greece from the milk of local sheep and goats.)
But feta isn’t the only food getting a boost in TikTok’s real world. And it probably won’t be the last, given the growing status of TikTok recipes like baked oatmeal cake and vegan do-it-yourself chicken.
Ms Saxelby sold another cheese, Winnimere, after the TikTok video of a friend praising the cheese was viewed more than 250,000 times in two days. It sold 20 whole cartridges in one day – 12 sold in a typical week – and the Vermont dairy that makes it, Jasper Hill Farm, saw a significant spike in traffic to its website.
After months of another popular TikTok recipe known as the tortilla wrap hack – you cut, fill, and fold a large tortilla with flour to make a giant wedge of a sandwich – Olé Mexican Foods, Georgia saw an increase in nationwide sales of its burrito size. tortillas. The greatest growth has come from cities that are not “traditional tortilla markets,” said Enrique Botello, the company’s marketing director.
Last spring, Target stores across the country repeatedly ran out of packages of Martinelli apple juice, when millions of TikTokers – including singer Lizzo – realized that when you bite into the plastic bottle in the shape of a apple, it looks like biting into real fruit. .
The 153-year-old California-based company had to ramp up production to keep pace, said Tom Brancky, a marketing consultant, who gave a weekly PowerPoint presentation last May to keep the company up to date with any video successes. He always sends it once a month.
“It was phenomenal, it was unreal,” he said, “and it was mostly the high school kids who drove it.”
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