Instacart zeroes in on TikTok to make viral recipes shoppable and win over swipe-happy home cooks

That viral recipe for baked feta pasta… is headed straight from TikTok to your Instacart. This week, Instacart launched a “shoppable recipes” feature that lets TikTok stars like Jason Derulo tack on shopping lists to food videos, so that fans can buy the ingredients for his giant doughnut burgers. Here’s how it works:

• Social shopping: You can now add recipe ingredients to your Instacart by clicking a button in a TikTok. It’s already open to some creators, and a wider rollout is coming.
• Several ways to shop: Instacart’s also teaming up with BuzzFeed’s Tasty and Delish owner Hearst to add shopping buttons to recipes on their cooking sites.

Content is all about consuming… and Instacart wants to translate video consumption into food consumption. By making it easier for shoppers to add ingredients to their carts while browsing social media, Instacart hopes to differentiate itself from grocery deliverers like Blue Apron, Shipt, and FreshDirect, as well as bigger rivals like Amazon and Walmart.

• Crowded field: Instacart’s the second-largest online grocery deliverer after Walmart, but is expected to lose market share to Uber and DoorDash as they get deeper into the grocery game.
• Imminent IPO: Instacart is expected to go public this year, after delaying earlier plans to focus on building out its ad platform.