The TikTok Queue Goes Viral

In early 2023 we reported on the appearance of queues outside food outlets in Amsterdam that were created by TikTok posts. We asked the questions whether this might be a new global phenomenon. Apparently so, because now there is an extensive report in the Guardian newspaper detailing the many ways in which hospitality businesses try and harness the TikTok queue as a marketing mechanism. As one interviewee remarked:

“We wait in line for everything now,” says 23-year-old Hannan Mahamud as she stands midway down the queue with three friends. “I queued for an hour the other week for a cookie, although it wasn’t worth it. We heard about Yo-Chi through a creator on TikTok who works in an office building across the road and posts queue updates. We thought it might be a fun day out.”

The TikTok queue has now become a global phenomenon, adding to overtourism in cities like London and Amsterdam, but also now found in rural and remote locations, as another Guardian article recently reported. High up in the Italian Dolomites, TikTok queues have also been forming for 'krapfen' pastries:

“We only came for this,” one visitor told Rai News, while another said they were attracted by a post about krapfen on Instagram that was accompanied by “heavenly music”.

The Crocus Project, working on developing cultural tourism in Rural and Remote Areas of Europe, has also noted a growth in viral tourism to usually tranquil rural locations.

What are they waiting for?

The Guardian article ponders: "It has become common for people to wait in long lines for cafes, bakeries and ice-cream shops. But why?"

The why question was the focus of our earlier research article, which used netnography and interviews to try and fathom what all these people were doing queueing for baked goods and fries. You can read the whole article here, but in essence we identified a cycle of consumption experiences: from tourists consuming digital content, reproducing it through physical visits and queuing, and then sharing new content, later amplified by the TikTok algorithm:

This cycle produces performative participation, algorithmic temporality, spatial amplification, and reflexive ambivalence. The TikTok queue is revealed as a key performative space, where algorithm-created performance, aesthetic desire and sensory imaginaries produce a merging of the physical and digital space of the city.

So the answer to the Guardian's question is that the food is just a prop in a TikTok staged performance, with the queue itself as a central performance space. The implication of consumers as extras in the TikTok queue is what enables businesses like CZER to charge £13 for a wrap. This is an algorithm supercharged version of Pine and Gilmore's Experience Economy.