The app’s snappy videos are the new gateway to food fame. Its breakout stars explain the secrets of their success
When Poppy O’Toole was made redundant from her job as junior sous chef at the AllBright private members club in Mayfair during the first wave of the pandemic, she expected to return to work soon enough. “I thought, I’ve got three weeks to cook some nice food at home,” 27-year-old O’Toole remembers, “and be back in work in a few weeks.”
With lockdown opening up in front of her, O’Toole decided to upload the recipes she was cooking for herself on to the video-sharing app TikTok. “I’d always wanted to do the social media thing,” she says, “but I never had time, because I worked 70-hour weeks.” On 1 April 2020, O’Toole uploaded her first TikTok video under the handle @poppycooks. “Hi everyone … I’m going to start cooking at home doing TikToks,” said O’Toole. She captioned the video “hope this TikTok doesn’t flop like my career”.
