TikTok launched a restaurant guide called Must Eat and is reportedly working on payments, a sign it wants to be the app you use for almost everything.
TikTok is turning into more than a video app. This week it announced Must Eat, a built-in restaurant guide. It has also reportedly been working on a way to send money through direct messages. Taken together, the moves suggest TikTok wants to be the one app where people find a place, book it, pay and share what they thought.
Must Eat pulls from more than 40 million posts and comments to build restaurant recommendations and curated lists in one place. Users can browse by city and narrow results by cuisine, price, rating and location. That puts TikTok in more direct competition with Yelp and Google Maps.
On payments, Bloomberg reported in August that TikTok is building a feature to let users send each other money in direct messages. It would use TikTok Pay, which is already available in Southeast Asia for TikTok Shop purchases. Reuters reported in March that TikTok applied to Brazil's central bank to offer lending and payment services.
The goal is often called a super app, a single app that handles many everyday needs. WeChat in China is the best-known example. It works a bit like Facebook, WhatsApp, Apple Pay and an app store combined. Whether that model works outside China is an open question.
TikTok has been adding pieces for a while:
Not every try has worked. TikTok launched a music streaming service in 2023 and shut it down a year later.
Restaurants and local businesses are the most direct audience. Customers who already find a place through a TikTok video may soon also look up details, compare it with others, book and pay without leaving the app. For everyday users, it could mean fewer trips between apps. It could also mean more of their spending, searching and money activity sits with one company.
The money-transfer feature has been reported but not launched, so there is no release date or list of countries. It is also unclear how Must Eat will rank restaurants or how businesses can manage their listings. TikTok moved to new, primarily U.S. ownership in January, but the material does not say how that affects these plans.
Business owners can check how their restaurant or shop shows up in TikTok search and on its map. Videos from customers and from the business itself may now carry more weight, since they feed the guide, the reviews and possibly future bookings.
If customers find you on TikTok, check how your business appears there now, because discovery, booking and payment may soon happen in the same app.
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