First Watch plans a U.S. TikTok GO pilot for the fourth quarter

First Watch and TikTok are planning a U.S. TikTok GO pilot for the fourth quarter. On November 3, 2026, CEO Chris Tomasso said TikTok invited the chain into its first group of restaurant testers. He hopes First Watch’s seasonal dishes will attract local diners. He gave no locations, offer or checkout details. First Watch earnings call

In its fiscal 2025 annual filing, First Watch said it used its own data to target digital ads to people who resembled its frequent diners. Combining remote waitlist entries, online orders, Wi-Fi and tokenized card transactions helped the chain study first visits and how often guests returned. It also reported about 7.6 million opt-ins for direct communication. First Watch annual filing

For an owner weighing a dining offer, matching a redemption to a restaurant check can show where and when a guest used it. What the check can’t tell the owner is whether that diner would have come in anyway.

At the register#

When TikTok introduced GO in the U.S. in May, it showed how a traveler could go from seeing a hotel in a video to booking it inside TikTok. Search and location pages also led to bookings. TikTok’s launch announcement

For dining, TikTok’s U.S. developer guide describes how restaurant software can look up products by outlet and redeem a voucher by scanning a QR code or entering its code. The merchant portal tracks sales. In the separate mobile app, a registered restaurant can accept a coupon and look up its verification history. U.S. integration guide · Merchant app

Peblla’s register guide describes a separate setup. Each TikTok outlet links to its store. A product voucher adds a no-charge combo. Sales can start before every store links its combo to the offer’s TikTok product ID. Cash vouchers work as payment. In Peblla’s example, $35 buys $50 of credit, a $15 discount or 30% of face value. Peblla guide

A Sunday purchase in TikTok could become a Friday lunch. A manager tracking vouchers sold in one week could match later redemptions to the date, store and number on each completed check. Count a check with two vouchers once. Voiding a Peblla order doesn’t restore the voucher. Guests request refunds in TikTok. Peblla refund instructions

To work out the restaurant’s contribution on a redeemed order, the owner needs the actual payout after fees, including any subsidy. Add separate payments for extras, net of tax and refunds, then subtract food and other costs incurred to serve the order. The voucher’s face value adds nothing to those receipts.

How many extra lunches?#

In the third quarter, before the planned pilot, First Watch’s annual email offer drew more redemptions than usual, CFO Ashlee Weisser said. She credited database cleanup and subject-line testing for part of the response. First Watch earnings call

For the 13 weeks ended September 27, traffic at 454 comparable company-owned restaurants fell 1.9% year over year while sales rose 1.0%. Those restaurants had been open at least 18 months at the start of the fiscal year. Tomasso attributed much of the traffic decline to business shifting to new restaurants. Quarterly filing · Earnings call

A multi-store operator could try a voucher at one restaurant and compare it with a store where weekday lunch checks had been following a similar trend. Choosing stores that draw from different neighborhoods reduces the chance that the test diverts diners from the comparison store. Keeping an email promotion on the same schedule at both would help, too.

Suppose both stores averaged 100 checks per weekday lunch before the test. During it, the participating store averages 115 and the other averages 110. If the participating store would have gained the same ten checks without the offer, the estimated lift is five checks per lunch, even if staff redeemed 20 vouchers per lunch. A regular making an extra trip could account for one of those five. A festival near just one store could throw off the estimate.

Before extending the offer, the owner could check whether breakfast or other nearby restaurants lost business as lunch picked up. Across the owner’s stores, the contribution from extra meals would have to cover any discounts the restaurants funded and fees they paid on meals they would have sold anyway, plus the cost of running the campaign.