Seller Spotlight
Jerky.com
Turning a jerky business into a live studio that sold 60,000+ items in five months
Meet the Seller
For nearly 20 years, Jerky.com has sold jerky online from its Oklahoma City warehouse. They specialize in dried meats, predominantly beef, with over 100 SKUs including exotic jerky and meat sticks, all made to their own recipes.
Since expanding into live selling on Whatnot in May 2026, they've built out a dedicated studio with a team of presenters.
Prior to Whatnot
- Founder Doug had built hundreds of single-category websites, from dartboards to hammocks, before starting Jerky.com in 2008.
- The range grew to more than 100 jerky products, from beef and exotic jerky to meat sticks and gift sets, all made to Jerky.com's own recipes.
- They operate out of a 10,000-square-foot warehouse in Oklahoma City, and run sales through their own website, Amazon and TikTok Shop.
- On TikTok, the team ran lives for up to 14 hours a day from a dedicated studio, with six people on camera and paid ads behind them.
- However many hours they put in, TikTok traffic stayed hard to predict, which made it hard to forecast sales or plan staff for each shift.
“The non-fancy truth is I saw that nobody was selling jerky online as well as I thought we could, so we built the website to make money.”
- Doug, Jerky.com
Launching on Whatnot
- A local Whatnot seller told them about the platform, and in May 2026 two of the team ran the first week of shows to learn how it worked.
- From the first shows, bidding per viewer was much higher than on TikTok, even on a brand new account with 20 to 25 viewers.
- Two shows in, they started building a dedicated Whatnot studio, with custom displays, a spotlight on the product and colored lighting behind the presenter.
- From the first few days, presenters never mentioned retail price, letting bidding and salesmanship set the value of each bag.
- They paired $1-start auctions with short flash sales, time-limited discounts that sold best at one or two minutes because the urgency did the work.
“On our first Whatnot shows we had a brand new account, very few followers and 20 to 25 viewers, and the bidding per viewer was much higher than on TikTok.”
- Kenny, Jerky.com
“We were only two shows in when we said, all right, we know where this is going. So we started building a full studio for Whatnot.”
- Doug, Jerky.com
Growing on Whatnot
- In June they moved to eight hours of shows a day in two four-hour blocks, with TikTok-trained presenters retrained for a different pace.
- Buyer's choice became the signature format: two or three flavors go up together, the winner picks, and fans of different flavors bid against each other.
- Presenters read the room through the bids, swapping three hot flavors for a savory and a sweet one when the hot ones close at two dollars.
- By August, hours live had nearly doubled to over 340 a month, and items sold rose with them to more than 18,000.
- The limit now is the cart: each presenter sells from stock picked before the show for about 60 sales an hour, which a strong run can outpace.
More hours live, more items sold: when weekly hours jumped in early August, items sold jumped with them.
“We had to unlearn. We thought Whatnot would be the same as TikTok and we'd just build another studio, but really quickly it was clear it's not the same at all. Buyers here are ready to buy, and that was obvious right from the start.”
Doug, Jerky.com
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