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The influence of Thai influencers
Amidst a sea of insanely flamboyant booths, this one stood out more than anything else. And why not? The larger-than-life fiberglass lady in red on the sauce bottle was a showstopper and a brand statement. I had no idea who this was, but fortunately, I was with Bangkok-based GourmetPro expert Rob Hall who enlightened me about her and the larger context that she’s a part of.
For those of you who don’t know, this is Pimrypie, real name Pimradaporn Benjawattanapat. She is one of Thailand’s biggest food influencers and live streamers, with a combined 31 million followers across TikTok and Facebook. Her content is loud, chaotic, deeply Thai, and extremely watchable. And her booth at Thaifex Anuga Asia was all of those things in physical form. I couldn’t tear my eyes away!
This booth is a testament to the growth of influencer-driven brands in Thailand. Pimrypie’s Mae E-Pim fermented fish sauce started as an internet sensation in 2020 and is now the second best-selling fermented fish sauce by sales volume in Thailand. That is not just influencer marketing. That is brand building on a scale that has taken established FMCG players years to get to. And Pimrypie did it through her content, first building up a base of loyal followers who naturally drifted to her brand when it was launched. Now, that brand encompasses not just the fermented fish sauce but other sauces and snacks.
And this explains why brands are paying close attention. Thailand’s influencer economy was valued at THB45 billion (USD1.4 billion) in 2024, with over 3 million influencers generating nearly THB39 billion (USD1.2 billion) in digital advertising value. This is roughly a third of the country’s entire digital ad market, and it is expected to grow by 15-20% annually. Just as a comparison, global influencer marketing was valued at USD32.6 billion in 2025.
In Thailand, the F&B, beauty, and fashion sectors together account for more than half (54.4%) of all influencer marketing activity, with TikTok driving 66% of it. And increasingly, it’s not just the mega-name influencers brands are chasing. Micro-influencers – those with between 10,000 and 100,000 followers – deliver engagement rates of 4-6 times higher than their macro counterparts, at a fraction of the cost. The reason is simple: in Thailand, 92% of consumers rely on influencer advice for buying decisions (the highest rate in Southeast Asia) and their trust lands on creators who feel accessible rather than aspirational. Authenticity, it turns out, is a better conversion tool than reach.
Rob pointed out that this dynamic was playing out in two distinct ways.
The first is what he calls “active influence”. Brands of all sizes are increasingly recruiting influencers not just to post content but to become genuinely embedded in the brand: co-creating products, shaping messaging, and targeting niche audiences with surgical precision.
The second, and perhaps more interesting from a market-building perspective, is the rise of creator brands. This entails content creators who bypass the endorsement model entirely and build their own F&B labels from scratch. Pimrypie is the most visible example, but she is not alone. The advantage these founders have is significant. They have an existing audience, a natural instinct for storytelling, and the ability to produce the volume and quality of content that modern brand-building demands.
Rob’s point, though, is that you don’t need a creator as a founder to learn from this playbook. Strong visuals, personal storytelling, entertainment-driven content, and even bringing creators in as early investors are lessons any emerging F&B brand can borrow.
The scale of what Thai creators can actually move is remarkable. In mid May 2026, Pimrypie ran a four-hour live stream to help clear a national durian glut. Weaker Chinese demand had left Thai farmers sitting on a mountain of unsellable fruit. She priced premium Monthong durian at THB100 a piece (much lower than what it usually goes for), almost 8 million people watched on Facebook alone, and nearly 2 million order comments came in during the stream.
A 2025 report estimated that Thailand had about 850,000 video-commerce sellers driving 1.3 billion transactions, with growth outpacing the rest of Southeast Asia. And this is probably why the Thai government has started taking notes. The Department of Intellectual Property also in May 2026 partnered with a celebrity influencer couple to promote the country’s 258 registered Geographical Indication products, worth an estimated THB116 billion (USD3.6 billion), through a branded content series.
There were plenty of other celebrity brands and celebrity-endorsed brands on the floor, and the photos speak for themselves.
And in case you missed it, check out our other tradeshow roundups from this year:
The heat is on
Have you ever watched Hot Ones, that YouTube show where celebrities eat progressively more lethal chicken wings while being interviewed. I haven’t, it sounds painful, but I understand the premise. And that’s kind of the energy at about a third of the booths at the show, what with brands competing with one another to show that they are indeed much too hot to handle.
Thailand has always been unapologetically spicy. I mean, heat is baked into the national food identity. But on the floor seemed like a globally synchronized spicy arms race, where the benchmark keeps moving and “hot” no longer means what it used to. My innards are on fire even as I think about these off-the-chart Scoville units.
Let’s start with a Thai classic. Spicy tamarind snacks are wildly popular as a treat in the country and are made by coating the sticky soft balls of tamarind pulp with salt and chili. This results in a sweet, sour, savory, and SPICY little snack.
But one tamarind company took this further through a collaboration with Rungchareon, a Thai brand famous for its single-serving, mini cups of traditional chili paste designed as grab-and-go packets to spice up a single meal. The chili used is called “Narok”, which means “hell” in Thai. So, do with that what you will.
It wasn’t just Thai companies getting in on the action though. Companies from all over the world came here with their spiciest best to impress the local palate.
Like this German brand of long chips seasoned with Thai pepper with the warning of being “Extremely Hot”. It was adorable. I have very limited spice tolerance and even I found it not particularly spicy. But good effort!
A little heat and the sweet of mango to give it a bit of a kick, from Vietnam
A crispy seaweed snack from South Korea, featuring Korean gochu chilli - a flame and a tear indicate some spice.
Now we get to the big boys, the ones that offer a certain degree of customization and choice, almost making heat a gamified collectible experience.
Starting with Korean noodles major Buldak from Samyang and their spice level chart – from the new on-trend Swicy product to their 2X spicy.
Thai brand Kopeg Food’s Bamee Mafia has its own escalation ladder: 0.5, +1, +2, with toon versions of local celebrities on the pack.
Polish brand Goong had a very similar (and eerily familiar name) with their Bulldog brand. The Hell and Hell X2 ratings made me laugh a fair bit, along with the branding. I wondered if their mandate was to just make it hurt. But this brand has also taken the next logical step: once you’ve maxxed out the heat dial, flavor become the differentiator. Theirs were all about world cuisines.
But these are all reflective of a global spice preference shift. A 2026 study into heat trends by ingredient company Kalsec found that 65% of global consumers now say they now eat spicier foods than they did a year ago; this is also a 27.5% increase since 2019. Nearly 4 out of 5 consumers today believe that most foods taste better with some level of heat.
A 2024 study by Innova reported that over the past five years, global launches of chili-flavored packaged foods and beverages grew by 4%, with Asia accounting for one-third of all these chili flavor innovations.
And the next frontier is already clear: sweet and spicy product launches in North America have grown by 85.7% since 2019, with brands pairing heat with mango, honey, and tamarind to soften the blow and widen the audience.
While people’s mouths may love this experience, I’m sure their gut lining has some things to convey.
Private label in Asia is ripe for the taking
In Europe, private label is no longer a small category. Store brands now account for 38.5% of total grocery market value across Europe, hitting a record EUR352 billion in 2024, growing at twice the rate of national brands. In Czechia, more than half of everything in a grocery basket is a store brand. In the US, 21% of total food and grocery sales is estimated to be from private label, growing at double the rate of the overall category. Consumers who switched during the pandemic or cost-of-living crisis didn’t switch back. They stayed because the products were good enough to keep them.
Asia, meanwhile, is sitting on an enormous, largely uncaptured opportunity. I attended the PLX Asia Industry Leadership Summit at Thaifex, where a series of speakers from across the region laid out the state of play. Here is what I took away.
Consumer intent is ahead of what’s on shelves
71% of Asian consumers say they buy or are willing to buy private label. But actual value share in the region sits at under 5%. That gap is not a consumer problem. The consumer is ready, but the shelves are not.
This is despite Asia being home to the world’s fastest-growing middle class and some of its most digitally engaged consumers.
No product category in Asia currently holds any significant market share to speak of. Though even in the most developed markets, own brands are still concentrated in staples (rice, noodles, dry goods), but that is changing rapidly. Premium, health and beauty, alcohol, and frozen foods remain largely untouched.
National brand loyalty is eroding
Category sequencing matters enormously. One retailer who launched private label in the Philippines started with home textiles and non-food, moved to food, then fresh, and will only tackle health, beauty, and alcohol once the brand has earned trust.
Health and beauty is the hardest category to crack. One solution was to create “power brands”, technically own brands, but with separate identities that feel like national brands until trust is established.
Brand loyalty in Asia is eroding, but it’s being replaced by rationality rather than indifference. Consumers are reading ingredient lists, checking country of origin, comparing packaging. The era of national brand default loyalty is ending.
Value, affordability are key to own label growth
Stop calling it “private label”, and instead call it “own brand”. Private label sounds like a knockoff. Own brand signals that you built something worth putting your name on. One retailer said every own brand decision – including discontinuations – goes through the chairman personally.
Price is the entry ticket, not the strategy. Every speaker made this point independently. “Affordable” and “value” have replaced “cheap”, and they are not the same word. Consumers who switch during a crisis stay not because of price, but because of quality.
Blind testing is non-negotiable. One retailer tested even their pet food by putting bowls in front of cats and dogs – one own brand, one national brand – and only launched when theirs won (they even tested the poop to check digestibility!). Food products are tested with at least 100 real consumers. Quality must be proven, not assumed.
AI is reshaping the process at both ends: scanning social media and retail data to catch consumer demand signals before they go mainstream, and designing shelf packaging that benchmarks against competitors in real time.
Health and wellness is the biggest white space. National brands in this space are expensive and out of reach for most consumers. Own brands can democratize access by making functional, high-quality products affordable for everyday use.
Where the real opportunity is
The fastest innovation is now happening at the retailer level, not the national brand level. Retailers can test, fail, and remove products far faster than national brands burdened by marketing investment and distribution commitments.
Collaboration (with celebrities, influencers, chefs, streaming platforms, and IP) is the future differentiator. The line between national brand, retailer own brand, and content IP is blurring fast. Asian retailers are only just beginning to play in this space.
As seen in Tops, Bangkok. This pack is gigantic!
As seen in Tops, Bangkok
The food service blind spot: almost all private label innovation is still designed for retail shelves, then awkwardly scaled up for restaurants and caterers. But food service professionals think completely differently. They need consistency, yield, prep speed, and predictable costs. Nobody is building truly food service-first own brand solutions yet. In Southeast Asia, where restaurant turnover is extremely fast and operators are perpetually cost-squeezed, this is a wide open frontier.
The retailer-manufacturer relationship is the foundation. Not vendor and supplier, but genuine partners with shared goals, co-development commitments, and long-term accountability. Retailers that build this way create systems competitors cannot easily replicate.
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