Foodie Media, Malaysian digital media platform with an F&B focus

[This is a sponsored article with Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC).]

Whether you realise it or not, chances are you’ve come across Foodie Media’s videos before.

It’s only the company behind some of the biggest food media platforms in the country, such as KL Foodie, Johor Foodie, Halal Foodie, and many more. They’ve even expanded their reach to other countries with brands like Singapore Foodie, Jakarta Foodie, and Manila Foodie.

And that’s just one small portion of all the different media brands they run.

Most recently, they’ve also been making news headlines for seeking an initial public offering on the ACE Market.

Foodie Media has come a tremendous way since they first started out as a humble channel called Penang Foodie in 2016, launched by Pinn Yang.

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Meet the true foodie

Pinn Yang, the CEO and co-founder of Foodie Media, was born and raised in foodie capital, Penang.

His dad worked as an insurance agent and later ran a Hainanese chicken rice hawker stall while selling frying pans in the morning market. Pinn Yang would help him after school, which taught him the value of hard work, people skills, and business fundamentals from an early age.

From there, he went on to pursue a marketing degree from Tunku Abdul Rahman University, and later interned at Tencent/WeChat Malaysia. It was here that Pinn Yang worked on a food discovery app, which sparked his interest in the intersection of technology, content, and food.

“After Tencent’s food discovery app failed to take off, I returned to Penang in 2016,” he told Vulcan Post. “I realised there was a gap—food content in Malaysia was fragmented, and many amazing local businesses were invisible online.”

With that realisation, Pinn Yang started Penang Foodie as a side project with his brother and his wife.

At first, it was just a simple blog and Facebook page. They were able to earn a few cents a day from AdSense, but when they hit their first 1,000 followers, they understood the power of community.

“That was the ‘aha’ moment,” Pinn Yang declared. “If we could build a platform that connects people to great food and empowers small businesses, we could create something impactful. By 2018, we decided to fully commit and incorporate Foodie Media.”

Making a name for themselves

While content creation might look easy from the outside looking in, Pinn Yang knows the truth—it’s hard, very hard.

This was especially the case as the founding team bootstrapped everything. Their initial capital was used to purchase a camera and a laptop for editing, which was paid across a 36-month instalment.

“Everything was a challenge at first,” he explained. “Content creation, finding our voice, understanding algorithms. For the first few months, growth was painfully slow.”

However, once you persevere and overcome that initial struggle, growth is oftentimes exponential.

“I remember it took us close to a year to achieve our first 1,000 followers on Facebook, and just one day to achieve the next 8,000,” Pinn Yang reminisced.

In the early days, the team would work on content at night after their day jobs. When revenue hit RM15,000 a month, they finally decided to quit and go into the business full time.

Staying hyperlocal and authentic

With this saturated media landscape, it’s hard to stand out. But Foodie Media found a winning strategy by keeping its content area-specific as well as staying in the forefront of news and trends.

“Our followers came from us staying hyperlocal and authentic. We told stories about hawkers, their struggles, and their passions. People connected with that,” Pinn Yang said. “Our approach is simple: people first. We tell stories that Malaysians care about, whether it’s viral food, street vendors, or the new opening of an eatery that people want to try.”

The Foodie Media mantra is to entertain, inspire, and inform, without losing authenticity.

“We have a strong editorial pulse and rely on community feedback to stay grounded. And of course, behind the scenes, we’ve built a solid content engine to maintain consistency and quality,” he said.

Today, the team has around 70 full-time editors and a leadership team managing 36+ brands, including KL Foodie, Penang Foodie, Johor Foodie, Malaysia Homie, and more.

While it has grown into a sizeable team, Pinn Yang understands the need to continually improve and stay relevant as the barrier to entry in their industry is rather low. Many influencers and creators can easily dip their toes into content such as Foodie Media’s.

“But the media space is a marathon, not a sprint,” Pinn Yang clarified. “It’s not just about one viral video, it takes years of consistency to build trust and recallability behind the brand.”

Expanding into other verticals

From the early blog days of Penang Foodie, Foodie Media is now a multi-brand, video-first media company.

They’ve even expanded beyond content and now handle collaborations with creators, live commerce, and even offline events like food festivals.

“Philosophically, the biggest change is purpose,” Pinn Yang shared. “At first, it was about growth. Today, it’s about impact: helping small businesses thrive through storytelling and social media.”

Pinn Yang sees Foodie Media as not just a food media platform. While they started as that, Foodie Media today has more than 30 brands across different verticals such as property, car, and tech.

“We are an ecosystem that connects content, creator, commerce, and community, which we refer to as the four Cs internally,” he shared.

Instead of simply focusing on food videos, Foodie’s aim is to inspire experiences. They always strive to be at where the attention is at.

With that in mind, Foodie Media is doubling down on wider media categories and genres of content. They’re also investing into digital commerce and AI technology.

“Long-term, we want to build Southeast Asia’s leading content-commerce platform, one that empowers creators, brands, and communities, Pinn Yang shared.

Supporting their efforts is MDEC, the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation. Foodie Media is a part of MDEC’s Founders Centre of Excellence (FOX), a platform dedicated to cultivating high-potential startups.

In particular, MDEC focuses on supporting those showing strong scale-up tech icon potential.

FOX equips these high-potential companies such as Foodie Media and founders such as Pinn Yang with tools and knowledge they need to innovate and scale globally.

More than the payout

In the beginning, success was all about getting views on social media, as that was what paid the bills.

But now, years into the business, Pinn Yang found that the heart of the business is about creating impact at scale, changing lives of SMEs, building a legacy brand, and inspiring the next generation of creators.

“If I could go back, I’d tell my younger self: you did the right thing,” he shared. “And to any young entrepreneur, stop worrying about what other people think.”

“Patience is the game. Play the long game. Focus on brand. Build community. And most of all, fall in love with the process, not the payout.”