Street food 2.0: from roadside treats to export strategy
The rise of street food brands turning familiar drinks and snacks into export-ready chocolate and condiments is a shift where kopitiam flavours are reimagined as professional, scalable products aimed at supermarket shelves worldwide, transforming nostalgic experiences into branded assets for global trade and cultural storytelling.
This is not a quirky niche trend; it is a deliberate strategy to turn everyday flavours like teh tarik, onde-onde and sirap bandung into premium confectionery and fast-selling condiments. On one side, NIMS Adeliciousz is bottling these memories in its NIMS Chocotub Taste of Malaysia: Malaysia’s Favourite Flavours line, complete with Teh Tarik Crunch, Onde Onde Crunch and Sirap Bandung Laici Crunch. On the other, creator-turned-entrepreneur Khairul Aming is proving that sambal – the definition of homely street food – can power a mass-market brand, with his new Sambal Nyet Bilis launch breaking multiple live-commerce records in a single night. The message is clear: street food is no longer confined to hawker stalls; it is a serious export business.
Chocolate as a passport: turning teh tarik and onde-onde into exports
If you want proof that street food can travel, look at what NIMS is doing with chocolate. The company has launched its latest collection, NIMS Chocotub Taste of Malaysia: Malaysia’s Favourite Flavours, featuring Teh Tarik Crunch, Onde Onde Crunch and Sirap Bandung Laici Crunch, all inspired by everyday life. This is teh tarik chocolate export by design, not accident: the brand is explicitly targeting supermarket shelves around the world, using confectionery as the vehicle.
The onde-onde global market is no longer a fantasy framed by food bloggers. NIMS already exports its products to 27 countries, including regional neighbours such as Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia, with the wider Asean market remaining a primary focus. One quotable statement from the launch sums up the ambition: “Through NIMS Chocotub, Taste of Malaysia, we want to bring the uniqueness of Malaysian taste to global consumers.” This is street cart memory, repackaged as premium chocolate, engineered for scale.
From kopitiam cup to premium brand: repositioning nostalgia as gourmet
Teh tarik, onde-onde and sirap bandung were never designed for tasting notes or export catalogues; they belonged to mamak tables and pasar malam queues. Yet NIMS is intentionally elevating these flavours into premium chocolate products, with Matrade’s leadership describing the move as exporting culture rather than merely selling chocolate. “When NIMS elevates the taste of teh tarik, onde-onde and sirap bandung into premium chocolate products, they are not merely selling chocolate, they are exporting Malaysian culture.”
This repositioning matters. It signals a professionalization of street food culture: recipes once shared informally are now intellectual property, wrapped in branding and backed by national trade agencies. The launch itself was officiated by the deputy chief executive officer for Entrepreneur Development at the national trade promotion agency, underlining official support for turning local flavours into export-grade products. Food stops being a low-margin, informal trade, and becomes a medium for carrying a country’s story and identity to international consumers through value-added innovation. Nostalgia, in other words, has moved into the gourmet aisle.
Khairul Aming and the new street food entrepreneur playbook
While NIMS is building a confectionery bridge to the world, Khairul Aming is rewriting how street food brands scale at home – and his model could easily cross borders next. He recently launched an all-new product, Sambal Nyet Bilis, through a TikTok Live session from the top of the Merdeka 118 tower on 7 August 2026, and broke several records in the process. The launch generated RM2 million in one minute and 51 seconds, with total gross merchandise value reaching RM3.5 million in that single session.
The numbers tell a story of industrial-scale demand: 125,000 jars of Sambal Nyet Bilis sold, compared with 80,000 jars in an earlier product launch, and a peak of 388,000 concurrent viewers on TikTok Shop. This is street food flavour – a sambal rich with ikan bilis, green chillies, kaffir lime, tomatoes and belacan – monetised with a level of precision and spectacle usually reserved for tech product launches. He even tied the launch to future experiences, offering an all-expense-paid trip to the Dolomites in October to early buyers, turning chilli paste into a lifestyle brand with international aspirations.
Why this export wave matters – and what comes next
Taken together, NIMS’ confectionery push and Khairul Aming’s sambal empire signal a decisive shift: street food is no longer a side hustle, it is a structured export strategy. Matrade’s decision to officiate NIMS’ launch – and to call the brand a larger success story in the making – shows that national trade policy now sees food brands as serious contenders in international markets. Campaigns like NIMS Beli & Menang 2026, which offers prizes including a Proton eMAS over three months until November 8, reinforce the intent to build household recognition at scale.
The next chapter will be written in how these brands maintain authenticity while chasing volume. If they succeed, teh tarik chocolate export and onde-onde global market ambitions will not be marketing slogans but case studies in how local street food brands can evolve into credible Malaysian food exports. The professionalization of this culture – from live-stream sambal launches to government-backed confectionery lines – suggests that the world’s next wave of comfort food might arrive not from fast-food chains, but from former hawker icons, dressed in new packaging yet rooted in familiar flavours.
