From Backwater to Mainstream: How Italian Food Won Over Southeast Asia’s Middle Class
Five years ago, Italian food in Southeast Asia translated to expensive belt-buckle restaurants in expat precincts.
There are now more than 350 million middle-class consumers in Southeast Asia, and they aren’t just purchasing Italian goods but assimilating them into their day-to-day providers.
What changed?
We did. The Italians who successfully exported to those markets discovered that it’s not about transplanting what works in Europe, it’s instead intelligent adaptation that guards authenticity.
We’re eating 500g of pasta and not 1kg because urban Southeast Asia is a market dominated by smaller homes.
Small single serving packs of mozzarella, to match eating habits in the area. Bilingual packaging is educational, not patronizing — explaining DOP certifications, with suggestions for local recipe adaptations and trust-building through transparency.
And it has everything to do with the partnership model.
Retailers such as Central Food Hall in Thailand and the AEON group across the region are not just purveyors but also cultural bridges, with a deep knowledge of how tastes have evolved locally and spending has shifted.
They have placed bets on cold chain infrastructure to make premium Italian dairy and charcuterie possible across tropical climates, and they are curating Italian sections that present our products as aspirational yet obtainable.
Indonesia is especially interesting — we have Italian halal-certified products that are helping us penetrate where 10 years ago this would not have been possible, and the Vietnamese consumer is jumping directly on to premiums without having to go through mass-market.
The Italian brands that are succeeding in Southeast Asia today are those who understood that “mass” didn’t mean losing quality; it is taking what you do well and making it both accessible and relevant.
We are not selling nostalgia to expats; we are in the business of building the next generation of Italian food consumers in markets that will inform global demand for the next thirty years.