Every night in China, millions of single men sit down to eat dinner with the same woman. She doesn’t smile. She doesn’t talk. She sits on the table, watching, judging and delivering one hell of a spicy kick.

Her name is Tao Huabi. You probably know her face. It’s printed on over a million jars of chilli oil every single day (about the same number as Heinz makes bottles of ketchup).
And Tao built that empire without a business degree or traditional marketing.

Today’s episode is about the story of Lao Gan Ma: the godmother of chilli crisp, and how she created one of the most iconic and unintentional brands on the planet. I’m calling it…

This edition of supergoods is brought to you by Mind Control

Why is chilli oil like the new craft beer?

You’ve probably felt it. That slow burn becoming a full-blown obsession. And then suddenly, you have a fridge full of chilli oil brands. Each one beautifully packaged. Each one handcrafted. Each one cost you $21 a jar.

But like any good trend, this didn’t come from nowhere. The chilli oil boom has been building for years.
And while the West is just discovering it, one brand has quietly dominated — long before you knew how to pronounce “umami.”

Every marketers dream: an ‘accidental’ cult

The year is 1989. Michael Jordan is still dunking for the Bulls. The Berlin Wall is falling. Seinfeld hasn’t aired yet. And deep in a Chinese village, a widowed mum is running a noodle stall out of pure survival mode. She’s broke, illiterate, forty-something with two sons. Tough gig.

But she has a secret weapon. A homemade chilli crisp - oily, crunchy and packed with umami flavours. People are lining up out the door at her noodle stall, purely for the sauce. So she stops selling noodles and focuses on her secret sauce.

Pricing and product are 2 P’s you cannot ignore

Much like the rise of Kewpie Mayo in Japan, Lao Gan Ma’s early growth came down to two fundamentals most marketers overthink:
make something insanely good, and price it so people can actually buy it.

Tao wasn’t just obsessed with quality, she had strong ideals about pricing and saw fair pricing as a moral duty. She didn’t want to make a luxury item. She wanted every household in China to have access to proper flavour. So she kept costs low, sourced ingredients smart and refused to cut corners.

By 1996, she’d rented a house and turned it into a makeshift factory with 40 local workers, many of them friends and neighbours. Early growth sets off, seeing the company move insanely fast, all without a single ad campaign.

Being incredibly cost-savvy, they had a different approach.
Mass sampling.

She gave free jars to truck drivers. They carried it across the country, dropping off heat in every corner of China. Each jar was a flavour bomb. Each spoonful a word-of-mouth grenade. Once people tried that umami-loaded, crispy, tingly crunch, they were sold.

The quiet billionaire

But by 2001, Lao Ganma finally won the trademark and the Beijing High Court banned imitators from using her name and face. This legal win cements Lao Ganma as the market leader and they go on to expand nationally. I guess it’s kinda hard to dispute, given it’s her face.

Entering her billionaire era, the companies success soared and by 2011, the had over 2,000 employees and hundreds of millions of dollars.

The best in the west

For decades, Lao Gan Ma remained a quiet giant, beloved in China, smuggled in suitcases by students and expats, but mostly unknown in the West. That all changed during COVID.

Locked down and bored, people started cooking more. Social feeds lit up with recipe videos, jar hauls, and “you have to try this” reviews. And there she was, that same stern-faced woman from a small Chinese village, now popping up in fridges from Melbourne to Minnesota.

UK-based retailer Sous Chef reported a 1,900% sales increase in Lao Gan Ma during lockdown. In the U.S., it went from cult secret to kitchen flex. Suddenly, Tao Huabi was accidentally leading a global flavour movement.

Kick on to 2025 and new brands are spawned every 5 minutes. Chilli oil is no longer the thing they never give you enough of at Chinese restaurants in the little metal saucer, but an item in everyone’s kitchen.

We can all be a little more Old Godmother

I think the most inspiring thing about this story is relentless progression. One step in front of another, moving forward without a masterplan but with sheer will.

Tao Huabi didn’t have a complicated marketing funnel, meticulously track website analytics or jump from trend to trend.

She had a wok, a recipe and a reason to keep hustling.
She made the best thing she could, sold it at a fair price and never stopped showing up.

That kind of slow, stubborn hustle is not a sexy “built in 5 years and sold to Pepsi” story. But it’s how beautiful businesses are built.

The face on the jar is a reminder: you don’t need hype if you’ve got heat.
And if you keep going long enough, even a village noodle stall can turn into a global brand.

If you enjoyed this story, share it with your hairdresser, print it out and mail it to your doctor or simply repost on Linkedin.