Traditional gultik and soto rarely come with a place a young customer wants to stay in. Masnug keeps the recipes and raises everything around them: a comfortable space, a standardised kitchen, a six-person team, and marketing with Semarang food creators that passed 580K TikTok views.

What Masnug is

Gulai tikungan ("gultik") and soto are street-food staples that most Indonesians already love. What they usually lack is a place a young customer would sit down in, photograph and come back to. I founded Gultik & Soto Masnug in March 2024 in Banyumanik, Semarang, about ten minutes from the UNDIP Tembalang campus, to bring those traditional recipes into a comfortable place to eat and hang out, with WiFi and board games, for Gen Z, families and the neighbourhood.

Street-food flavour, five-star quality.

The positioning of Gultik & Soto Masnug

That line is the whole strategy. The recipes stay traditional, because that is what people come for. Everything around the plate, from the space and the service to the portions and the way the brand speaks online, is raised to a standard the usual gultik stall does not aim for.

What I built

I own and run the business: brand, operations, team, procurement and marketing.

The operating system behind the plate

  • Standardised production

    Recipes, portions and preparation steps are fixed, so the taste stays the same whoever is on shift and the kitchen is ready to scale.

  • A team of six

    Training, task allocation and performance reviews, so service quality does not depend on one person.

  • Procurement and budget

    Supplier negotiation and daily budget control, where a small kitchen's margins are won or lost.

  • A place to stay

    A comfortable space with WiFi and board games that turns a quick meal into a place to hang out.

Marketing with Semarang food creators

Masnug's marketing leans on local food creators rather than paid ads. Their videos, reposted on the Masnug TikTok account, add up to more than 580K views and 30K likes, and the most popular one passed 140K views. Masnug's own Instagram and TikTok accounts fill the gaps with aesthetic, lifestyle content for Gen Z.

  • 580K+

    TikTok views

    from creator videos

  • 30K+

    likes

    TikTok and Instagram

  • 140K+

    views

    on the top creator video

Results

  • A 5-star Google Maps rating with 300+ positive reviews within the first six months of operation.
  • A brand known among UNDIP students and locals, built from scratch around street-food flavour and five-star quality.
  • A standardised kitchen and a six-person team, with procurement, supplier negotiation and daily budget control run by me.

Where Masnug is now

Masnug is currently moving to a new location. The brand, the recipes, the production system and the team carry over, which is exactly what the standardisation was built for.

Lessons

Food is the product, but consistency is the brand. A campaign that brings students in only pays off if the tenth visit tastes like the first, which is why operating procedures matter as much as the recipe. The other lesson is that reviews compound: once the 5-star rating was visible on Maps, the creator videos had something concrete to point to.

Building an F&B brand?

I am happy to talk about positioning, operations and creator marketing.

Talk about F&B branding

Questions people ask

  • A gulai tikungan and soto brand in Banyumanik, Semarang, that serves traditional recipes in a comfortable place to eat and hang out, positioned as "street-food flavour, five-star quality".
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