MILKLAB had a clear ambition: grow from an Australian café favourite into the barista milk of choice across Asia.
The brand has a model that travels well. Wherever there is an established café culture, MILKLAB can build around the baristas and cafés already shaping how people drink coffee, without fundamentally changing its positioning market by market.
But expansion brought a harder question. Every market came with different coffee cultures, competitors and consumer behaviours, and the team did not have a consistent way to understand where the brand was winning, where it was falling behind or whether its investment was translating into growth.
MILKLAB became an Ideally customer in July 2025, using the platform across Australia, New Zealand and its priority Asian markets. In Thailand and Indonesia, the team wanted an objective read on the consumer that could sit alongside feedback from suppliers and customer teams on the ground.
Before Ideally, three barriers consistently got in the way: distance, language and cost. MILKLAB does not have an in-house research team, and traditional quantitative studies were difficult to justify market by market. Much of the local picture had therefore been built through anecdote, which was useful for context but harder to compare across markets, benchmark over time or confidently take into a boardroom.
The Insight
MILKLAB began building that baseline in 2025 with U&A studies in Thailand and Indonesia. The Indonesia study fielded on 18 July 2025 with 806 respondents, followed by Thailand on 8 August 2025 with 458 respondents.
The research gave MILKLAB a consistent view of how consumers buy and drink plant-based milk, where they consume coffee, which brands they know and where MILKLAB sits against competitors.
In Indonesia, where MILKLAB had been operating for more than five years, 20% of consumers were already aware of the brand. Knowing that one in five consumers recognised MILKLAB gave the team a solid foundation to build from and a benchmark against which future growth could be measured.
Thailand told a different story. MILKLAB had been in the market for less than two years but had already reached 17% brand awareness, giving the team an early indication that its market entry strategy was gaining traction.
That gave the team a much more useful benchmark for growth. Rather than looking at awareness in isolation, MILKLAB could see where it sat within each market and track that position over time.
For the global brand team, it also created one consistent way to compare markets, while local teams could use the findings to inform media, café partnerships, sales priorities and channel strategy.
The café is core but the occasion is broader
MILKLAB was built for cafés, so understanding where consumers drink plant-based milk with coffee was central to the research.
In Indonesia, consumption was almost evenly split between home at 51% and cafés at 49%, rising to 56% in cafés across Greater Jakarta and Western Java.
Thailand skewed more heavily towards home, with 64% consuming plant-based milk in coffee at home and 35% in cafés.
That mattered for a brand historically built around cafés. Stronger-than-expected at-home consumption showed the opportunity extended beyond the coffee shop and gave MILKLAB greater confidence to consider extending the brand into retail in both Indonesia and Thailand than previously planned.
The café is core but the occasion is broader
MILKLAB was built for cafés, so understanding where consumers drink plant-based milk with coffee was central to the research.
In Indonesia, consumption was almost evenly split between home at 51% and cafés at 49%, rising to 56% in cafés across Greater Jakarta and Western Java.
Thailand skewed more heavily towards home, with 64% consuming plant-based milk in coffee at home and 35% in cafés.
That mattered for a brand historically built around cafés. Stronger-than-expected at-home consumption showed the opportunity extended beyond the coffee shop and gave MILKLAB greater confidence to consider extending the brand into retail in both Indonesia and Thailand than previously planned.
Brand and Marketing Goals
The research also gave MILKLAB a way to test whether the positioning it had built around coffee and café culture was translating into consumer perception.
Across both Thailand and Indonesia, MILKLAB scored highest among the brands measured on the attribute “best alternative milk for coffee.”
For the team, this was one of the most important signals in the research. MILKLAB has deliberately positioned itself as a milk made for coffee, so seeing consumers associate the brand with that proposition showed that the positioning was translating across markets and cultures.
It gave the team confidence that the go-to-market approach was working. The next opportunity is to protect that position while introducing MILKLAB to a broader group of category buyers.
Brand and Marketing Goals
The research also gave MILKLAB a way to test whether the positioning it had built around coffee and café culture was translating into consumer perception.
Across both Thailand and Indonesia, MILKLAB scored highest among the brands measured on the attribute “best alternative milk for coffee.”
For the team, this was one of the most important signals in the research. MILKLAB has deliberately positioned itself as a milk made for coffee, so seeing consumers associate the brand with that proposition showed that the positioning was translating across markets and cultures.
It gave the team confidence that the go-to-market approach was working. The next opportunity is to protect that position while introducing MILKLAB to a broader group of category buyers.
Consumers who knew MILKLAB also held strong perceptions of the brand.
In Thailand, 54% associated MILKLAB with high quality, 51% with trust and 47% with great taste.
In Indonesia, 53% associated it with great taste, while 41% described it as trusted and 41% as high quality.
The research also provided another way to understand where awareness was coming from. In the most recent studies, 63% of consumers in Thailand and 67% in Indonesia who knew MILKLAB cited social media as a source of awareness, ahead of online advertising, in-store and other channels.
That was an encouraging signal for a brand that has focused heavily on connecting with consumers and baristas through social media, particularly TikTok and Instagram. In Indonesia, MILKLAB was also named Most Engaging Consumer Brand at the FMCG Asia Awards for its social campaigns and wider industry collaborations.
The Outcome
The research has given MILKLAB a clearer view of where the brand sits in Thailand and Indonesia, how the markets differ and where the biggest growth opportunities remain.
It has also changed how the brand marketing team uses research. Without an in-house insights function, the team can now check in with consumers directly without the distance, language and cost barriers that previously made international research difficult.
The team plans to run the research twice a year: setting goals and investment priorities, measuring what changed in market, then using those findings to adjust the next round of activity.
The data now feeds into annual brand planning and goal setting, as well as how MILKLAB reports progress in these markets to its executive team and board.
The Outcome
The research has given MILKLAB a clearer view of where the brand sits in Thailand and Indonesia, how the markets differ and where the biggest growth opportunities remain.
It has also changed how the brand marketing team uses research. Without an in-house insights function, the team can now check in with consumers directly without the distance, language and cost barriers that previously made international research difficult.
The team plans to run the research twice a year: setting goals and investment priorities, measuring what changed in market, then using those findings to adjust the next round of activity.
The data now feeds into annual brand planning and goal setting, as well as how MILKLAB reports progress in these markets to its executive team and board.
The Results
The research now runs two times a year, up from annually, supporting market planning, local decision-making, executive reporting and board conversations.
Subsequent studies show brand health growing and consumers increasingly seeing MILKLAB in the channels where the business is investing.
Stronger-than-expected at-home coffee consumption moved retail higher up the strategic agenda.
Strong brand credentials around quality, trust and taste among consumers who know MILKLAB.
Social media is a major awareness driver, cited by 63% of consumers who know MILKLAB in Thailand and 67% in Indonesia.
Noumi reported a 22% uplift in plant-based milk export sales to Asia in FY26, with Indonesia and Thailand playing an important role in MILKLAB’s international growth strategy. This is broader business performance and is not directly attributed to Ideally.
The Results
The research now runs two times a year, up from annually, supporting market planning, local decision-making, executive reporting and board conversations.
Subsequent studies show brand health growing and consumers increasingly seeing MILKLAB in the channels where the business is investing.
Stronger-than-expected at-home coffee consumption moved retail higher up the strategic agenda.
Strong brand credentials around quality, trust and taste among consumers who know MILKLAB.
Social media is a major awareness driver, cited by 63% of consumers who know MILKLAB in Thailand and 67% in Indonesia.
Noumi reported a 22% uplift in plant-based milk export sales to Asia in FY26, with Indonesia and Thailand playing an important role in MILKLAB’s international growth strategy. This is broader business performance and is not directly attributed to Ideally.
“Previously, we didn’t have a market insights tool that connected us directly with consumers in these markets. Ideally replaced the anecdotal feedback we were relying on with objective data, giving us a common language for where the brand is at and how it’s performing.”
General Manager Marketing, Noumi Ltd
