Abi Marquez is more than just the ‘Lumpia Queen’
Writer Teresa Tran chats with the Filipina food content creator about her viral rise and her ambition of breaking into the U.S. market
Abi Marquez first gained popularity for her viral TikTok recipes.
Courtesy of NYMA Talent Management
Words by Teresa Tran
When food content creator Abi Marquez stepped foot inside a Trader Joe’s for the first time, she cried. “I would have certain vegetables or ingredients that I want to cook back in the Philippines, but they’re just really difficult to source,” she tells me over Zoom from her hotel in New York City. “And then you just walk into an [American] grocery store where everything is there. And I was jealous.”
This wasn’t the only time Marquez noticed the differences between the United States and her home country, the Philippines. In May, the food influencer—known to her fans as the “Lumpia Queen” for her viral TikTok recipes (the most famous among them incorporating non-traditional ingredients inside lumpia)—flew to New York City for the first time to accept the award for the People’s Voice Winner in the food and drink category, at the annual Webby Awards, an international awards night dubbed the “Oscars of the Internet.” Marquez made history that night as the first Filipina to win the award. Even more impressive? She’s been creating content for less than two years and has already amassed a combined 8.3 million followers across TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.
The food content creator has had a meteoric rise to success.
Courtesy of NYMA Talent Management
Not one to waste an opportunity, Marquez made it her mission to make the most out of her first trip to the States and try all the New York food staples like the hot dog, bagel, and pizza, citing “the expensive plane tickets” as the reason. For her, the biggest difference in food between the Philippines and the States is more the quality over the quantity. “Like anywhere else, you can find good ones. You can find bad ones. It’s just a matter of selection,” she says. In the Philippines, she’d shop at wet markets, called palengke, which are separate from air-conditioned brick-and-mortar grocery stores. And as a self-titled night owl, she typically does most of her grocery shopping in the evenings. This means she’d often have to settle with whatever ingredients are left. On the flip side, she notes her awe at how vegetables and produce in the United States are readily available and fresh, no matter the time of day. “I was like, ‘Oh my god, now I have to come back to the Philippines and deal with gray vegetables!’”
But it was New York’s work culture that left the biggest impression on her. “Everybody seems like they’re in a rush,” she says. “The assertiveness and the aggression in the streets is wild. Back home [in the Philippines], everybody’s just warm, hospitable, taking their time. But I guess that’s what makes New York really fascinating. It really inspires me.”
Giving her best
At just 24 years old, Marquez is eager to explore her potential. But if we’re being honest, she’s already a bit ahead of the curve for her age group. In the last two years alone, she’s been included as part of this year’s Forbes 30 under 30, was nominated for a James Beard award, and received TikTok’s Creator of the Year award in Food in 2023. How did she accomplish so many successes in such a short span of time? She tells me her work ethic is simply a manifestation of how she was raised.
“My parents taught me that in everything I do, I don’t have to be the best, but I have to give my best,” Marquez says. Born and raised in the province of Laguna in the Philippines to traditional Filipino parents, she found her initial inspiration from watching the way her analytical engineer father arranged the table and the way her stay-at-home mother cooked their family’s meals. Her parents never worked professionally in the food industry, but it was their passionate diligence and attention to detail that informed the bar that she set out for herself, including her academic studies and later on, her career in food content creation.
Marquez spent most of her childhood studying. She excelled academically, going from being her elementary school’s valedictorian and sitting in the top academic section of her science high school, to earning a degree in hotel, restaurant, and institution management from the University of the Philippines in 2022. Food content creation came into her life during the last semester of her senior year in college. Her first viral video was a five-ingredient easy tuna pasta recipe and was only the third TikTok video she posted on the platform. “The first two [videos] were really just me cooking, slapping music, and just for the joy of doing a video,” she says.
A part of the initial appeal of TikTok—and why Marquez’s first few videos performed unexpectedly high—was due to the fact that she had no intention of going viral or becoming a food content creator. As such is the case for many people who start out sharing their hobbies on social media for the fun of it, rather than with the goal of monetization and brand building. Without these initial pressures, she was able to find an outlet of expression for herself and a window into a world more creative than her upbringing, which proved refreshing for someone who mostly did STEM all her life. Then opportunities came calling. And Marquez answered them with enthusiasm. “Before I graduated college, I pretty much decided that I’m gonna do this full-time,” she says. “And [so far], it really worked out for me.”
Birth of the ‘Lumpia Queen’
The video that fast-tracked her career and gave Marquez the nickname “Lumpia Queen” was a fluke from experimenting with leftovers from a pool party she unofficially catered as a favor. Known in her circle as the designated friend who cooks, she’d often buy the ingredients and keep all the leftovers afterward. On one occasion, she had some remaining marshmallows and chocolate. Moved by a sudden spark of inspiration, she looked up if anyone had done a lumpia recipe with them. No one had. So she filmed herself stuffing them in lumpia wrappers, posted the video on TikTok, and it racked up three million views within an hour. It was quickly obvious she had struck content gold.
“I had this good feeling in my stomach,” Marquez says. “I just followed that instinct.” For the rest of that week, she published the same experiment with little tweaks based on people’s suggestions in the comments. The weirder and the more outlandish the experiments became, the more viral the videos would become. “People would just keep commenting ‘What happens if you put this in lumpia wrapper?’ as a way to make fun of me,” she tells me. “But the thing is if you make fun of me, I will do it. I like being made fun of and [in the Philippines], we call it [putting on] a dog show.” You tease her, she will tease back.
Before me, albeit through a Zoom screen, Marquez comes off as bubbly, outgoing, and easy to laugh. As we chat, it’s obvious she’s an incredibly ambitious and determined person, with a clear-eyed focus on what she wants, a sensitivity to new ideas and people, and strong opinions on her industry. I remembered stumbling upon her peach mango lumpia recipe while scrolling the app nearly two years ago, in which she stuffs peach mango pie inside a lumpia wrapper, an odd choice for a Filipino spring roll known for its more savory ingredients like pork, cabbage, and other veggies. The peach mango lumpia video had only one million views at the time when she first posted it. Since then, the video has gained more than 31 million views. “The Internet is meant to be fun and you're supposed to be entertaining,” Marquez says. It seems this approach is not just the recipe for lumpia wrappers. It’s her recipe for success.
A different type of professional
Don’t get her wrong, Marquez understands the clickbait nature of short-form videos for the sake of views and she’s not a big fan of them. “There will be TikTok creators who purposefully make stupid stuff, you know? Have you watched food videos that are like, ‘Is this meant to piss me off?’” She’s referring to TikTok videos that like to mix, mash, and cook up super processed foods one after the other. It’s videos like those that have created tension between people in the professional food industry such as cooks and chefs, and food content creators who might have come from an untraditional food background, like Marquez.
“What creators are doing versus cooks, they're very different,” Marquez elaborates. “And there are things that are challenging to us. We're not professional chefs. We're not professional cooks. So you can't expect us to break down a whole lobster perfectly. But there are things that just cooks cannot do from the skillset that creators have, like brainstorming, storyboarding, writing a viral hook. So it comes with different skillsets.”
Marquez is a rare instance of someone who has turned a few viral moments into a career.
Courtesy of NYMA Talent Management
Marquez knows TikTok isn’t that serious, but she treats it seriously, while still maintaining an irreverent tone and brand. “I think the keyword should always be, I guess, ‘valuable,’” she says. “And what's valuable to other people, that varies over time. Because value comes in two things, at least for me. It's either entertaining or educational. And if you provide entertainment, you're able to make people laugh and smile and give people valuable information that they cannot help but just take in and watch.” If anything, chefs, cooks, and food content creators can work together and produce something amazing, as she has proven through her TikTok collaborations with former Michelin chef Kevin Lee and chef Andre Rush. “I think if you are doing things genuinely and with good intentions, you'll not have trouble finding people who will respect you,” she says.
Regarding intentions, Marquez intends to do food content creation for a long time, as long as she can, even with its challenges. When I ask her if she ever gets exhausted following trends and having to go viral to make money on TikTok, which pays its creators through the TikTok Creativity Program (originally the TikTok Creator Fund) based partially on views, she admits it can be draining. “Yeah. It is one of the fears of being a creator because the Internet is really fast-paced,” she reveals. “People's preferences vary a lot and they always like something new. But as a creator, it's one of our responsibilities to make sure we keep pushing out refreshing content.” With that said, she’s not worried about running out of ideas or competing with anyone, but herself. “There's no formula to a viral video or a good video,” she says. “[To be sustainable in this career] means always being curious and always learning about what you’re doing right now and making sure that in everything I put out, it’s always at a certain standard.”
An example of this standard shows up during our conversation when she tells me she’s in New York to meet creators and make appearances. She’s been receiving a lot of invites to participate in food-related content. This is just a typical day in her life. Besides traveling a lot, even outside of filming, she’s spending her free time practicing cooking. But her top priority? Learning about the local food and produce here in the States. I tell her she has to visit the Jollibee’s in Times Square, and that if she’s going to visit U.S. grocery stores like Trader Joe’s, H-Mart, and Whole Foods, she ought to check out Aldi’s and see how the prices for ingredients vary—because not everyone can afford to shop at the former stores consistently. She studiously and excitedly jots all of my suggestions down, thanking me for the tips. “So that when I make my videos, I’m more informed of how I can make my content more relatable to people who live in this city,” she says.
Going global
Marquez’s also strategic about her collaborations. She’s working with freelance editors and writers to help with some of the behind the scenes of her content. She’s hired a manager to help her talk to companies and field potential brand deals and clients. She’s networking with major celebrities, including Filipino American singer Saweetie, and content creators like Uncle Roger and Albert Cancook. All of these collaborations, as well as her frequent trips to the States, are a part of her larger goal to break into the U.S. market. “I started out with the mindset that if I’m going to shoot for the best, I’m going to shoot for something on a global scale,” Marquez says.
She believes it’s the right time to do so. “Filipino food has had, in the past couple of years, been getting itself known in the world. That’s what I’m trying to say. It’s time,” she says. In everything she does, from her collaborations to her trips to the U.S., Marquez is able to bring her Filipino food and culture with her everywhere she goes. “I know that I would never be satisfied until I make it here.”
With the global creator economy currently worth $156.37 billion as of this year and expected to hit $528.39 billion by 2030, we’re going to be seeing more and more people with untraditional backgrounds such as Marquez, disrupting hierarchical industries like the food industry—particularly an American one filled with food celebrities who often travel to Global South countries like the Philippines for food tourism content, while not always respecting the local people and culture. “I think it’s a matter of filling these spaces with someone that looks and is Filipino. And that’s also a young woman. Especially in the food industry, which is dominated by men,” Marquez says.
Marquez currently has a cookbook in the works.
Courtesy of NYMA Talent Management
Regarding future projects, Marquez is looking to branch out from the digital world and into the physical realm: bookstores. More specifically, she’s working on a cookbook. “I want something tangible to give to my community,” she says. “And what better way to do that than a collection of recipes throughout the years that they can make at home?”
Marquez’s not stopping there. She’s keen to travel and expand her current content to include other cultures and people around the world. She’s also interested in dabbling in other forms of media, including traditional media and long-form content. “As an ambitious Asian woman, I want to explore everything that I can,” she says. “I will do anything once. Maybe not bungee jumping, but I will do everything at least once.”
Published on October 30, 2024
Words by Teresa Tran
Teresa Tran (she/her) is an American-born Vietnamese writer and filmmaker based in Atlanta, Georgia, with a background in theater and community organizing. She has a B.A. in English and Women’s Studies and a B.S.Ed in English Education from the University of Georgia and studied British Literature at the University of Oxford. She is currently writing and directing her own short films and working on her debut novel. You can find her on Twitter at @teresatran__.