Culinary knowledge sharing on social media: Case of the 2019 Malaysian World Pastry Champion Wei Loon Tan

Abstract

Culinary knowledge is hard-earned and frugally passed down from one culinarian to another. This frugal practice is, however, gradually diminishing as culinary professionals are increasingly turning to social media to disseminate their culinary knowledge, exposing their intellectual property and culinary secrets publicly amid the process. Such practices come with immense consequences and responsibilities, especially for chefs with higher social status in the culinary domain. Exploring this phenomenon, this paper details how an elite culinarian—Chef Wei Loon Tan, one of three Malaysian pastry chefs who won the 2019 World Pastry Cup—navigates his responsibilities as a culinary elite on Instagram. Adopting an interpretive case study design, this paper focuses on how Wei Loon embraces his ambassadorial and generative roles as a Malaysian culinary knowledge bearer. The research findings converge to form the Generative Model of Culinary Knowledge Sharing, an original conceptualization for knowledge management theory and practice.