Vanilla Crepe, the Malaysian dessert brand known for its French-style mille crepe cakes, has added a new accolade to its record. According to the company’s own announcement, Vanilla Crepe was honored with the Emerging Magnificent Business 2026 Award at the Shanghai International Prestige Business Awards, known as SHIPBA, for 2026.
The Shanghai International Prestige Business Awards is a business-recognition program organized by ShangHai Business Media, a long-established Malaysian business media company. According to the organizer, the awards are intended to commend the achievements and promote the entrepreneurial spirit of outstanding companies, and to help strengthen the brand image of Malaysian enterprises. The program is structured across several categories, including company, industry, and personal honors, with the company honors featuring recognitions such as Signature Outstanding Business, Leading Excellence Business, Emerging Magnificent Business, and Rising Star Business.
For Vanilla Crepe, the Emerging Magnificent Business category reflects the trajectory the brand has followed. Founded in 2014 by chief executive and co-founder Nelson Liew, the company has grown from a single concept into a nationwide chain with more than 20 outlets, and it has been officially recognized by the Malaysia Book of Records as the largest mille crepe chain in the country. An award framed around emerging and fast-growing businesses fits a brand whose story has been defined by steady expansion.
The recognition also continues a pattern of accolades associated with the brand and its founder. Nelson Liew has previously been named among the 100 Most Influential Young Entrepreneurs, and Vanilla Mille Crepe has been recognized with a Best Brands Award by BrandLaureate. Viewed alongside those earlier honors, the SHIPBA recognition adds to a body of external acknowledgment the company has accumulated over the years.
What sets an award like this apart from an internal milestone is that it comes from outside the business. Being named by an external awards program, rather than simply marking one’s own growth, offers a form of third-party acknowledgment that a brand is being noticed within its wider business community. For a homegrown Malaysian dessert brand competing in a crowded food and beverage market, that kind of recognition can reinforce credibility with customers and partners alike.
The award arrives at a point where Vanilla Crepe has already established a clear identity. The brand is built around mille crepe cakes made with French pastry techniques, layering many thin crepes with cream into a single cake, and it has expanded that core product into a wide range of flavors available across its outlets. That combination of a signature product and a recognizable brand is the kind of positioning that business awards programs tend to highlight. More about the brand is available at vanillacrepe.com.
For the company, the significance of the honor is likely to be as much about momentum as about the trophy itself. Awards of this kind are often used by growing businesses as markers along a longer journey, points that acknowledge how far a brand has come while pointing toward where it intends to go. Vanilla Crepe has stated ambitions that extend beyond Malaysia toward a wider Asian presence, and external recognition can support that ambition by raising the brand’s profile.
The Emerging Magnificent Business 2026 Award, in that sense, functions as both an acknowledgment and an encouragement. It recognizes the growth Vanilla Crepe has achieved to date, from its founding through its recognition as the country’s largest mille crepe chain, and it lands as the brand continues to pursue further expansion. For Nelson Liew and his team, it represents another layer added to a story that has been built, much like the brand’s signature cakes, one careful layer at a time.
As Malaysian food and beverage brands increasingly seek recognition on larger stages, Vanilla Crepe’s latest honor illustrates how a locally grown dessert company can earn acknowledgment within the broader business community. The Emerging Magnificent Business 2026 Award at SHIPBA 2026 adds to the brand’s record and to the profile of a company that has spent more than a decade turning a French-inspired dessert into a nationwide name.
