Silence, Brand! Deep Dive: Highway Cafe
🦀 Deep Dive: This Thai cafe is dominating the #ceasefire hashtag on TikTok
“hey this isn’t the usual trend roundup from Silence, Brand!?”
true.
we spotted an internet anomaly and did a deep dive — ENJOY :) 🤿 🫧🦀
How a Cafe in Thailand Unintentionally Hijacked the TikTok Algorithm
Scroll through the TikTok profile of Highway Cafe (@highwaycafe_th), an American diner-inspired eatery in Thailand that looks suspiciously similar to In-N-Out, and you’ll find over 20 posts in a row with viewer counts in the multi-millions—none prominently featuring the restaurant’s food.
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Instead, the cafe has built brand awareness by posting videos of its employees, and though the 230k-follower count boasted by their most featured personality, @warisential, might suggest otherwise, you won’t find any influencer content either.
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The cafe has been consistently producing content since 2022, long before its exponential growth began in February after posting a video of Waris doing the Astro Slide in her uniform and sunglasses that now has over 18 million views. Waris posted her first TikTok in January and did not begin posting videos of herself until after her initial viral moment on the restaurant’s account labeled her as the “Highway Cafe Girl.”
Most of Highway Cafe’s content with Waris features her dancing to popular audios. In one video, she slides into the frame next to a customer eating onion rings soundtracked by “Have you seen my boyfriend?” It’s unclear whether she actually works in the restaurant, or was hired solely to grow the restaurant’s account.
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Recently, the cafe also introduced @pinlukiris, an employee and model known for runway walking through the restaurant. Comments on the account’s videos are rarely about the cafe itself, and both girls have become synonymous with the brand.
Highway Cafe is beginning to function similarly to the Stardust Diner, offering exposure and allowing employees to build their own audience while increasing brand awareness for the restaurant.
It’s the dream of any social manager: low-effort, batchable, evergreen content that goes viral with every post, but is that all there is to it?
Of Highway Cafe’s last 30 posts, 28 captions include #ceasefire—a hashtag associated with the Israel-Hamas War. According to TikTok’s Creator Center, out of the 125,000+ videos using #ceasefire in the last year, 15 of the top 20 most-viewed videos were posted by Highway Cafe.
Thailand leads the “Regional popularity” for the hashtag, followed by four other South Asian countries. The map shows the highest spike in activity along Thailand's Gulf Coast, where Highway Cafe is situated.
Although TikTok has not commented on claims of suppressing war-related content, it is improbable that Highway Cafe's content genuinely represents the most relevant and high-quality material for this hashtag.
Furthermore, it strains credulity to suggest that multiple South Asian countries would organically generate the highest volume of content under this hashtag without some form of algorithmic influence or manipulation. While it is unlikely they are aware of it, the restaurant’s content has inadvertently become a tool for the algorithm to suppress geopolitical information.
Highway Cafe’s unique approach to TikTok, focusing on personality-driven brand awareness over traditional menu awareness, has helped it develop a digital niche as unique as the restaurant itself.
However, its unintentional commandeering of #ceasefire on a platform where algorithms rank light-hearted, shareable content higher than—if not actively promote in place of—relevant, sociopolitical information reveals a complex and potentially problematic facet to the cafe’s digital success and TikTok’s algorithmic recommendations alike.
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Silence, Brand! is an internet culture and marketing newsletter compiled by unhinged brand marketing professionals—an elite army of internet idiots.
Thank you to this installment’s contributors: Ryan Benson, Dayna Castillo, Lenny Leithauser & Benton Williams