Popping Up, Selling Out: How Ninong's Dessert Lab Made Ube the Main Event

Ninong's Dessert Lab has spent over a decade turning ube, the vibrant purple yam at the heart of Filipino desserts, into a household name. What started as a family restaurant in Granada Hills became a fan-favorite CPG brand after its Ube Pancake Mix, Ube Spread, and Coconut Syrup found a second life online, on Amazon, and through retail.

The product already had proof: a 4.3-star average across hundreds of Amazon ratings and a loyal following of ube lovers. The next challenge was turning that proven product into a proven experience: getting people off the internet and into a room to taste it, talk about it, and post about it. With backing from Shopline, Ninong's partnered with Relish to do exactly that.

The Opportunity
Ninong's wasn't trying to convince anyone that ube desserts were good; the reviews already said so. The challenge was different: how do you turn a shelf-stable mix into a can't-miss, in-person moment, and get a small, two-person team the local buzz that a national brand takes for granted?

With a Shopline-funded activation on the table, Ninong's had the resources to do something bigger than another product photo: a real event, with real creators, built to prove the format could work before scaling it further.

The Strategy
Relish and Shopline came together to launch a Relisher Popup Event, a ube brunch experience where local creators didn't just try the product; they lived it.

Key tactics included:

• Signature-event storytelling: Framing the activation as an experience, a ube brunch, rather than a standard product sampling.
• Local creator network: Sourcing and screening Relishers across Los Angeles and beyond to bring authentic, in-person energy to the event.
• Multi-platform capture: Encouraging both Instagram and TikTok content so the moment traveled across feeds, not just one channel.
• Discovery-first framing: The best-performing creators skipped the templated hashtags and posted the event as a local food discovery ("this pop-up was made for you") rather than a branded ad.
• The tone: warm, nostalgic, and unmistakably Filipino, built around family, flavor, and firsts.

The Results

• 20 pieces of creator content
• 26,938 total views
• 1,055 engagements
• 3.9% engagement rate

Why It Matters
Ninong's proved something many proven-but-quiet CPG brands need to hear: the product isn't the risk; visibility is.

With Shopline sponsoring the activation and Relish running the network, a two-person team did what usually takes an in-house marketing department: turn an Amazon success story into a real-world moment, powered by the people who actually love the product.

Because the best validation doesn't come from a star rating.

It comes from a room full of people posting about it before they've even finished the bite.

Ready to bring your Shopline brand to life locally? 👉 Let's talk.