How can a café or food brand get recommended by ChatGPT in Malaysia?

A café or food brand gets recommended by ChatGPT in Malaysia mostly through what others have written about it. In our tests of food and beverage (F&B) questions, ChatGPT took its restaurant, stall and café picks from food guides, ranking lists, listings and tourism guides. In the few order-ahead questions we had, such as cakes or catering, the seller's own website led instead.

Picture a customer typing "Any nice café for breakfast near me this weekend? Somewhere comfortable to sit with my parents." When we asked questions like that, about one link in twelve under ChatGPT's answers went to an eatery's own website.

Where does ChatGPT read about cafés and food brands in Malaysia?

ChatGPT read about Malaysian cafés and food brands on other people's pages far more than it did for service businesses. We went back to six of our saved tests and sorted every link under ChatGPT's answers with one set of rules. The six tests also asked about clinics, tuition centres, aircon firms and other services, so we could compare.

So for service businesses, about half the links were the business's own pages. For places to eat, hardly any were. The middle row is small, only four questions asked twice each, so treat it as a first sign and not a rule.

Which pages does ChatGPT cite when it recommends a café or restaurant?

When ChatGPT recommended a café, restaurant or stall, it mostly cited articles and listings written by someone else. Which kind depended on the city and the dish.

Each test has its own article with the detail:

• KL nasi lemak: blogs and ranking sites led, as our nasi lemak test shows.
• Penang seafood: the state's tourism guides were cited in every answer, in our tourist test.
• Miri and Sandakan cafés: every link was TripAdvisor, in one answer per town, in our Sabah and Sarawak test.

OpenAI's own example of how ChatGPT searches is a food one. Ask for good restaurants nearby and it "may rewrite your prompt into the search query 'top restaurants San Francisco'" (OpenAI). Our reading: a "top restaurants" search brings back lists and guides, not one café's homepage.

When does ChatGPT cite a café or food brand's own website?

In the four order-ahead questions we had, ChatGPT cited the food seller's own website far more than it did for places to eat. That's eight answers, so it's a lead to test, not a rule. For questions like "Can you recommend a home baker in PJ who does custom birthday cakes?", about seven links in ten went to the sellers' own sites. Those pages listed what a food guide can't: cake designs, prices, minimum orders and delivery areas.

Cafés with a real website got cited too. In our two Bangsar brunch answers, four of nine links went to the cafés' own sites. And in our just-opened test, two new cafés with no pages beyond "new openings" round-ups weren't recommended at all.

A smaller café or stall can still get in. In the nasi lemak test, famous names held the plain "best" question, and lesser-known stalls appeared once the customer asked for something specific, like late-night hours.

What can't these tests tell a café or food brand about ChatGPT recommendations?

• How much each page counted. We saw which pages ChatGPT cited, not how it weighed them.
• The ChatGPT app. We used OpenAI's API on two days in October 2026. The app, with maps and your location, can differ.
• Every dish and town. Forty-four food answers is a small set, and one test used a different model.

What should a café or food brand do to get recommended by ChatGPT?

Some of this work is off your own website. For a café or food brand, that's where ChatGPT did most of its reading.

1. Request EasyFound's free check. See what ChatGPT says when customers ask for food like yours, then go through it with us on a free call.
2. Read what's written about you first. Search your name on TripAdvisor, place listings and your mall's directory. Fix wrong hours, addresses and closed days, and keep them the same everywhere.
3. Get into the guides for your town and dish. That may be a food blog, a "best of" list or your state tourism body's food guide. Invite writers for the one thing you do best.
4. Keep a simple page of your own. State your area, hours, signature dishes and what makes you different, in plain text. Here's how to write a page ChatGPT will quote.
5. If you take orders, publish the order details. Products, prices, minimum order, lead time and delivery area belong on your own site as text.
6. Don't rely on Instagram alone. None of the food links in these tests was an Instagram or TikTok page. Our Instagram and TikTok check explains why.

EasyFound is a founder-led AI SEO service in the Klang Valley, so we're one of the options for this work. We check six AI tools (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode) in English, Malay and Chinese, then work on the pages they draw on. The free check is below.