Grubbing For Lunch

By Sean Gregory

Would you like worms with that grasshopper? A former Thai disc jockey and her ex-shrimp-farmer boyfriend have launched Insects Inter, Thailand's first fast-food chain specializing in cooked bugs. Water beetles and scorpions have long been popular foods in the country's impoverished northern provinces, but Pailin Thanomkait, 32, and Satapol Polprapas, 29, are betting that middle-income urbanites and adventurous Western visitors will pay 70-c- for a box of crispy fried crickets with chili sauce. The company's network of kiosks has doubled to 60 in the past four months, and Insects Inter aims to have 200 outlets in Thailand by the end of next year. The company's bugs come from 5,000 farmers who breed them. Thanomkait and Polprapas are negotiating with investors from Indonesia to open franchises there, and they're also targeting South Korea, where street vendors already peddle bugs. --By Sean Gregory