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Let's Walk (with Halli)
Jing Gao : The Fly By Jing Revolution. From Sichuan to Success
The journey from rootlessness to cultural pride isn't a straight line - just ask Jing Gao. Born in Chengdu, China, the founder of Fly By Jing spent her childhood moving across continents, adopting a Western name and working tirelessly to blend in as the only Asian kid in her schools. But a remarkable transformation began when she reconnected with her culinary heritage as an adult.
In this captivating conversation, Jing reveals how food became her pathway back to identity. From starting a food blog that caught the attention of celebrity chefs to opening (and painfully losing) her first restaurant in Shanghai, each step prepared her for what would become Fly By Jing - now one of America's fastest-growing condiment brands.
The story behind Fly By Jing's viral chili crisp is both entrepreneurial masterclass and spiritual journey. Jing shares the raw details of her Kickstarter success, manufacturing challenges in China, and a shipping disaster that became an unexpected brand-building moment. With remarkable candor, she explores how business growth forced personal growth - confronting fears, embracing vulnerability, and finding purpose beyond profit.
Most powerfully, Jing articulates how her mission transcends sauce, challenging perceptions of Chinese cuisine as "cheap" while creating space for authentic cultural expression. Her ambition? To make chili crisp as ubiquitous in American homes as ketchup, while staying true to Sichuan culinary traditions.
Whether you're building a business, searching for identity, or simply curious about the woman behind the condiment taking over your social feed, this conversation offers wisdom on resilience, adaptability, and the courage to embrace what makes you different. Have you tried it on ice cream yet? You should.
well, good to see you. How are you?
Speaker 2:good to see you too, my friend. How have you been?
Speaker 1:I've been great. I just came back from uh. I was in new york and I and then I I went to panama city for the first time, which was great wow and now I'm back home in Iceland.
Speaker 2:How is Panama City? That's like such an exotic place of the planet somehow.
Speaker 1:Panama City is great. I was there only for two days I'm working on a project with the city but I got to see the first time visiting. I got to see the canal, which was really, really fun. I got to see different parts of the city, the old town. It's a beautiful, beautiful place.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's phenomenal. My week hasn't been that exciting. I've just been working. I've been working on making some incredibly important sneaker commercials but, you know, with some fun people and maybe a celebrity here or there, you know we'll never know who those are because the NDAs they'll come for me in the NDAs. But yeah, los Angeles weather's good. We're busy-ish, you know. It's like we talked about the other day. It's been challenging sometimes with what's going on in our little world over here, but I had a really fun food excursion this week.
Speaker 1:What did you?
Speaker 2:do Well. So a beautiful friend of ours who's a Michelin-level chef, my friend chef Joseph Geiskopf. He used to live here. I met him because I'm a chatty Cathy.
Speaker 2:I was just working at a coffee shop in Echo Park and he used to work at Noma, he used to work at Vespertine and he like a very high level of cooking and it was kind of odd that in this Echo Park we had like thisavian, Japanese kind of. This is like almost eight years ago now. Everything was black and white in Echo Park, which is quite sparkly and like hippie and colorful, and then I walked in there and they had something called the black sesame latte.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Which now I think, is everywhere, I think even like Starbucks, or somebody has a version of that, of course, but it blew my mind. And then, of course it just the chef was making some serious noma style food. Now, if people don't know what noma is, it's that fancy, fancy, fancy michelin restaurant in copenhagen that does molecular cooking and very you know, very thoughtful and blah, blah, blah food.
Speaker 2:So so, uh, I was blown away that this was so cost effective and like it was, you know, and and economical and so so good, but you know that place died. You know it's, it's a so good, but you know that place died. You know it's hard, even here when you have millions of people. I mean, you know, in Iceland restaurants will open when I come home for summer and it's gone in the wintertime. There's no consistency with what you can do because we just don't have enough people to patronize places. But this friend of mine, dear friend of mine, he's had to move around, like to Washington DC and Seattle, and now they're in Texas just to kind of chase where the opportunities are and and uh, and they came back to town and had a pop-up and I was so excited, like, like had a, had a incredible pop-up inside another restaurant. He kind of cooks Japanese and it's just like, literally my favorite thing to do is to eat. So you know what?
Speaker 2:who we're talking to today's got me tickled pink. I'm very excited because Fly by Jing is literally one of like the main. The chili crisp is like one of the main things that I discovered in COVID and many different chili crisps have kind of come since, but the empress of that is definitely Jing, that's for sure. That's in everybody's household. That I know. If you don't have it, what are you doing? It all wrong.
Speaker 1:So I'm excited to hear more about Jing yeah. Jing Gao, the founder of Love by Jing, is who I'm going to go walk with, and I'm really excited about this. I'm not a huge foodie, by the way. I mean, I like good food, but it's not something I spend a lot of time thinking about. Wow, I haven't tried the sauce. I'm going to definitely try it as soon as.
Speaker 1:I can. It's not available everywhere, but I've heard amazing things and I'm really excited. She founded the company in I think it was 2018. So it has had explosive growth and I think the timing was great. I think COVID was a time for them to explode. They were viral. I think they have multiple viral moments. Hopefully we'll get to talk about it. And then I just want to get to know her and how she does this, Because I think she was able to build this thing from the ground up, from nothing.
Speaker 2:That's what I mean. I mean being a woman-owned business, an immigrant I mean I mean being a woman owned business, an immigrant owned business. I mean I'm a fan of those two things and I try and champion that in all of my consumerism. That I try not to. I try not to go with like big box things and I'd rather directly shop my makeup from the drag queen that I love and adore and you know, shout out to Trixie Mattel and, and you know, and it's I mean literally down to my toilet paper, down to my Chili Crisp, to the olive oil, to all this stuff. I usually just get really, really small with it because I this is my home turf. I'm a foodie, like I will travel to the ends of the earth for this, that and the other. I will drive Los Angeles across for a $2 taco because I know it's going to change my life. So I'm very excited.
Speaker 2:I mean I use Chili Crisp on basically anything I can get my hands on. I'll put that on ice cream, I put it on toast, I put it in my dish, I put it in everything. So I mean people go, yeah, ice cream. I'm like I've been doing that forever. Put syrup and chili on top of the Chili Crisp game. Game changer, I mean just like I challenge you to try it, yes, and anybody who's listening, absolutely, and it will not go wrong.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, we're going to chat in LA and I'm really excited to talk to her and just get to know her and finally get to try the chili chili crisp oh my God, and just the flavors. I mean, I've read a lot about her and I'm super excited.
Speaker 2:I'm so excited to talk to you on the other end when you finally tasted this, because then we're going to have a discovery journey together. It's going to be exciting.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:All right honey.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'll see you after we record and listen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:Bye, bye.
Speaker 3:So now I live in Vegas.
Speaker 1:What is that like?
Speaker 3:It's great Like there's so much Vegas is like growing very quickly. It's just like a very convenient lifestyle. Everything that you need is within a five to ten minute drive. It actually feels quite small. You've got everything you need and for me, the most important thing was like proximity to good food, and Vegas has great food.
Speaker 1:Even outside of that, Especially outside.
Speaker 3:So yeah, outside of the center, outside of the strip, that's where all the great food is. There's actually a really big Chinatown in Vegas where there's like, all kinds of great Asian food.
Speaker 1:And that's your big thing. Food, food, and Asian food in particular. Yes, how did that happen?
Speaker 3:Well, I have to kind of start the story from.
Speaker 1:When.
Speaker 3:I was born. So I was born in Chengdu, which is the capital city of Sichuan province in China. It's probably like nothing that you would expect. It's kind of like a continent, more than anything. It's so big and Sichuan is in the southwest. It's known for the most flavorful, delicious and also spicy cuisine. I was born there.
Speaker 3:My dad, he was a nuclear physicist and he was a professor. So we moved around with his job quite a lot, moving to almost a different country every year up until high school. So we moved to different countries across Europe and I, from a very young age, learned to adapt to new environments when I was five or six. Even then I just wanted to really blend in, not stick out, and I always stuck out because I was always the only Asian kid. So I went by a Western name, jenny, at a very young age and I was Jenny for most of my life. Eventually it was like through food that I started to find myself again or sort of reconnect with my sense of self and identity. So eventually we ended up in Canada and we stayed there.
Speaker 1:How old were you at at this point?
Speaker 3:I was in like middle school and then, you know, all that time we would go and visit my family, extended family, in china. I was the only child, so it was just me and my parents and I ended up, you know, going to school, going to college. There I studied business and then came out and started my career in the corporate world.
Speaker 1:Where was your start? Where did you?
Speaker 3:So I did some investment banking and so I tried it. It wasn't for me. Around that time, like I actually in my last year of college, I ended up on an exchange semester in Beijing, which really opened my eyes to modern China. There was a lot of like really interesting people living in Beijing at the time from all over the world, and I loved that energy. It was really surprising to me what I saw, and it was then that I sort of kind of like discovered how incredible Chinese food was. For me it started out as like just eating and exploring. So, like I said earlier, China is more of a continent than anything. All of the different provinces and the different regions have like wildly different cuisines and there's so much like it's literally 5,000 years of culinary heritage that just really the rest of the world knows nothing about what I was seeing I wanted to share. So I had this like food blog. I call it Jing Theory. What age are?
Speaker 1:you at this point.
Speaker 3:I think I'm like 19 or 20. I think you know there wasn't a lot of people writing about Chinese food in English, so it got some attention. And you know, when celebrity chefs would come to China they would have me take them around to eat. I would be sometimes an on-screen guide. I would write for magazines and you know travel and food magazines about China.
Speaker 3:So for me, like what initially started out as just like pure interest turned into, you know, more of a kind of purposeful endeavor when I realized like I was actually able to shine light on something that you know really was underrepresented and misunderstood. You know there's all kinds of misconceptions like Chinese food is unhealthy, is, you know, low quality, is cheap. For me it just became more of a mission to shine light on what it really is and dispel some of those misconceptions, and so it was that like kind of self-expression piece that led me to quitting my job and starting to really like focus on food full time. Then I think the food career really started taking off when I moved to Shanghai, and I moved with a job with Frog Design. I was their head of business development for Asia and it was great.
Speaker 3:But that brought me to Shanghai and that's where I started to really take this like Chinese food. That brought me to Shanghai and that's where I started to really take this like Chinese food, like what, what could I bring to Chinese food? Take that seriously and started to really think about that. I ended up eventually quitting my job at Frog, so I I didn't know what I was going to do, but I knew that I wanted to do something with food. Eventually I met a business partner at the time who you know had a lot of money, wanted to figure out what to do with it, and I had a lot of ideas and I wanted to kind of like I was really inspired by the fast, casual restaurant model of, like Chipotle sweet green and I wanted to apply that to Chinese cuisine.
Speaker 1:In China, in China, yeah.
Speaker 3:And create something kind of unique, because that model didn't really exist and it opened. You know, I think it was very unique and people loved it. The flavors were really great. It was really like showcasing different regional Chinese flavors, yeah, and it did well.
Speaker 1:And it was built as a chain.
Speaker 3:Well, you know, with the idea that you could scale it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:It was definitely successful. It was in like this, you know, with the idea that you could scale it. Yeah, it was definitely successful. It was in like this, you know, central business district, so people, you know, the lunch crowd would come, and it was a wild experience, like two kids basically. We were both I was 24 maybe, and he was even younger and with zero experience, and both of us were somewhat you know. I mean, I mean we were. I would call myself an expat, like I'm not chinese, I'm canadian, my chinese is decent but is not fluent. He was also kind of like overseas chinese that lived in shanghai how did the uh partnership end?
Speaker 1:was it uh amicable?
Speaker 3:no, you know, it wasn't, uh, a pretty breakup, but what had happened was I mean, there's probably a lot of different ways I could tell the story but ultimately my business partner who, you know, like I mentioned earlier, was kind of the financial backing behind the project felt like he could do it on his own yeah you know, sort of uh decided that he didn't need me and so kind of.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was a very shocking experience to be like kicked out of your own company that you built. That was your idea, that you like poured your blood, sweat and tears into for over two years. We did have written agreements, um, but I was like I was not that naive, but I was naive enough to not catch when he put his father on the board of directors as the chairman of the board, and so the board was me, him and his dad, so of course the two of them outnumber me. What I took away from this experience is the experience of building it all.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And they can't take that away from me. I knew that that was going to create way more value in the long term, so I walked away after two and a half years with nothing.
Speaker 1:How fast did they sink the company?
Speaker 3:Six months.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the greatest satisfaction is just having built something way more value afterwards. Having tied my sense of self to this company for as long as I did, it was a real shock when it's taken away from me and I think that's a big lesson. So that was definitely an adventure, learned a lot, learned a ton. You know it got a lot of attention. It got attention even from Western media. People were talking about it. I learned that I didn't really want to operate restaurants, but what I really learned was like how to create something from nothing and storytelling. That was what I really became addicted to so.
Speaker 1:But you come out of that partnership and you still have the fire and you still sort. You saw that you were able to build this thing for nothing Exactly. So you had, and what do you do with that?
Speaker 3:I kind of like run away for a while. I like booked a flight to Chengdu, my hometown, and I stayed there for a couple months. I contacted this chef who I met a while ago and he is one of the kind of great master chefs in China he's a Sichuan chef and I was like can I just come in like stage at your restaurant, you know, just basically intern? And he kindly said yes, that's what, just learning from him, whatever, like whatever you need done, you know just being around this guy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, literally anything Like usually a stage in a restaurant is like cutting carrots for, like you know, for ages.
Speaker 1:Was he open with you he?
Speaker 3:let you in and share his secrets.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he was very kind, him and his wife. They run this sort of like a very high end, almost like a private kitchen which is quite popular in China. It's like sort of like an underground restaurant. They're like masters of Sichuan cuisine and so through them I learned a lot about, you know, flavors, techniques, ingredients, and through their ingredients I was really like it was opening my eyes to the difference that quality ingredients really makes in flavor and so learning kind of the foundations, the traditions. I then thought about, well, what do I bring, what can I do that you know isn't already there. And that was kind of the beginning of what became Fly by Jing. But for me it was very just experimental. It was just really trying things, putting one foot in front of the other and, you know, testing things out and cooking and just experimenting in the kitchen. So I started initially by like starting a supper club. When I went back to Shanghai Called it Fly by Jing.
Speaker 3:What does that mean Fly by Jing? So the fly part is a reference to a type of restaurant that's famous in my hometown called fly restaurants. These are hole in the walls that are hidden down alleys really kind of nothing to write home about if you look at it, but the flavors are so good that they attract people like flies. So no matter how hidden, people will always sniff it out because it's so good.
Speaker 3:There are like food cities, but Chengdu is like the most food crazed city that I've ever been to. Everybody is always in pursuit of flavor, is passionate and obsessed, and so when I cooked I wanted to kind of bring that energy to life and bring that, those flavors, to life. I also started to do a lot of pop ups with restaurants and other chefs. So I would do like collaborate with an Italian chef. We would do a Sichuan Italian mashup. What's really great about Sichuan food is that it's all about flavor and a lot of the flavors. You know there's sauces that can be applied on any vehicle, right, and so you can combine Sichuan flavors with, like Italian dishes, you can combine it with Mexican dishes, and I would be invited to like cook at a food festival in New Zealand or at like an event in New York, and so I would travel all the time, or at like an event in New York, and so I would travel all the time. But what I realized was it's impossible to find these ingredients that I was cooking with in these places, and they were essential to the end result. So I would travel with these ingredients with me in suitcases and like pray that you know, customs doesn't confiscate before a big dinner event. I knew that these flavors, you know, I mean, I grew up loving these flavors, but now I knew that you know everyone does they just like don't have any access to it. With flavor, I mean, even within China, sichuan is known as one of the major cuisines that really have mastered flavor profiles. They're famous actually for the chefs being able to use very limited ingredients but create like dozens and dozens the most famous like 23 different flavor profiles with like the same five or six ingredients. When you get that balance right, people don't really know what they're tasting, they just know it's good. And then, huh, what is that? Yeah, so I just kind of realized like there's something here.
Speaker 3:And so, looking into Chinese food history in the US, you know Chinese food in America is its own thing. It evolved in its own way over the last like hundred plus years and it evolved out of like politics. Basically, for a time in the 1800s, chinese people were immigrants, were actually banned from coming to the US, but there was a loophole they called it like the Chao Mian loophole and essentially you could come if you are a restaurateur or if you own a laundromat, and so that is basically the birth of Chinese American food, because people would come with no food background, using limited domestic ingredients to create a semblance of what they knew from home, but then adapting it to local palates which is sweet, add sugar and use cheap ingredients because Westerners don't want to pay for it. So you got to make it cheap somehow, and that is how Chinese food actually became, you know, arguably the most popular cuisine in America, because there's over 50,000 Chinese restaurants in this country. That's more than any McDonald's, taco Bell, KFC combined and yet it has a reputation problem. People look down on it. That was like what I really wanted to address.
Speaker 3:By 2018, I was already kind of like making sauces in my kitchen, because a lot of the sauces were like elements of my dishes that I would create in batches and then be able to travel with more easily. A lot of that just turned out to be like OK, this stuff is shelf stable, people are loving these flavors, maybe I can bottle this and sell it. So I did that locally in Shanghai. But in 2018, I came to California. At this point like I'd never lived in the US before, but I was curious about the food landscape here and I went to a trade show At the time I was just like walking the halls seeing everything that was there. I remember like at the end of that week I just was craving like a bowl of noodles. I was craving Asian food and I was like, huh, I wonder why. And I realized there was not a single Asian food product at the entire show. Because you go around and you try everything, right? Remember that being kind of an aha moment, like wow.
Speaker 3:When I went back to Shanghai I thought about okay, if I were to scale this up and bring it to the US, what would it look like? That's when I started getting to work and trying to scale up production. I was just making it in my kitchen, so I had no idea. You know how to get something like this off the ground. But in China and actually a lot of Asian countries like it's sort of by law, every food company needs to put the name of the manufacturer on the packaging. So what I did was I just went to the grocery store, picked up a bunch of like sauces that were similar to mine and I contacted those factories, contacted, I think, dozens, and dozens got rejected by most of them because they're like who are you what? How, what's your like quantity, like there's no way you're going to meet our moqs.
Speaker 3:we moq meaning uh, minimum order quantities. They're used to working with giant restaurant chains. I was just like one person with no budget. Nobody wanted to do it, let alone like someone who was as specific as I was, you know, and so a lot of them didn't want to deal with me. I had some friends who had done some successful Kickstarters for their projects and they were like, why don't you do a Kickstarter?
Speaker 3:So I thought that made some sense and spent the time building a Kickstarter page, went to Chengdu, filmed like a two minute video and really just told my story, which was about like changing the perception of Chinese food by showing that it can be super high quality, and doing so through this condiment that I was making, called Chili Crisp, that really didn't exist here at the time, and so I had to convince people that this thing that they can't try because it's on Kickstarter, it's delicious and that it also deserves, you know, a premium price point. To my surprise, this campaign went viral and it became one of the highest funded food projects on Kickstarter.
Speaker 1:Amazing, and how much did you raise?
Speaker 3:So altogether it's about 250k. So now I have something that I can work with. Yeah, I knew I needed to move to the us, uh, set up a company. I'm a canadian citizen. I need to figure out how to do that, how to get the right visas. And now, you know, the real work begins. Because I promised people I would deliver a hot sauce to them within six months. I took that money, went to the factory and now, you know, I basically lived in the factory for about a month trying to figure it out how to do this at scale.
Speaker 3:Yeah. A lot of frustration because the way you do it in a kitchen is not the way you do it in like a you know two 500 kilo drum.
Speaker 3:It's very much like a different ball game. Through that process I think I really realized how a lot of mediocre products end up on shelf, because at every stage there's shortcuts that you can take and if you are not adamant about your vision, this end product will look very different from where you started. I remember I literally cried in the hallway of this factory and we still work with this factory and they still remind me that time when I like had a fit and cried out of frustration and like this is a kind of a side interesting side story.
Speaker 3:But the only reason they agreed to work with me was because the CEO of this company he had this assistant who was kind of like this retired older man who had a daughter that was similar in age to me, and I think he saw this spirit in me that reminded him of his daughter, who was ambitious, and I think he convinced them to do this as like a fun little project.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:He became this like fairy godfather to me. During the process, he like eventually pulled me aside and was like you need to learn this, as, like a, an american, uh, it's better to use soft touch rather than a hard elbow.
Speaker 1:So that was like his words of wisdom for me did you, did you learn that or did that just yeah?
Speaker 3:no, I think it was a bit of both you have a soft touch now um, I have to remind myself of that all the time I do yeah, even with, like, my team but you were able by the end.
Speaker 1:This is all worked out, so I'm assuming you were able to get to an end product. Yeah, that was mass producible. That was up to your standards of quality. Yeah, uh, and was it within the six months?
Speaker 3:well, uh, let's see. Well, we finished in july. I shipped in the end of december, okay, so it was about exactly six months. So it was funny because I came to la um in november. I rented an airbnb. I was like, okay, well, there's too many orders, I need to find a 3PL like a third-party logistics company. There's no way I can ship things out of my Airbnb.
Speaker 3:So, phoned around, found this 3PL, I went to visit their warehouse. I told them you know, got this shipment coming? Glass jars, super fragile. I've experienced shipping it in Shanghai. You need to really bubble wrap it. And they're like, yes, you need to really bubble wrap it. Yeah. And they're like, yes, yes, totally, we do this all day long, we know. So shipment comes in, okay.
Speaker 3:Uh, I'm like I uploaded all the orders into their system and I saw that like in one day, they shipped out, like I don't know, almost 3 000 orders. I was like, wow, that's really impressive. Cool, cool, cool. Now three days passes by and I got an email and it's from a customer who was like I just received this in the mail and it was a photo of a manila envelope with broken glass and a pool of chili oil inside. And she's like what is this? And I realized that these guys had shipped out because all the all the orders were. Orders were two jars. They shipped out all of the orders in manila envelopes with zero protective packaging. When I realized that, like, everything just stopped because I'm thinking I've lost the entire batch and also credibility credibility.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm gonna need to refund these people and I don't have money for that. Yeah, like I would basically be in the negative. You you know before I even begin, and so panic sinks in. I do the only thing I know that I need to do, which is I email everybody and I said OK, look, you may be receiving some stuff like poorly packaged Reach out to me, I will make sure we solve it for you. I was just praying that people would allow me to reship it and I would figure something out with the shipping company in the meantime. So I raised hell with the shipping company. They apologized and they were able to refund me for all the broken shipments and also reship the ones that were broken. The thing that stuck with me the most is that after I sent out that email, I got hundreds of responses from people who were just like assuring me, like don't worry, like this stuff happens, Don't worry, you sound really stressed and it'll be all fine. We'll let you know how it arrives.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how many of them are broken?
Speaker 3:So that was in November or December and I just basically stayed in my Airbnb for a whole month responding to customer service emails. The final numbers were about like 15% were damaged, which I was shocked by because I really thought like 100% would be broken. And on top of that, like all of the direct interaction with the customers really gave them the sense of connection to me and the company and they were more bought in than before.
Speaker 1:That was just you being open and honest with them about what was happening and sort of reassuring them that you would take care of it.
Speaker 3:And ultimately this happened many, many more times, like shit happened, you know, over the next few years. And every single time I would do that, I would be completely transparent. This happened during COVID as well. Completely transparent. It ended up turning more people into brand fans. Our customer service is kind of what we became known for. They knew that, no matter what happened, they email us, they get a response within 24 hours and we'll fix it. Yeah, okay, and the savory, the cold and the hot, the crispy and the creamy actually works really well together and it also goes to show how versatile the product is together. And it also goes to show how versatile the product is. That was kind of a viral moment. We got written up in the new york times for that, you know. When people saw that, oh, it could work on ice cream, it was almost like giving them permission to experiment more wildly with the product.
Speaker 3:yeah, so it was like the early, the early ads and the photos that we took were all just like very common, everyday foods that people already knew and loved, and then adding this like novel twist to it right we got a lot of attention, we got a lot of press as a result, and that was kind of like the beginning of the chili crisp craze that took over the us, and it's like one of the fastest growing condiments today and how.
Speaker 1:How were you able to deal with that growth?
Speaker 3:as an entrepreneur who starts a successful business, you are forced to adapt and grow at such a breakneck speed and we always used to say, like every quarter was like a year in like human years and one year is like four years. So you really are, it's like adapt or die. And as a founder and a ceo and as a leader, you have to grow and I I always say that like entrepreneurship is a spiritual endeavor. Whatever demons and trauma that you have that are unresolved, it's going to come up in your journey as an entrepreneur in some way or other and you have to deal with it or else you can't move forward. Every few months you are dealing with a whole new company, dealing with, you know, a whole new person that you have to be not just you, but you know the rest of the team too, and it's a constant evolution. We have our definitely this like through line, but you know, at every stage of the business we're always like questioning, like is this the right thing at this point? Like, how do we adapt to a new landscape and and all that.
Speaker 3:I think in the very early days it was just like. I think a lot of it was defined by my personal mission right, like I wanted to do something that was meaningful and changed culture in a way that meant a lot of it was rooted in the quality of our ingredients. A lot of it was, you know, rooted in the story. My story, which is a story about seeking belonging. The story, my story, which is a story about seeking belonging, finding a sense of self and identity, and that we were fighting for the people that didn't have a voice. I felt like I didn't have a voice for a lot of my life.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And we were fighting for a place at the table and so that was kind of this like crusader kind of vibe that we had in the early days. I think we're still kind of at the early stages of expanding people's palates and minds. We just launched at Walmart last year and now we're all of a sudden in places where they have no idea what Asian food is. So it definitely took off initially in the coasts. So LA and New York are still our biggest markets, but now, like with our expansion with Walmart, we are definitely reaching those places that we haven't been before. Most things do sort of take off on the coast first and then move their way inland. Yeah, but the good thing about you know TikTok is that you're reaching everybody at the same time. So we had a influencer this summer. His name is Logan and he makes this like cucumber salad oh, is that the one that went viral?
Speaker 1:yeah, okay I haven't seen it, but all of a sudden my seven-year-old wants cucumber talking about cucumber salad all the time. What is happening? It's so strange it's it really.
Speaker 3:It goes everywhere, yeah, and so this kid, who's actually Canadian and lives in Ottawa, he started this entire craze of cucumber salad, which you know. He makes it really fun and accessible and easy and he used fly-by-Jane chili oil in his recipe. In that month that it went viral. We saw a 3X lift in stores, at Walmart and Target. Like that's huge, like that doesn't just happen. But I think the question is how do you sustain that? How do you, how do you keep your brand name in the ether like that? And it's something we always think about is like how do you sustain that?
Speaker 1:Where do you spend your the most of your time at the company?
Speaker 3:You know talking about phases of the business, I recently, six months ago entered a new phase where I hired a president. Finally, you know, I'm still a CEO.
Speaker 1:Okay, oh, right Okay.
Speaker 3:And I yeah, I'm on the board. The president was able to take a lot of like the day to day, but she's more like bringing together the commercial side of things and you know really driving that. So for me that was like a real milestone For the first time in the last six years, being able to step back and look at the bigger picture and think about. You know, the strategic landscape. We now have competitors. You know we started in the space with no competitors.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:And now we do.
Speaker 1:What's the strategy there, Like how do you battle that?
Speaker 3:Just being aware of what's happening, being aware of the landscape, like how the landscape has changed, and we saw that they were coming in with a product that used, you know, cheaper ingredients and so their price was lower. You know the gap was a bit too big. You know, closing that gap.
Speaker 1:And you're able to do that without sacrificing quality.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, we were able to find a lot of our savings through packaging and logistics, so we're still using everything the same in terms of ingredients. Also, like really shifting your thinking to how do you expand the pie? How do you envision like a world where both can exist and both can thrive? But it is challenging because in the Asian food category we still unfortunately live in a world where people think there can only be one of something. Retailers sometimes might be like well, I've already got this one, I don't need another.
Speaker 1:Right, because you just need one of these things on your shelf.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I think like these kind of things is what I've been able to free up my space and mind and time to think about. Innovation is a big part of that is like how do we innovate what? What new products will, uh, that make sense?
Speaker 1:how many uh products you have um.
Speaker 3:So we have probably like a couple dozen products on our website, but in stores we have our core three to four. Our bestseller, the one that we originally launched with, is still our bestseller. So that's what we're known for. It'll always be our bestseller. So right now we have like two or three other sauces that have different names and different you know, color labels and people think they're very different from the original, but when really in actuality they're variations of the original. So, but because they're called different things right now people don't know when we do the repositioning it's going to help. So just thinking through things like that like really stepping back. We just launched noodles as well, so we have like a noodle line now, which is exciting because it's again. We think of it as a vehicle for the sauce. Ultimately, we're a condiment company. I don't want to be like a giant platform company. In every category. Everything that we sell is still crafted, sourced in my hometown.
Speaker 1:And America is the biggest market.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's our main market, Like we're not really in any other markets. What about?
Speaker 1:in China.
Speaker 3:No, we don't sell in China.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 3:My goal is to create an iconic brand, just like Heinz Ketchup, and to have Chili Crisp in everyone's home the way that they don't think twice about having ketchup and mustard. There's a long way to go before that happens. Calling it a hot sauce doesn't actually do it justice, because a lot of people use hot sauce only for heat. But what Chili Crisp has is flavor. So it's really like anything that can use more flavor, like, for example, your eggs in the morning, a burrito, your avocado toast it's perfect for it. It adds a bit of heat, but it's not too much. But more than that, it's like umami Real, real flavor, which is why it's good on ice cream. It's even good on sweet things.
Speaker 1:I mean it sounds like the story at least the way I understand it is. You grew up rootless. You move away from your country of origin and birth and the country that lives just in your body and on your face and people see you all the time you go to Europe where I mean mean I remember in iceland, I mean that's, that was the whitest country and still is probably one of the whitest countries.
Speaker 1:It was one asian kid like that I was aware of, yeah, in the whole community that's exactly that was me and I often think about what that must have been like, because, as a kid, what you really want is to be accepted and not stand out exactly, not be different. To paraphrase what you were saying, you were feeling like okay, I just want to fit in, I'm going to use my westernized name, I'm gonna probably not dress in any way, that is like calls attention.
Speaker 3:I just don't want to stand out at all.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah and then slowly coming to the realization that the heart of you is still there, you go back and you, you sort of build this thing, but the interesting thing is you then take it to again to the western culture, where you say, like, not only are you not ashamed of this anymore, you're saying you know, I'm proud of this. This is where I'm coming from.
Speaker 3:This is who I am and you know it's like yourself and being a very, very sort of embracing this identity yes, and I would also add that, you know, in the early days it was definitely about like, okay, discovering what does being chinese mean. The further along I went, it was really just about like who am I? Like that's not necessarily tied to being chinese or canadian or, you know, living in amer. And then, what's really interesting, in the last couple of years, especially as I became a mother and just really sort of continued to go, you have a new child yeah, he's one.
Speaker 1:How's that going?
Speaker 3:I mean and running a company. I mean I'm lucky that it happened when it happened, because any earlier and I couldn't have you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So I feel you have a good partner yeah, very yeah and uh, you know my president has been a key part of that and so just you know, to finish out my my thought, I think in the last couple of years I've even moved beyond like this sense of like self, or who am I and what is my unique self-expression, but more just like general detachment and just being. I don't have to necessarily find this like specific identity to latch onto.
Speaker 1:So you're able to evolve.
Speaker 3:Yeah, evolve and just be present, connect. I think intention is so powerful. I mean, everything is energy right and you put that energy out there, the universe will conspire to make it happen.
Speaker 1:Well, at the very least I believe. If you don't believe it, there's no way it will happen.
Speaker 3:Oh, absolutely yeah, Without the intention, yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean there's no, it can't materialize yeah.
Speaker 3:And you know you learn through your failures and you learn through your wins and that's okay. You know, I think it takes some time to trust in that process. Because, like when I was younger too, I always thought there's no way but just trusting that that is the process we're supposed to go through and everything is kind of happening for the highest purpose.
Speaker 1:Do you have a spiritual system?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I think I've definitely grown to really trust in an inner wisdom that is connected to source, universe, God, whatever you want to call it, and to listen to that and to trust in it.
Speaker 1:How do you hear it?
Speaker 3:Quieting down, creating space to quiet down. That's ultimately, I think, the biggest lesson in life is that it all just is. It's not good, it's not bad, and there's no use, as humans do, to put a place of value on events and things. It just is, and the sooner you can accept it, the sooner you'll get the point of life you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, obviously I have moments, a lot of moments, where I'm angry and afraid and all of those things, but more and more I'm able to just accept what is happening and even find it amazing. Yeah, finding things in tragedy or in whatever that are, even going back to your first shipment yeah, like yeah. In that moment that must have been like the world was ending yeah, the world was ending, but it was a gift.
Speaker 3:Yes, it was a huge lesson and it was a, you know, actually a brand building exercise, yeah, and the culture building exercise, yeah and I think what I realized in this journey is like, the more that you can like not place a value on what happens, that is good or bad, the more you can accept that, okay, everything is a learning opportunity. Everything is actually, at the end of the day, happening for you, not to you, right when? When you accept that there, like you said, there's a huge comfort in that we don't feel like we're quite so alone in this universe.
Speaker 1:You kind of feel like, okay, maybe the universe is on my side well then, then I have moments where I feel like, oh, that's privilege talking, that's that's me talking from a point of oh yes, everything worked out for me I mean that's, it doesn't necessarily well, actually a lot of things did not work out for me I think that's yeah.
Speaker 1:The thing that I also have to remind myself is and everyone has a different struggle and journey that is the right one for them because the hardest I mean the hardest thing I'm dealing with at any given moment is that my body just keeps failing me because I have dystrophy. So it's from year to year I will look back and remember oh, I was able to do this. Yeah, now I'm not able to do it anymore. Right, as hard as that is, that has taught me again. That will be okay because, for whatever reason, when I need it, when I have a new need that I didn't have, there's something I can't do anymore. Maybe it's just because then I start to think about it, but then there's a solution to it. There is some way that I will figure out how to adapt my life to the new situation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and over time.
Speaker 1:I think once you've sort of seen that happen over and over, you get up to a point where it's you get to that place of place of just okay, I'm going to trust that this is going to work out. Yeah, because I would spend a lot of time worrying, um, yeah, yeah, which is just pointless, absolutely pointless. Yeah, yeah, and just living in your imagination of a bad future yeah, or a past or even a past yeah, what do you?
Speaker 3:what would you? How would you describe your spiritual practice? Do you have one?
Speaker 1:I mean, it sounds like you do, I practice, I meditate, yeah, but it's it's. It's one of those things where I, if I do it for a while, I try and do it, you know, twice a day. If I do it for a while, I start to feel great over time and then I stop doing it because I feel so good and then I go back to it. I went through a lot of different types of you know, gone through a lot of therapy, and running a company was actually a huge therapy Because I was forced to deal with to your earlier point all of my bad behaviors got exaggerated. Yeah, yeah, once I got more power, it got. It got worse before it got better. So that was a huge thing I had.
Speaker 1:At one point I had three therapists wow uh, because I I just I had a lot of issues that I was trying to work through as fast as I possibly could, because I felt that by not dealing with them, I was harming the people I was working with.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so what I've been doing recently is have you read the Artist's Way?
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 3:So I've been kind of revisiting that book.
Speaker 1:It's been a while, though, but yeah, I remember that very clearly, impacting how I wanted to live my life.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think, as founders, as entrepreneurs, we are creators, we are artists and, ultimately, I think what we want to do is just create to your point.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:And I think to your point. It's not about how big of a company you can build or how much money you can make. It's just about the act of expressing what's inside of us, or what just. Maybe.
Speaker 3:It's not even about us, it's about just what oh, it's all about me to be clear well, you know, like sometimes I think an idea is just ripe in the universe to come out and it's not really about who brings it forward. You know, yeah, we might just be a vessel, and I think the artist way is like kind of something I'm doing personally right now to try to, you know, become a vessel to bring forth something and just like kind of keep that as a practice, not with any goal in mind, doing something that I enjoy for the sake, and then maybe something will come through, maybe not.
Speaker 1:Who knows? I mean, that's this whole podcast for me is there's no ads. There's no practical benefit for me other than I get to meet people like you and talk to them and ask them probing questions that I wouldn't if I. You know, it's rare that you just get to go and talk to someone for two or three hours and you can ask them about things and they will actually, you know, in most cases be pretty open about it.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So that was sort of the impetus for the podcast. It's just I want to meet more people. I used to have an agency, which meant that I met a lot of people. It was just like a flow of interesting people coming in with new ideas, yeah, which meant that I met a lot of people. There was just like a flow of interesting people coming in with new ideas?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and did you find that, like those people you were meeting, they were, you know, bringing opportunities to you?
Speaker 1:Yes, I mean because they were literally coming to me with a project, a project. Right right right they were. In those cases, it was like, yeah, here is a fun project and here's money, go figure this out.
Speaker 3:which is a fun project and here's money.
Speaker 1:Um, go, go figure this out, which is a dream decision for me to be in, yeah, working with some people that are very passionate about whatever it is they're making, and then them trusting me to be a part of that. That was always so much fun to me, yeah, and getting the insight into all these different people and how they work. What are the common themes of failure and success? And after a while, you start to predict what's going to happen and it's not necessarily exactly what's going to happen, but you start to have some kind of an idea of who to follow, who is the right person to jump into a cave with and who is probably better to have them jump alone. I have this constant thing where I'm not sure if I'm an old man or a kid.
Speaker 3:I think you're both. I'm trying to be yes both, so I think like so, like Jihan actually shared with me your birth time and date so your birth chart that's literally. It's funny you say that because that's literally in your birth chart Okay, that you're both this wide-eyed wanderer and an old sage, like a wise sage. So that's exactly.
Speaker 1:So you're right on the money, okay, and you kind of see yourself as more of the wide-eyed wanderer yeah, I think, because I made so many mistakes and I'm constantly amazed with the level of success I have, is how stupid I am, how often I'm just like I'll go into something like and think something completely different will happen than will actually happen. You know, I don't want to lose that yeah, no, you won't.
Speaker 3:It's, it's a part of you. But I think, like what you said is like the more you do, the more you realize how much you don't know. That's the criteria for wisdom. That's what people actually see you, as is the wise sage.
Speaker 1:You don't see yourself as that as much as other people see you as that yeah, I don't think of myself that way you know, I, I like giving people advice, but I'm always afraid that they will actually follow it because, yeah, I know what's right for me um most of the time, but I, yeah, I, I don't know what will work for anyone else.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you have hobbies I, um, I love reading. You know, one of the things that I've been doing as part of the artist's way is like nurturing that artist in you right by like treating her well and giving her, because for so long I deprived myself of like anything like I was like I cannot read a book unless it's going to help my business.
Speaker 3:It has to be a non-fiction business book, yeah, you know. And like when I was a kid, I loved reading novels and I haven't picked up a novel in like 10 years because to me it's like not beneficial, not productive. Productive, yeah, and as part of this like artist way is like just doing things without a goal in mind, and that's something I have to really unlearn, because for so long I was like everything needs to be a goal and goal, and so as part of the practice, as you know, there's the morning pages, and then every week you also like do something nice for yourself. You take yourself out on an artist date, and maybe it's like, you know, I went to the, the art supply store.
Speaker 3:I used to like paint a lot and sketch and draw, and I bought, you know, paint and canvas and I started painting again without any goal. You know, like I haven't painted in many years, so it's not going to be good, but that's not the point. You know, another thing I've always wanted to do but just haven't had time for is I wanted to learn how to do pottery. Yeah, so just yesterday actually, I went to my first pottery class what did you?
Speaker 3:make. I made a teacup and a bowl. They were terrible, but it was a first try and uh, it's hard, it's very, very hard, it's insanely hard. Insanely hard. You need like arm strength, body strength, like. But it was fun, you know, to just not be on my phone for like two and a half hours just talking to the teacher she's this 75-year-old woman, like it was really nice and yeah, just kind of getting back into it. What about you? What are some of?
Speaker 1:your hobbies. I really enjoy making music, but I played guitar and piano but my fingers have been not strong enough, so I've been looking for different ways of creating music. That's been very challenging because it was such a big part of sort of being able to relax. So a new thing I just started doing a few months ago, similar to you, was drawing, and it's the same thing. I try and draw one thing a day. Sometimes I only have 20 minutes or something, sometimes I have a couple of hours. It's extremely relaxing.
Speaker 1:The other thing I decided to do was, again because of my big fear of rejection, and then I have a fairly big Twitter following. I started posting my illustrations on Twitter, okay, and every time I do I lose about a thousand followers. Okay, and the first time I did it it was like holy shit. And then it became for me a practice of no, I'm going to keep doing this. Yeah, if this is also to self-help. Yeah, I'm okay with people saying this is not good. Yep, I'm okay with people like, just yeah, dropping off. Yeah, I'm okay with all of that. And because I enjoy making it, yeah, over time I may be able to whittle my Twitter down to the 10 people that like it Exactly, and maybe that's just my wife and her alt accounts but that's fine.
Speaker 3:Yeah, do you listen to the Mel Robbins podcast?
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 3:Do you know who that is?
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 3:She's got a very popular podcast and kind of writes. She wrote a book recently called the Let them Theory and it's basically like every you know wise philosophy over the years, kind of distilled in a different way. It's essentially like the practice of just like saying you know, let them like whatever they think, whatever some someone says, whatever thing that triggers you, makes you unhappy, makes you stressed um letting that go and just saying, well, let them, let them say what they say, let them unfollow me, let them, you know, um, judge me and talk behind my back, and it's very liberating yeah, I mean and it's very challenging for me because it's very a big part of me is avoiding being judged and a lot of it was because, again going back to just how I walked as a kid, I was just.
Speaker 1:I didn't want anyone to point and say look at you.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so if I get a hateful comment, it will still fester in me. Mm-hmm, but that's part of the process for me. It's just like I'm going to take these things. They're coming in and they come back. Some of them come back over and over again. Yeah, and I need to figure out. Why is that so triggering?
Speaker 3:Because that's just some random person and ultimately that's something within you and has nothing to do with that person.
Speaker 1:No, no, no. It's just, somebody was in a bad mood or somebody was, you know, had a mean dad, or I don't know what happened.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, was, you know, had a mean dad or I don't know what happened. Yeah, yeah, um, but the way that you feel has nothing to do with that person, it has only to do with what's inside of you. Yes, I mean, I can totally relate, right like I've spent my entire life trying to blend in, not be, not stick out, and as a result, I'm like you, I'm very, very afraid judgment, and that's been something I feel like I've been on a kind of parallel journey in the last year. You know, one of the things that I've come to realize like is one of the, you know, my kind of purposes in life is.
Speaker 3:I'm similar as you, like experiment, I learn, and those learnings I'm meant to share those, and I feel like most of my life I've been holding it back. I don't want to be judged, I don't want people to think something of me, say something about me. So as a practice, I've been trying to just share more Distance myself from that attachment of like, being liked, being accepted. I'm just like posting stuff, you know, and it's nowhere near like anything good or whatever, but that's not even the point. I think it's just the practice of doing it, and the more I do it, the more easier it becomes yeah, but yeah, the first times were though they were brutal, like yeah, it was really hard for me not to then go delete the thing and just nobody saw that that didn't happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because it's so strange also to have or be known for something yeah and then do something else.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that you're not an expert in. Yeah, that you haven't perfected or haven't spent the years of your life getting better and better and better at but having a lot of people see that, yeah, when, in most cases, if I was posting this, very few people will see it, and I was able to sort of again find the tiny people or whoever who liked it, but in this case it's like hundreds of thousands of people and they're mean. We're on Twitter. It's a mean space, yeah absolutely.
Speaker 1:And they're mean to the. Those things that I'm sharing are usually things that are coming from the little kid part of me, so they're mean to the little kid Right, which I'm very protective of.
Speaker 3:I'm sharing are usually things that are coming from the little kid part of me, so they're mean to the little kid right um, which I'm very protective of.
Speaker 1:Yes, um, yeah but it's, it's helping yeah. I'm getting there slowly but there's still a couple of people that I just I can. I remember exactly what they said. Yeah, I remember them extremely well. Yeah, Any critique that you know. Someone said something, someone laughed at me, someone did something 30 years ago, 40 years ago.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I remember that Well, you had a famous encounter.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah. Then I had an interaction that was interesting because that for a lot of people that was the first time they knew anything about me and so that to them was me. That one event becomes like a defining thing and I was really struggling, and have been really struggling, making sure that does not become the thing it happened, really struggling making sure that does not become the thing that. It was a thing that happened and it was interesting and at the time I actually kind of enjoyed it in a way, in a weird way.
Speaker 3:But I don't want to be the hot tour girl. But is it just mainly strangers on the internet or has it colored the way that people who you meet like view you?
Speaker 1:It's mostly strangers on the internet. Yeah, because, again, a lot of my internet presence then became people that followed me. Because of that? Because of one thing yeah, and it's very strange to have a lot of people that like you because they dislike someone else. Yeah, that's not how I want to be right.
Speaker 1:I feel like that was. I mean. For me, that was about two days of things that happened and and it was even at the time I didn't really recognize that it was a big thing. I didn't even tell my wife that it was happening. It was just something I did and I went to work and I went to do something and I had to hang out with the kids, and then it was in the news and my wife came to me and was like what's happening? And I'm oh yeah, I forgot to tell you. Um, yeah, it's also. Being on twitter is so strange and I've been on twitter and had so many twitter arguments before that there was.
Speaker 3:That was just one of them that was the mother of all twitter arguments well, yeah it it led to.
Speaker 1:I mean, it was hard, but it led to good things. I'm very comfortable with it. Yeah, I think one of the things that it taught me was there is common ground to be found with anyone.
Speaker 3:Okay, you found common ground with him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I found, I mean with any human find I may. I think I'm able to find something. Yeah, and you can see the pain behind a lot of people's actions and you see, oh my god, yeah what is driving them?
Speaker 1:yeah, not to excuse anyone or anything, but you kind of start to understand everyone is a hero in their story, yep, and everyone is thanks for doing the best thing. That's the same with me, like I've hurt people and not even realize it until sometimes, much, much later. And so, as a part of all this, so easy to point at someone else, yeah, but I have so many issues, uh, and a lot, of, a lot of things in my, my past that are different to how I would do them now, and I hope that for everyone, that they are all able to later on change.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I think that's such a big thing. That I think about with parenting Is that it's an opportunity to kind of end intergenerational trauma. You're never going to fully end it, it's genetic yeah but, and you know, whoever you bring to this world is going to have their journey and nothing you do is going to change the journey they're supposed to have um, which is extremely hard and it's kind of, you know, as a as a parent you just want.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you have the easiest best, yeah, and you see the mistakes, yeah, or you think you see them at least, yeah, and you're like don't do that. Yeah, please don't do that. And then obviously they do that, yeah, and that's the same with me and my dad, and I'm sure it was the same with his dad. Yeah, and I understand my father a lot better now, because the way he was behaved towards me was very he was overprotective in many ways and that was really frustrating because I wanted to be an individual. Yeah. And then I do the same with my kids, yeah, where I'm trying to protect them too much and they resent me.
Speaker 3:Yep, yeah.
Speaker 1:This has been wonderful.
Speaker 3:Very, very wonderful.
Speaker 1:This street is also beautiful.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's one of the few walking neighborhoods in LA.
Speaker 1:So maybe we can end on your little shop, yeah sounds good, tell us about that.
Speaker 3:So it's been about a year since we opened.
Speaker 1:And what is it called?
Speaker 3:It's called Sua.
Speaker 1:How is that spelled?
Speaker 3:S-U-A, and the word is actually a Sichuanese word that means to have fun and it's like a slang word. So me and my business partner she's also from Sichuan and we actually connected because she was a customer of Fly by Jing and loved the food and we became good friends and ultimately decided to open this.
Speaker 3:But you know, after Baoism I was like never again, unless I had good operating partners for me I didn't want to necessarily operate it, but I had ideas right and so this is something that had been in my mind for years where, you know, I'm type of person like I love sitting down to a good meal, but a lot of the times I'm just busy and I'm on the go and I need something that's grab and go. When you think of grab and go, like really the options that you have, it's like McDonald's and you know nothing really high quality. So the idea sort of came from that it's like can we create something that's grab and go but also like super high quality ingredients, organic if we can, and also with Asian flavors, which really doesn't exist anywhere? And then along the way we also created sort of a souperette, like a mini market, where you can find high quality, you know, pantry goods, home goods, and there's also great tea and coffee drinks as well.
Speaker 1:And they're all from china or from asia.
Speaker 3:So a lot of the so the flavors are such one, or asian flavors, but in a format that's familiar, for example a wrap or a salad right or you know a bowl, you know it's, it's kind of asian.
Speaker 1:Inspired and how's it going?
Speaker 3:it's going well. I think people really like it. This community ofarchmont Village is like a perfect place for it. It's busy, you know people and a lot of regulars, people that live in the neighborhood, you know. But with all small businesses it's tough. We have a lot of overhead and, you know, trying to grow sustainably. But ultimately, I think there's a lot of synergy between that and what flat-edging does. Ultimately, I think there's a lot of synergy between that and what flat-edging does. Both of our mission statement is to expand people's palates and that's why I'm doing it.
Speaker 1:Do you spend a lot of time here?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I come here as much as I can, I'm probably here two or three times a month. Well, it was great to meet you. Yeah, you too, and I hope to see you around sometime around, yeah, I'll take the mic though.
Speaker 1:Oh yes okay, that was it. What do you think that was?
Speaker 2:I mean, that was a. You just have a knack with people. I love that you you are not lying when you say that you just are using this as an opportunity to just meet people and talk to them and have access to just ask all these questions, which you would not usually do. And I mean I think you're achieving that here and I just so much I didn't know. I mean, what do you think when I say Vegas, like what pops in your head first when you say Vegas?
Speaker 1:Well, this is the first time I've actually talked to anyone that lives in Vegas, because I've been to Vegas usually for maybe one, two, maximum three night trips.
Speaker 2:Oh God, God bless you.
Speaker 1:Always for a show. I saw the Stones there. I've seen a lot of shows in Vegas.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it's never struck me as as a town that anyone would live in, so that was very interesting exactly, yeah, actively moved there to.
Speaker 2:I mean, people are from there. I've met some people from there and that's kind of it's, they're kind of interesting, a bunch of people. They're like yeah, I like you. How is it growing up in vegas? Like it's just a man-made city that's just created for entertainment and recreation only. I mean it's, it's kind of it's a it's an interesting psyche in that city, but I mean what a resilient human being she is.
Speaker 2:I mean starting a company, going sour with her business partner and having to like come back from that and be and still be positive about it because that's I mean and end up with nothing in her hands.
Speaker 1:It's devastating, you know I think, yeah, I think resilient is definitely a word that I would use to describe her. She's as you heard. She's gone through a lot. Yes, yeah, that that business partner she had in in China with a restaurant, but also, just, I think she's moved around a lot. I think she's been trying to place herself in the world for a long time. You know, we both grew up in Iceland and I mentioned this in an interview. There was one Asian kid in the school that we went to yes.
Speaker 1:And I just can imagine well, actually I can't imagine what that must be like In the early days, probably trying to hide who you are. But then, ultimately, what I found beautiful in her story is that that became what she embraced, and that's a huge part of who she is now. Yeah, I think it's a beautiful story.
Speaker 2:I think it's a really beautiful story because it's kind of I mean, you're exactly right because of our generation, without telling people our age, but we, you know but, I think like solid Gen Xers is you're absolutely right Like a singular black kid, a singular Asian kid, and it was just like it was like you stuck out and of course kids just want to, kids want to fit in. You know, kids really want to more than anything. And then you know, and then you know, so then you feel like an imposter in this, this way and because you're trying to hide something or this, that and the other. So do you watch chef's table? That show on netflix about the, the chefs no, no, no, no, no, chef shows no chef shows um.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'll be the chef. Well, except, uh, anthony bourdain oh well, I mean, there you go, yeah yeah, it's just because of him though. Yeah, I mean, he's amazing.
Speaker 1:If it was a show about tables, I would watch that show.
Speaker 2:No, the thing is, I find her takeaway to be the most same takeaway of all the chefs that I saw there is that they all kind of want to fit into this mold of being chef de cuisine, these French-French chasing the French brigade system and being like nailing the, the, the french sauces, the mother sauces, and this, that and the other, and then after people grow into themselves which I seem like jing has done, by all the adversity she's had to go go through, and like her shipment breaking and and you know, and then you know, and that turning into a, uh, actually a positive moment is that when you finally like take a beat, you breathe out, you take a minute to be there you were both talking very about being present, which none of us are these days and embrace and kind of come back to yourself.
Speaker 2:You don't have to be a French chef, just be you from Chengdu and Canadian and this and I completely hear this conversation with my foodie community like chinese food had like a reputation problem and it was looked down upon, and this is also with like indian food and and thai food, that it's like simple and cheap, whereas actually, like it's one of the most complicated culinary things you can do. Because there's so many ingredients, they all have to be exemplary and you know it's just like this. You know western french food has just been like, championed as like the one that's worthy of being expensive. Like people, I don't want to go to expensive mexican restaurants and I'm like why not?
Speaker 2:why not? Why not? It's no less important than the other.
Speaker 1:So you know, when I think about chinese food, I have the same. You know it definitely when she's talking about that, that resonated with me, because Chinese food is supposed to be cheap in our culture.
Speaker 1:It's what we expect and it's been cheap for so long. And as part of my research, I was reading up on her and definitely there are people on the Internet complaining why is this so expensive? But when you talk about it and compare it to something else that has been so much complexity to it, that is that is rooted in culture, that is done meticulously in the way that this is done. Yeah, that's not the thing.
Speaker 2:That's not the thing you complain about no, like caviar or something you know, like caviar, like no, but nobody would ever doubt that a caviar cost a teeny tiny can of it cost $3,000. Right.
Speaker 1:And this is definitely not in that range, and actually I did get to taste it, which was amazing.
Speaker 2:All right.
Speaker 1:And I tried it with a bunch of food. I tried it with I'm sort of a basic person. Okay, I eat a lot of chicken salad. I tried it with chicken salad and it elevated that. I tried it with ice cream, yeah, and that was actually very surprising.
Speaker 2:Right, I told you yes, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:It's just, it's one of those things, it's a condiment.
Speaker 2:It's a condiment.
Speaker 1:It works with so many different things and I think, yeah, and it was a flavor that I've I don't think I've ever tasted before yeah, the umami, because it's not because people get like what is chili crisp?
Speaker 2:so it's like a bunch of onions that you, you, you saute onions until they're they're super crispy and that's sweet and beautiful. And then it's oils and then just for the people, just to explain for everybody, and then chilies and sesame oil and sesame seeds and whatever, and it's basically, like you know, now many people are making like here in Los Angeles in my little cutesy stores that I go and shop, but there's like multiple varieties of chili crisp and even some people have tried to like corner the market and like sent a sea synthesis Even to fly by Jing and which was kind of yeah, that was kind of crazy story.
Speaker 2:That was in the news, not naming names on this podcast, but and then it just kind of turned into like you can't really coin the phrase for chili crisp. It's just really such a that cats out of that bag. It's like a universal thing right now. But she was the trailblazer and and I mean it is crazy, delicious and and very and it's not just like spicy, that's not really the, the.
Speaker 2:So people get like chili crisp. I don't, it's too spicy, it can be whatever you want, you know. And and she said I want to be as iconic as the heinz ketchup, and I mean, for for me I always have to have chili crisp in my arsenal, in my kitchen, always, at all times. So I I I concur with with her.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just, um, they don't sell it in iceland, no, so I'm gonna have to bring a bunch of these home, yeah, um, and and store it and and then, uh, try and convince some somebody to import it, because it is, it is delicious and it does, it definitely makes everything better it definitely more than that, I think.
Speaker 1:For me, I think, it was her story that was inspiring. She built this literally from nothing. She started with a Kickstarter, had a specific amount of time six months, I think it was to get this to market. Achieved that had some initial sort of stumbled a little bit along the way, but turned every stumble into a success.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And is doing it over and over again and, as someone that has I've grown a company, a lot of the things that really resonated with me she was talking about. It's a different company every few months, it's not the same and you have to learn so fast. And you know, in my case it was my first business. In her case it was sort of she had this restaurant, but it was sort of her first business as well. And anyone that is able to learn that fast and do what she did Adapt, yeah, adapt and is going back to that original word, is resilient.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:I think that's her word.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it really is. It's incredible. And just being open to that adaptability and like, nope, this is how we do it and that you have to. You know, if you have to be, you have to sway, because if you're, if you're stiff, you just break, you know. And so she, she definitely doesn't fight the flow. You know you can't argue with the flow. So she, which is, which is, you know, hey, a lot of people, I would dare to say most, don't, I mean people just get set in their ways and don't think change is is a change is key. You know it's key yeah, incredible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's the, the only constant and it's it's what has made her able to do what she's done. She's she's adapted many, many, many, many times and I think that's inspirational. I mean, definitely to me. This reminds me of what it takes to build a business you have to be a great listener. I think she is a fantastic listener to what she is, while still having a strong point of view.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I mean, when she said, like the bad experiences that she had, she's like it's happening for you. When she said that it's all about framing something, it's not happening to you, this is happening for you. And I mean that is a mental, mental gymnastics that she's doing just to to keep that risk, because, instead of giving up, she's like this is happening for me. You know, the universe isn't for you, for or against you, it just is. And I thought that was very, very, very sage advice from her and and that's why she's where she's at. It's phenomenal, phenomenal story.
Speaker 1:Yeah, great interview yeah, and just the fact, yeah, trusting in life, everything she's talked about deeply resonated with me and uh, you know, reading up on her before the interview I had, I was very interested.
Speaker 1:After talking to her, after spending time with her, I was, I just came away with a lot of respect I also one of the interesting things of doing this podcast, especially in LA, is people in LA don't walk. This is true and so and I talked to her after the interview, because the version we share is usually around an hour or so yeah, but this conversation was I think it was two, two and two, two and a half hours oh, wow and she was just exhausted uh, I'm pooped, I'm pooped, I can't.
Speaker 2:There's no more walking.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she was yeah, she was done. So I'm just so uh grateful that she put herself through that and you know, and she didn't complain no before or after, because she just shared with this with me and just said like this was definitely new to her yeah, yeah, this is a long walk and I found this as a part of the conversation with a lot of people in la I uh, people don't walk, um, so that's it's funny to do a podcast there. That's about walking yeah, it is.
Speaker 2:It is because I mean it's not like new yorkers will walk in european people. I mean I walk, but I walk my neighborhood, which is basically like a mile up or down, that's it. You know, that's not really I'm not. I'm not like when I'm in New York I walk, you know, 80 blocks. I don't give a, I love it.
Speaker 1:Right, I love it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she was like I'm pooped the LA people.
Speaker 1:You'll know which one are the LA yeah. Yeah, Well, actually one more thing actually. She took me to her little shop.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Suat yeah, that is beautiful. That has all these. Everything she does, I think, is celebrating where she's from, and a lot of the things in her shop are not made by her in any way but, are just things that she wants to elevate and does really well, and I tasted some of the stuff she sells and I highly recommend going there as well. I don't know how she has time to do that with what she's doing.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and she said that she came to LA like two to three times a month, which is crazy. But yeah, I need to go to that store. It's on Larchmont Millage, I've got to go. She seems to be championing brands and things that she loves to elevate, which you know, that's small business. I'm a big fan. I love it. I love that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she's very authentic and I'm very grateful to get the time to talk with her and, as I said in the podcast, that's the ultimate point of this. I really enjoy meeting people and if you don't have a podcast, I recommend it because you can ask people anything about their life. I love it.
Speaker 2:That's my favorite of the podcast. It's like everybody feels like you're just sitting having coffee with somebody, which you know people don't do anymore. You remember people used to go visit people's houses without ringing or texting. I'm outside, you would just actually knock on the door and go inside and sit, have coffee and shoot the shit and it's. I love. I love a long podcast. This was so insightful and like it's the back, you're getting backdoor advice Like you're getting like all the secret advice by Exactly Asking all these questions you you wouldn't normally do in another setting. So I love it. I learned a lot, very inspiring.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that's it. This has been great, and we're gonna see you again next week.
Speaker 2:I love it, can't wait. Who are we gonna talk to? Then We'll find out.
Speaker 1:We'll find out. Bye, bye. Thank you for listening to let's Walk. This episode was produced by Jihan Sincerely and edited by Gunnar Hansson. Our theme song is by Autny Runar Hlöversson.