How to pursue excellence … in noodles (unlocked bonus)

Hello, it is July at search engine, which means our team is out of office. For me personally, that means a month where I refuse to make any plan that was formed more than 24 hours in advance. My happiest space. We'll be back in August with news stories for you. In the meantime, we are airing some episodes that our free listeners have never heard, including this one. It first aired on incognito mode, our paid premium feed where we publish without ads and also publish extra episodes. Like this one, which I think about a lot, it's about the pursuit of excellence in domains that other people might overlook. And if you enjoy it, there are a bunch more episodes you've never heard. You just have to click the link to sign up in our show notes. It's $50 a year. That is the money we use to keep this show running. All right. Enjoy. I had a mentor who said something to me once that really stuck. He was teaching me how to make podcasts, something that got wrong. I was beating myself up for it and he said to me, "Everything wants to suck." Like the natural orientation of everything is for it to be bad. And if you're trying to make something good, you're just fighting against that the whole time. I thought that was true. It stuck with me. And now, if I'm anywhere where something is excellent, I start to get curious. Like, who is making this excellent? It wants to suck. Who is the person and what are the choices they're making to fight the natural orientation of the universe? There's a noodle shop I go to near a studio called Cheon Famous Foods that's not just a boss. They are very famous here in New York. They have a few locations. But they're superbly excellent. The noodles are glutinous, they're thick and ribbony, they're drenched in this spicy hot oil. I always eat too much. I go for the food, but I also go because while you're in the restaurant, the slightly hilarious thing is that you can feel the ghost of the person trying to make it perfect. They're these very prominent signs telling you how to eat or not eat the noodles that you don't ruin the experience. My favorite one is posted by the cash register. It says in all caps, "Are you sure you want to take those hand-ripped noodles to go? They will not taste as good as fresh dined in noodles. We allow take-out orders of our hand-ripped noodle dishes due to popular demand, but please heed this warning." The noodles cool down within 15 minutes or less when it's cooled out. As that happens, the sauces will soak into the noodles, causing them to bloat, lose their texture, flavor, and vibrance. The noodles may be reheated, but their original taste and chewiness will be gone. And then in all caps, so please eat the noodles right away. If you're able to, please have it in the store, or at least take a quick bite from the takeout container to know how it is intended to taste, or just come back another day when you can enjoy the noodles correctly. End quote. That is one of the signs. And the reason I love these signs is because when I read them, I know that there's someone who cares about something more than money. Like there's a person who is willing to turn away customers if he thinks they will have a sub-par experience of the excellence that he's trying to summit. Shion Famous Foods. I eat there once a week. This week, I wanted to talk to the person running this empire of noodle shops about how he built this, how he keeps things good, and how he fights the natural tendency of the universe for everything to suck. First off, can you introduce yourself? Yes. Thanks so much for the introduction, Vijaya. My name is Jason Wayne. I'm the CEO of Shion Famous Foods, the noodle shop, in question. So happy to be here with you. Did you personally write that sign? Oh, yes. Yes. So when you were talking about the ghost, and I was like, you know, I agree with that completely. It's like my aura all over all of the noodle shops. And also, I don't know if you noticed, my sound system actually comes in and out. Sometimes I will start talking on there and say, like, did you know that you could get your something, something, kind of like the subway system where people are announcing things? And I was like, yeah, it's not just the visuals, but also the creepy audio that comes in at you. Then when you were like the spirit of the person that is running the show here, I was like, yeah, that's a great description. Do you consider yourself at all a bit of a control freak? I'm definitely a control freak. And is that in the shop, is that in your life, like in what way? I think it's in my life. And of course, extends into the shops, into the business. I just can't be helped. Yeah. For better, for worse. So the way this is going to go, I want to do like the backstory of you and these noodles about what it was like to build the business, and then I want to go into like current day. Sure. Well, rewinding all the way back. I was born in China. I was born in Sian. I went to school there, immigrated to the US all over the US, not just New York, places like Michigan, and places like Connecticut. Why were you moving around so much? It's mostly because I kind of followed wherever my father goes for work. And he worked in restaurants. So basically, I was following wherever he's going, wherever the opportunity is. So over a decade of that. So that was my upbringing, kind of just all over the States, finally settling in New York towards the end of my high school career. So yeah. And what's Sian, what is that, what is the place like, like is it a big city, small town? It's not a huge city like Shanghai or like Guangzhou or Shenzhen. Those are probably the biggest cities in China, the coastal cities, Beijing of course. Sian is more inland, Sian is literally the middle of the current China geography. But it used to be the center of trade for imperial and ancient China, being the starting point of the Silk Road. So it has a lot of history there, 13 Dynasties, had their capital there. It was more lush, I believe as well. In the older days, then there was a bit of a change in climate and it got more erudite, it's drier now, it's more dusty. So it's kind of faded in a way, but nowadays experiencing such a rejuvenation of people wanting to visit there. Like when I first came to the US, I was like, oh my gosh, what is a supermarket, right? We didn't have supermarkets back then, we had like department stores, we had like, you buy your groceries on the streets, on stands, like vegetable stands or you go to the butcher for your meat. But now it's changed so much in China, you could go to any supermarkets in Sian and then you don't have to pay with your wallet or your phone even, you just scan your face. So just kind of a contrast, it's how far we've came from that dusty little city to a city that's kind of catching up with modern China. And what were your days like there as a kid when you were still there? Well, the only things I remember was being forced to play piano and because my father bought a piano and it was very expensive at that time, both budget wise and objectively speaking. So he's like, yeah, he has to, right? So I was sort of forced into it and I did not like it. So that was a lot of my childhood memories, unfortunately, was that and also just a lot of studying. School was very competitive. I had to get like 95% or higher on all midterms and finals, otherwise as I considered failure, just because it's so competitive. Yeah. And was food in general a big part of your family life back there? It was definitely a big part of my family life. My dad would always cook, I know my grandfather cooked, they cooked different things of course. But for me, I have to admit, as I was growing up, I hate food really because I just did not like eating. I was super skinny and I had to be chased down to be fed. I remember one thing I really hated was a general palmo, which is basically a lamb soup with sliced boiled lamb and the special thing about it is you would take a piece of bread like a hard flatbread and China, you would break it up yourself with your hands. You throw it into the bowl and in the shop or if you're home, you would boil the bread in the soup, making it sort of like a puffy type of bread soup almost. It's not really a soup anymore. It's kind of like a whole heavy meal from that and I really hated that dish as a kid because it was so heavy and then I just remember we had lunch hour, we go home during lunch in elementary school back then. I would go home and my grandfather would have a bowl of that ready for me and I was like, this is a lot of food, I can't eat this. I would just be watching the Lion King or something and then eating it and it would just get cold and the oil would get hardened and it would stick to the top of my mouth and it was just disgusting. So in China, I didn't appreciate it but once I left that environment going into small town, USA, I found out there's no land back then. I couldn't even find in the supermarket and all the condiments I'm used to, all the spices are not around. So I started missing those things I ran away from. So like food has changed its identity in my head over the years. What year did you move to America? 1997-98 around those and where was the first place your family went to when you got there? Yeah, so I moved into a small town in the Midwest. I think that was also very important because if I ended up in New York, I think it would have been different. My family is actually very small, most of my family is still in China and I think in the first couple of years of being in the US, there was some points where I was like, I'm not learning English fast enough. I'm always in this ESL type of situation, even though the school is so small, they didn't really have an ESL program, but I was always kind of segregated like, oh yeah, he doesn't speak English yet. So let's not have him take the regular test because usually take spelling tests and things like that. So it just felt like this is not somewhere I could be long term and that homesickness along with everything else, whether it's food every day or whether it's sorry to jump around. Food-wise, I used to hate the smell of pizza and used to hate the smell of pickles, like the dill flavor of it. Because it was the smell. Because I love those now. But it was like, they were just like unfamiliar. They were unfamiliar. We didn't use dill. We never used any of those spices. I mean, now pizza is all over China, but back then we didn't have pizza. There's no pizza hug, there's no-- - So what it did smell like to your nose when you smelled pizza. - It smelled like puke. It smelled like puke. It was because of the, I think it was because of the sauce, the onion combination, whether it's the oregano or basil. Well, I walked in the pizza one day, a small town, you know, that's what they had. And I was, I can't stand here. This, this, I can't stand to smell. - Yeah, I think it's a really relatable thing. Like the food of another culture that you haven't exposed to. Particularly like a food with a strong flavor of smell. It's like alienating, it's a weird feeling. Which is so, it's so interesting to me hearing you describe pizza at that way, 'cause obviously, for me, it's like, that's like such a food that I was socialized to be used to. - Yeah, it's standard. I mean, now I can't even think about why it was so weird to me, but that was just the different physical state that I was on, I guess. But now it's definitely a part of my weekly, I would say, diet. Why is young food so hard to find in the US in general? Historically, in the US, when you think about immigration from China, where are they coming from? China's a big country, right? But people are coming from the Southeast region initially, right? People that came to build the railroads, for example, people at a salon in Chinatown, they're from the Southeast. So they're going to bring the culture of the language, a lot of the Chinese dishes that we know of. Like, Egg Fuyang is not really Chinese, but even the wording of it is not like Mandarin. It's more like closer to Cantonese, right? So, and that is because the first wave of immigrants, whether they just made that dish up, it's still in their language, right, and their dialect. So that is sort of why the fixation of what Chinese people eat in the US, the understanding was that it's like dim sum, or it's like more Cantonese food, you know, more seafood focus, lighter flavors not necessarily spicy. And that was kind of the framework until maybe later in the 20th century, then more immigrants came over from say like Shanghai, from Sichuan, and also of course Taiwan, right? Taiwan is actually a melting pot of Chinese cuisine because of historically during the revolution, during the Civil War, a lot of people settled from all parts of mainland China into Taiwan, bringing their different cultures, different foods. So, anyways, getting back to your question. Sorry, I go on tangy, you got to stop. - No, it's like food travels with immigration patterns. And what you're describing is like the waves of, like people from different parts of China and bringing different kinds of cuisines. - Yeah, absolutely. And kind of getting back on track here is, there's never been a big wave of people from Xi'an. It's my point. There's been waves of people from various parts that are closer to the ocean, right? It's a little easier to get to the US. Xi'an is like landlocked, it's way in there. And our drive was really just, we want something to serve to people that are like us, serve folks from our region, yeah. - So, okay, so to cover you, you move to America, your dad's working restaurants. He just described for me like, what does that look like? Like, what type of restaurants, what type of jobs? What is it for how long? Like, what did it look like for your dad to be working restaurants then? - So, what I observed was I was mostly elementary middle school and some of high school. I'm usually at home like by myself for a few days of the week until he gets off. He comes over and he cooks some food for me so that I could have for a few more days. And then he's off to work again. Usually the work would involve working restaurants that are out of state. Opportunities are not always local. I remember him just having bunch of newspapers looking through and making calls to ask like, hey, you know, what do you need? Who do you need? What is the pay? What is the responsibilities? And how soon do you need someone? He'd make a lot of those phone calls. He would have like sprawling a bunch of newspapers on the floor and sending us underwear and just making these calls, right? And then it could be something like, oh, we need someone right now. I need you to be here today. So then he would basically have to catch the next greyhound or something. Or when we had a card, he would drive over immediately. I know that there was one time in Connecticut, someone needed a dishwasher because it was like holiday season and they were really busy. I think it was like a buffet restaurant. So they had a lot of dishes piled up. They needed someone right away and then they're like, okay, well, W are paid to like 200, which is a lot back then, right? If you were to come in right now and to wash all these dishes, right? And so he drove on Blizzard to get to this place. And I think it was like a three, four-hour drive got there and he was like a mountain of dishes waiting to be washed. And he washed those and then he got paid and then he couldn't even, I mean, it was not a lot of money to count, but still like he couldn't even count his fingers or so stiff from washing. And then he got drove back on Blizzard and all that. So those were like more of the extreme gigs. Other gigs, I remember like in Jersey, I remember actually going over to like Cape May. For example, there was a restaurant over there and I kind of tagged along ones because the owner had the house where all the employees were staying and he had a kid. So I was hanging out with his kid. I was sort of like a minification while my father was working for the restaurant. So that's usually the arrangement. And once you get your first gig, I think you know where to find the next gig and restaurants are networked as well. So they would know whoever hired you for this restaurant may be able to introduce you to another one, et cetera. So it's a very interesting system. And why is it so like freelance? Like why isn't it just places higher you and you work at one restaurant for a long time? Everything's very seasonal, I think. And business is a little unpredictable. And honestly, people change like in terms of what they want. The instability I think of the immigrant working populations because they have instability in their lives, right? They don't know if they're going to be in this country for that long. A lot of folks are in the country to make money, to support family back home. They're just looking to stay a few months, do some work, and then take money back. The exchange rate makes it worthwhile to make that trip. And that's why there's so much temporary type of gigs. - Got it. So it wasn't like a feature of the way your dad was working or something. It's like that was just how people worked. It was a highly dynamic, highly temporary kind of. - Yeah, I would say the turnover is not great in restaurant industry in general. For Chinese restaurants, it's the same. Maybe even more extreme. I think my father definitely has a personality as well, so he doesn't always get along with other people. - What's his personality like? - His personality is one that will always fight with me and vice versa as well. Or it could even be something as simple as like, he didn't like the way I taught to him. More like personal. And that bleeds into business. And sometimes that becomes an issue as well. So he's a sensitive guy. And I think that back then when he worked for people with some bosses, he vibed with, he got along with, but there's other people that he just did not agree with and he just basically left. So yeah, almost describing some of these times, at least halfway like an artist. - Yeah, yeah, you could say he's an artist. He's definitely more eccentric, definitely passionate. Definitely passionate, I would say. And I think it takes a little bit of crazy to really survive in this industry. - How did your dad decide to go from working other people's restaurants to starting his own thing? - Yeah, my father, he's always been very passionate about food that we eat from Sian. That's always been in the back of his mind, I think, even when he worked for other restaurants, whether it's like a sushi place or buffet, but his real passion's always been with our own cuisine. And right before when we started, which was 2005, there's nothing like, I dare say right now, there's still not that much around the country, right? So I think the leap of faith into doing something that he's always wanted to do, by meaning to serve our own food, came when I graduated from high school. Once I graduated from high school, I went on my own path, he feels like he doesn't need to have a safety net anymore to make sure I'm taking care of. So he's like, okay, I could go on a limb and actually do something I always wanted to do, starting from nothing huge. It's not like he put in so much money into such a huge restaurant. It was actually just a stall in the basement, food, corn, flushing, queen. So how do you describe Xiong cuisine, by the way? Like how do you explain to people who aren't familiar with it? So Xiong cuisine, there's a lot of different dishes, but overall the flavor profile is spicy and sour, suan la, or fragrantly spicy, xiang la. So sour, like from vinegar, it's quite prevalent in a lot of our dishes. And fragrantly spicy means like in contrast with, say, such on cuisine where it's like spicy, tingly, and could be really fiery, arc cuisine tops out because the peppers are very red. They're very fragrant, they smell very good. They're not super spicy. I tend to be like almost like, like my spice tolerance, I guess, it's gotten higher just living in New York, but it's like, you don't feel like you're massaciously proving something, but it's spicy enough that you have in almost like, I don't know, it's funny, I always joke about this, but it's like a slightly like drug-ish experience almost like there's kind of like a mild, like when I'm eating the noodles, my head does something strange. Like it's like 1% psychedelics. - Yeah, they call it crack noodles, right? And I was like, okay, all right. I like that comparison, but hopefully there's some healthier, but for people who have had the spicy, it becomes addicting in some way, it's very interesting. - Yeah, and it becomes like part of what you have to have. So that's the dominant flavors. And of course, there's other dishes like our flatbread, buns, that's gonna be more about the spices. So spices, meaning things like human cardamom, all sorts of spices are not native to China, but from India, maybe from more West. And that's really because of how the cuisine was influenced over the centuries because of the Silk Road. - So, okay, so you're dad opened like a boba stall. He opened a stall selling what noodles? He sold bubble tea. He was like, okay, I do want to sell my food, but I also don't want to go broke. - Yeah. - This is a failure. So here. He wanted to hedge it a little bit by selling bubble tea, because he's like bubble tea is just water and flavoring. That's all there is tapioca, that's it, and it should be hard to fail at that. So he got that franchise and he sold food on the side. I was like, "Oh, I have some food if you want, some too." And those would be the Ampico skin noodles, the burgers, and a little bit of the poll noodles. But more and more as he operated the business, people, yeah, they're buying bubble tea, but more people were interested in the food. So bubble tea actually got dwarfed after a little while by the food. So then he was like, "Well, why am I selling bubble tea, why not just focus on the food at this point?" It feels right at that point. So that's why he moved into the golden shopping mall. And he just started, because I feel like if someone hasn't visited, they're going to picture the wrong thing. It's not a random American shopping mall with a food court with like a Taco Bell and like a whatever. Like how do you start this experience that somebody would have? What happens when you walk in there? Golden shopping mall was literal basement. You walk down the stairs, and then everything's in Chinese. There are different stalls that don't have AC and don't have, I could say this now because we're not there anymore, doesn't have a proper exhaust system. All right. So somehow, you know, Fire Department never raised issue with it, but that's all said and done. All right. That's all in the past. And very close proximity, you know, really just a three-foot wide corridor bare minimum for people to walk down and just all after stall, you got food from the southeast China, food from northeast. You got food from our place like in the center, considered northwest China and all Chinese menus. And the place is hot in the summer, cold in the winter, people hawk in a little bit as well in terms of someone will walk down with a group that will be like, yeah, come here instead of over there. That was the vibe. Is it a hard place? Because I've been there. The food is delicious. I feel like you can sit down anywhere and have something special. But from the side of selling food in that environment, it seems highly competitive. Very competitive. Got to admit, we weren't best friends. I'd like people to think if a stall across from you sees that you're getting a lot of customers, they're going to bang their noodles a little harder, a little louder to get the attention. There's been fights over napkin use as well. A lot of customers that go down there, they think everyone's free for all. Like I could sit here and eat their food. I could, you know, like customers don't know, right? They're just there to eat. But the politics of it, it's more like, oh, well, your customer is eating more of your food. So don't take my napkins, right? So there's been a couple of punches thrown because of that, you know, and a couple of apologies this shoot. And, you know, I won't go into details, but yeah, I had to call the cops on behalf of my dad once for that. When the cops got there, they're just like confused, like, what is going on here? Why are we called to this place? Let's just shake and make up, you know, it's like over napkins. And everyone's speaking Chinese and I'm the only one speaking Chinese translate. All the customers are like watching what's going on. It was quite weird. And, you know, it's kind of a hard thing to tell friends, it's like, what did you do today for work? Oh, you know, I had to break up a fight over napkins, you know, so good times. We're going to take a short break when we return. A tiny noodle shop becomes very improbably internationally famous. What the heck is going on with all these promotional popcorn buckets? The giant shorts that all of Gen Z is wearing now, and whatever the heck high rocks is? I'm comedian and certified hater Matt Bellasai, and these are the types of questions I'm demanding answers to on my podcast. What the heck with Matt Bellasai? Listen or watch every Thursday as I rant about all the internet trends, pop culture stories, and personal mayhem that makes me scream, what the heck? Follow what the heck with Matt Bellasai wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to the show. So the fame kind of started locally with the Chinese immigrant population, whether it's Chinese newspapers or whether it's the SinoVision, which is like the Chinese news TV here in New York. They did a bunch of reports, lines were down the corridor of the food court up the stairs out around the corner of Main Street on 41st Road. Basically, there were a lot of people interested in the food coming from out of the state, and there were chowhounds from back then when chowhounds was, yeah, so I monitor all that because I made the website. So like, I would see where they're coming from. I would see the people who are so interested, they would take pictures of the menu in Chinese, and then have someone else translate it, and then share it. One of the moments that I noticed, like a big moment in the story of what you guys built was Anthony Riddain comes to eat. Queens. In a minute, you're in some stereotypical idea of why it is that you don't live in Queens. But the next, you're not even in America. Were you there when that happened, like, were you working with your dad at that point? I was not yet. The first time he came was for no reservations, and I was in 2007. How did he find it? He didn't find our stall. He found the gold shopping mall. A warren of vendors selling all sorts of mysterious and tasty specialties from all across China. So it was a hub. He went there for the mall with all these different cuisines. Our stall became sort of the hit because he specifically, when he was in our stall, having our food said, "This place is unbelievable. This place is great. I've never had anything like this before. I mean, I've tasted these flavors, but I've never had this within the framework of Chinese, with that mix. This is really great." This is something that I haven't tasted in Chinese cuisine. And I think that really boosted us in terms of bringing us into the spotlight for non-Chinese speaking diners. It's basically like, the food court was like the scene, and you guys ended up being partly like the start of that scene. Did your dad understand there's some guy with a film crew like what that meant at first? My dad didn't know who he was. My dad did know because of the entourage that he had, this must be somewhat important. And because some other diners that were there were like, "Oh, boss, you're going to be famous now." Because they know who he is. Right. So my dad sent me a picture that he snapped while they were filming, which was a no-no because it was flash. He didn't know. He was signing a snap, like a Sony point in shoe, that he had using that to take menu photos usually. But he sent to me. He's like, "Who is this guy?" I'm famous. I didn't recognize him either because I didn't really watch TV at that point. I was never in the common room of our living dorms, so that's where the TV is. And I show my sweet mates and I was like, "Who is this?" And they told me. I was like, "Oh, dude. We watched him all the time on TV." I was like, "Wait. Is he the ball guy?" Meaning Andrew Zimmer? No, he's not the ball guy. He's the other guy. I was like, "Oh, yeah. Anthony Bourdain. Okay." So yeah. That was that. So how did your dad get out of there? Like how did he get out of the food court? He got out because I got back in New York. What happened? So I was on my own track. I studied finance marketing in college. I went to wash you in St. Louis and I was supposed to do work on my own. But I always had this like itch for the business because I was helped out during breaks throughout college and I helped make the website help transit the menu and just help a little bit from afar, right? And after I graduated, I worked a stunt in Minneapolis for Target Corporation and wasn't the best at what I did. To say, I was really not in it. My heart was not in it and that looking back. So at one point, I was just like, "You know, this is not really for me and I have to really find my own path." And luckily, at that time, I got fired. It worked out. You know? I was like, "Okay." Obviously, it was a hit to my ego, right? Yeah. No one likes being fired. But, you know, I think it takes that type of experience to experience something like that in order to kind of refocus a little bit. Things are not always going to go as expected and one door closes, one door open. So, at that time, I called my dad and I was like, "Hey, honestly, not because I got fired, but I always wanted to do something with this business. I think it has a lot of potential if we don't do something with it. If you just stay in the stall and flushing, someone else is just going to capitalize on your fame and your idea. So I drove all the way back from Minneapolis with all my belongings in my sedan and fell asleep with them. McDonald's parking lot drove back in a couple days and then next day, my dad was like, "Okay. You can rest for a day and next day you're going to work, right? So, doing the basics, can't do anything at that point, have no food experience. So I just took out the trash, you know, to help clean, make some simple dishes. Did it feel humbling? Yeah. Very humbling because, you know, the thing is, Washu is considered a pretty good school. So, and during school, I was always like, "I got this on my SATs and I went to this school and, you know, your academics become a bragging point." And, you know, at that point, I was also dating someone from college and a part of when we were first going out, it was like talking about, she was like, always impressed. I was like, "Oh, you have this internship at Yahoo, you have the internship at Wells Fargo." It was like, "Yeah, you're so on track with everything, Jason, you know?" And my friends were in the city after graduation. Some of them in go to medical school, some of them are going to graduate school MBA programs, some of them are working. They would come after work, some in their scrubs, some of them in their suits and they would visit me and I'm cashiering at this restaurant. It's definitely a big hit when I was like, "Oh, shoot, I'm working in my dad's stall in the basement." But, it's humbling because at the end of the day, it took a lot of heart to know that this is going somewhere to continue day after day. The days weren't easy. Like, they weren't like, "Oh, yeah, I'll just do a lunch shift and I'll go home." No, it was morning till close. When we started expanding out of the basement food court, I had to drive our employees to the first Lower East Side Chinatown location, like under the bridge. This was 2010. I drove them in the morning, we drop off stuff from my trunk, like the food supplies, they go in and start the store, I go park. Then I come back, I open the store, I cash here, I make the food all the way until closed, closed the store, they come back in my car. I drive them back to, we all lived in flushing. I drive them in flush, dropped them off at their homes, and then I go home, I maybe eat my first meal of the day 'cause there's no time to eat when you're working and you're not supposed to eat in the kitchen per DOH regulations, but you don't feel hungry 'cause you're not on your feet the whole day. So anyways, that was like the life. So everything was kind of hard, but what kept me going was like, this is going somewhere, this is something that I could feel, not to glorify the data that grind, but I think I'm really proud of those years because I think that usually that leads to something, you know, it takes a lot of heart, so. - When you go home and you're helping the restaurant, you're doing like the road sort of grindy stuff, but like you were also coming to it with expertise in finance and marketing. Like how did the business start to evolve when you joined the business? Like what was the thing that you were starting to do to try to make it more than what it was? - Yeah, first I can definitely say, being school educated does not mean you are ready to run a business and retrospect, right? So being school educated, I think it helps to give you the mindset to approach problems, not that you'll have answers in your hands ready to go. That comes from experience, I think. And over the years, it's still a learning experience. I'm still learning to this day because there's things change, your business changes, you'll need different things over time. So it's always evolving and I think as a good business leader or owner operator, you have to adapt. At that point, I think the low hanging fruits were simple things such as introducing a POS system because I may website, so I know computer is a little bit back then and we had a box with a green button on it that opens and you click the green button and that's it, that has cash in it. There's no cars or anything. And my father's not the most computer savvy person. So that's all he used, that's all he needed. He'd do calculations in his head, taxes were included back then. So you don't have to add on the 8.875%. So that's how we work. We remember people by their faces. Oh yeah, that tall guy, the short guy, oh, that lady there. The guy with the kid, that's how we remember the orders and calculate the orders and charge them. So that's the low hanging fruit. That was like the best thing I did in the first year. I was like, oh my gosh, I'm so cool now. I contributed so much, but there's so much more than that. And what points do you know, like, stall to restaurant to restaurant splurrow? When do those things happen? Yeah, so as soon as I got back, my father already signed two new locations. And anticipation on me coming back. So the pressure was really on. I remember getting back and having to just draw the kitchen plan for that under the bridge location within like the first month. I didn't know what the heck is going on, but just trying to figure it out. So multiple locations came as soon as I came back. But the first location that was actually like my own location that I scouted personally, that I opened personally from start to finish, like talk on the landlord, everything was our East Village location on St. Marks. And that was a location I worked at pretty much every day for at least the year. And that's where I learned the most about the business. And what did you learn in that location? Learned every dish, learn how to open, close everything, learn how to talk to people. That was when I came out of my shell. I'm actually a pretty shy person. Back then I'm more, I wouldn't say bookish, but I'm not known for being very outgoing, charismatic in terms of talking with strangers. Maybe people I know, but when you're a cashier, you're meeting hundreds of people a day, and there are nice people, and there are gonna be difficult people, you have to be able to deal with all of them. And that was a great training ground for me back then. And of course, the kitchen side, working with employees, that was when I actually hired people. And at that point it was like, we can't hire people who are only Chinese speaking, many people who can speak English as well. So it really became sort of critical for me to expand from just the Chinatown business to a New York business. - And what about at that point working with your dad? Like how was that? It seems, I love my dad. - It seems really hard to imagine. - Yeah, no, it's stressful. A lot of arguments I don't even remember anymore because there are so many. There were multiple times that I call my good friend, and I was like, I don't wanna do this anymore. He wants to do stuff on his own somehow. He's like, I don't need you. Even though like, I know that's not true. He's just saying out anger. There's a lot of stuff he does that I can't do. There's a lot of stuff I do that he can't do. We have these fights all the time, it's not easy. We don't have meetings together with our staff, because every time we are in the same meeting, we will fight and everyone else will feel awkward. And we get pretty like to the point where everyone else is silent. So we wanna save them of that. It's a little inefficient to have two meetings, separate meetings with our staff, but that's how we do it right now. But for me, the thing that keeps pulling me back, at the beginning it was a point of pride, right? It's like, I don't wanna fail again. But nowadays if you're saying like, why do I keep going? It's because we already built something for our guests. We built something for our staff that we can't just simply exit out of. That's something that keeps pulling me back. So yeah. And what year do you guys really start to expand, expand? I would say right before the couple of years, before the pandemic, we were really starting to expand. Are you doing it right before the pandemic? We were starting to expand two, three years before the pandemic. Was that bad? I mean, was just a pandemic. The pandemic throws everything, of course, right? Like everything kind of crashed down. We had to lay off pretty much everyone at that point. And it was really scary. But the faith in the brand always remained because even when we're all closed, people are still emailing us, like, hey, we're in lockdown right now, but we could really use some of your chili oil, for example. So you know, we started shipping stuff. I started delivering meal kits locally using some sort of app that routes all the stops. It was cool because there was no traffic in New York. And I would just drive around and drop off stuff and actually meeting the customers face-to-face during the pandemic outside, of course. But it was pretty cool. But nowadays, I would say that our expansions really sped up in the recent times, you know. How many stores is it? We're 25 right now. I mean, part of the reason I wanted to talk to you, like, there's places I go where, like, the food where I'm not as curious about why the food's good. I think, like, I'm not an expert on food. I eat it. And one of the things that I noticed is that I'll love a place. They'll start to expand. And like, they'll stay good enough that people will keep coming, but they'll lose something. You know, it's like, it's hard to make anything good. It's super hard to teach other people how to make things good to the same standard. You guys seem to have really done that in a way that feels really rare. Like, what do you think you learned learning how to? - I mean, first of all, it's very hard to all the business that have expanded. It's not for lack of trying, I would say. It's just because it really is hard as a food business. Our food is not cooked by robots. Our food is cooked by humans. And the more artisanal the food is, rather than just like something that's pre-made, you heat it up and you just pack it together. If it's any sort of labor, any sort of technique that goes into it, like pulling noodles or cooking our lamb, things like that, mistakes will be made. We've made mistakes since day one. We still make mistakes. And we've made compromises that I think a lot of people are not super happy about. We had to cut down some of our dishes over the years, especially during the pandemic. The lamb pulmo soup, that bread soup that I told you about, a lot of our Chinese customers really missed that soup. They're like up on red note, basically messaging. Like, why'd you get rid of that? Bring that back. I petition to get it back. And then others, folks that are into the noodles, they're like, why don't you serve the ox tail noodles anymore? It's so good. And I really do miss that dish myself. So with expansion, there are things we have to give up in terms of like some things are just very labor intensive. We are not operationally efficient, one dish could delay a whole line in terms of like efficiencies and the kitchens. And if it's very different from other dishes, it has to be 86 for the time being. We do want to bring things back as specials every now and then, but I think that's an important part of like an expanding restaurant is the efficiency, but sometimes there's something's lost. So it's like doing less to make sure that you can do what you're doing well and efficiently. Being cognizant of our limitations. We can't do everything. Even if you go to see on their restaurants, I only serve Palmo, that's the only thing they serve. And they do a very well, they're famous for it. And their restaurants are only served noodles or only served on pizza. I aspire to move more towards that direction rather than be a jack of all trades because we're human, we can't do everything. There's going to be more errors. But of course, if we're able to better ourselves in the future, I can always bring it back. I get the sense from the signage in the restaurant of nothing else that you are not super into delivery, but you guys do delivery, it's weird. When I order delivery from you, I feel like I'm like pirating music or something. Like why did you start doing it despite your reservations? I think the big answer is COVID. And it's not because COVID was draining us of sales. Of course, I had a big financial impact on ourselves, but it was more so that COVID itself changed consumer behavior expectations. And like if you were a person back before the pandemic, I never ordered takeout. You might feel like, well, my expectations for this noodle is to arrive exactly like it would in the stores, right? So like, it was almost sort of like an education by ordering because more people ordered food than they would normally. And because of that, there's more understanding that food is not going to be 100% when it's delivered. So that was our biggest concern. We were worried, we still are worried about our food being [BLANK_AUDIO] is represented because if it's your first time having shank famous foods, you get it delivered, noodles come in, they're tasteless or soggy, they're clump, and that's your impression in shank famous foods, we can't have that, right? But we still take measures to mitigate that. We limit our radius to, I think in the city, we have six or seven minutes, delivery by bike, outside of New York City is seven minutes by car, and that's as far as we will go. We're not gonna go beyond that. Some people are not happy about that either, and they're like, why is it really so small? But that's really why so that works for us. We're also developed ways to separate the sauces, the noodles, to give it a few more minutes of life. So you could put it together, we developed a video guide as to how to put it together. All these measures, just to make sure that you have a decent first experience. - Jason's very, very cautious embrace of delivery has now extended to some cities outside New York. In some of these places, he's experimented with ghost kitchens. It's a delivery only, tiny outpost, just to test whether he can pull off good delivery elsewhere. The plan is, if it works, to expand in those cities to normal four wall stores, but if you live in a place right now like DC, you might see one of these ghost kitchens. They are Jason's begrudging compromise with the post-COVID reality of most restaurant experiences now being delivery, although even now, in his restaurants, he still tries to push people towards just eating the noodles there. And what does it feel like for you? When you think about somebody having the wrong, like the customer experience is like the final step in a process you're trying to create. And it's the part where you lose total control. Like you can't, if someone's gonna sit there at the table and let the noodles get cold, you like can't legally stop them. When you picture someone having a bad experience, what is the feeling you have? It just feels like I feel bad that they are missing out on what could be a good experience, right? In a way where, so that's why I'm like, I wanna throw all these signs up because I wanna prevent you from walking down the wrong path. So to speak, and that's where the control freak comes in, you know, I can't take your hands and force you but every customer might think I talk too much when they order something, they're like, oh, but I'm gonna take it home. I'm like, how far is your home? And she'll be like, oh, you know, it's like an hour but oh, that's no good. It's not that good after an hour. Do you wanna just have a little bit here? And she's like, oh no, is it not gonna be good? What if I separate, I could separate for you but it only gives you like 10 or 15 more minutes than usual. And she's like, oh, I didn't know about that. I'm like holding up the line and I'm talking too much but that's like the control freak of me. I'm just like, I wanna make sure you understand like you're missing out if you're not having it right away. So I just have a bite, we have a bite for me. And she's like, okay, another person be like, oh, I want the cold noodles but you want the sauce mixed with together. And then she'll be like, oh, mix is okay. I was like, you need 15 minutes, right? She's like, oh yeah, yeah, I'm just around the corner. I'm okay, good. So that's, yeah, you know, you can't force people but I think a way where you let them know the information and make the right choices, that's all we can do. - It doesn't seem like the way you choose to run your business is totally moment to moment and profit maximizing. Like you could have a wider delivery radius. You could open more stores less carefully. You could like, you know what I mean? - I know you mean. - I would say this Peter, I like, for me, I'm happy with where I am in terms of what I have and I don't need more. I don't need to make a mark to like prove myself anymore in a way where it's like, I need to hit this number or I also don't have investors, I'm okay. So I don't have that push. Everything else is worth about doing things right and making sure that this is gonna be a business that I'm gonna still be proud of, that I still want my name attached to. I think that's really the motivating factor a lot of times. - Is that you want to mean that you can put your name on and feel proud? - Yes. - And when did you start to feel like, you did have what you wanted, like you did have enough? I think that, you know, it's all relative, you know, like when we opened three or four stores, it feels like, yeah, this is good. Four or five stores, 10 stores. I think that a big part of what makes me content with where I am is also family. I'm 38 and I'm married. I just had a kid, you know, thank you six weeks ago. So I think that is a very important part of my life and I think that having this as an anchor, not that everything else doesn't matter, not that the business doesn't matter, but I think as a person of your ambitions, if you don't have a goal that you wanna hit and you feel like you're not always missing out on something, for me, maybe it's family, maybe it's just being able to see someone who potentially take over in the future, right? That, to me, in a way, is comforting and maybe more so than dollar amounts, maybe more so than store count. And that's probably a good spot for me. And I want the business to continue to be strong. I want to leave a good legacy for my family and I want it to continue to serve my guests who have been dining here for like decades now, actually. So that's really the motivating factor. Everything else, all the financial, not to say I don't look at the bottom. I look at the bottom line. But the thing is, the bottom line is more so a means to an end rather than the end. And overall, the year is gonna be a very exciting year for us just because we have six stores in the pipelines right now. Three in New York, one in Boston, and two in the DMV area. So one in Maryland, one in Virginia. Things are coming along, hoping to open the summer. People are waiting for us to open and I can't wait to really make a big splash with those grand opening. So are you gonna be there telling people how to eat the noodles? Oh, absolutely. That's what I'm there for, you know. Being a annoying guy that talks too much. Yeah. They keep you talking to me about this. Of course. What do you recommend people's first order? I would say depends on how hungry you are and depends on the season. If it's a hot day, try the cold skin noodles. If it's a cold day, try our hample noodles, which hample noodles, best sellers are spicy cumin lamb or the spicy tingling beef. But you know what? How do I see your noodles is a pretty much a vegan option even though it's cooked in the water with our dumplings. So if you're okay with that, then it is vegan. And our pork jajang noodles has actually been a sleeper hit these days. So definitely happened to introduce you to the different flavors, but I want you to make your decision. How many times in your life do you think you've said those words? A billion times. So many times. And sometimes I catch myself, I'm like, oh my gosh, this is crazy. Yeah, definitely been a few times. Thank you. That was my interview with Jason Wang of Jiong Famous Foods. If you enjoyed it, if you want to hear more of the interviews you may have never heard on Search Engine before, check out in Cognito mode. You can find it in our show notes or by navigating to search engine.show. It's $15 here. (upbeat music) Search Engine is a presentation of Odyssey. It was created by me, PJ vote, and Truthie Pinomini. Garrett Graham is our senior producer, Emily Maltaire is our associate producer. Our production intern is Piper Dumont. This episode was produced by Kim Koopal. Theme, original composition, and mixing by Armin Bizarriant, our executive producer is Leah Reese Dennis. Thanks to the rest of the team at Odyssey, Rob Morandi, Craig Cox, Eric Donnelly, Colin Gaynor, current Justine Francis, Kirk Courtney Vanessa Tinkati, and Elri Schaff. 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