May 23, 2023 • 43 mins
FLY BY JING founder Jing Gao never intended to make hot sauce for a living. But after living in China her pallet was awakened to Asian flavors that drove her to become a foodie. Jing decided to make the scary leap from her traditional tech job to a full-time career in food. In this episode, Jing talks about her diaspora experience growing up in the West, the many pitfalls she faced as a food entrepreneur, and how overnight, viral success changes a business.
To get your own Fly By Jing hot sauce, check out flybyjing.com
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. If you look closely enough at any success story,
you'll see a lot of failure. Things go wrong, partner
split up, businesses fall apart, and the story of my
guest today, Jing Gao is no different. Jing's the founder
(00:36):
of fly By Jing, a line of chili crisp and
other condiments sold nationwide. After she lost her first food
business to a former partner, Jing set out to create
something that was all her own and that would create
space for the appreciation of Chinese food in America. That's
how fly By Jing was born. It became a success
(00:57):
through overcoming a series of obstacles. Jing Gao drops some
gems in this interview, So I recommend you get your
notepad out and pay attention. This has started from the bio,
hard earned success stories from people like us. Maybe you
could tell me a little bit about your childhood. You
(01:19):
grow up in Chungdu.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Yeah, so I was born in Chungdu. It's the capital
of Sichuan. And China is crazy about food, right everywhere
in China. And China is as big as a continent,
it is as big as Europe, right, and so there's
so many different regional cuisines. There's so many culinary traditions.
And even with all of that going on, like Cichuan
(01:41):
is known as like the foodiest of all the foody places.
People are just like absolutely crazy about food.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Yeah, would you say, it's a big part of the culture.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Huge part of the culture. People are just born, like
your baseline, born as like a food obsessed individual, and yeah,
people live for food. Tichran is also a super leisurely
type of place. It's very different from cities like Beijing
and Shanghai, where people are always on the go, and
just like very fast paced, Chundu is slow. People are
(02:13):
all about the art of living. They're always playing majong
in the park, drinking tea, you know, having long dinners
over hot pot. And I was there until I was
about five, and my father, who was a nuclear physicist
at the time, became a professor and he was asked
to go and teach at universities in Europe, and so
(02:34):
we moved with him to Europe when I was about five.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Where do you guys move?
Speaker 2 (02:39):
We moved to Germany. So I went to first grade
in Germany in the Black Forest. I was the only
non blonde kid at school. I of course didn't understand
a word, and I didn't understand a word for the
entire year that I was there, and I think I
had just started to pick up some German a year
(02:59):
in when my dad changed to another university in England,
and so we moved to England then, and I started
all over again with English and you know, kind of
finding my way around a new country, a new culture,
new kids who were again like did not look like me,
and did this kind of on repeat for a few
(03:21):
more years, to Austria, France, and Italy, and then finally
we moved to Canada, to Toronto, specific Toronto.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Yeah, and how old are you at that point?
Speaker 2 (03:31):
I think I was in like middle school, almost high.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
School and you settled there, right, Yeah, So.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
We ended up living there for I mean, my parents
were still there and we became Canadians. I went to university,
came out and started working in Canada as well, So
it was like the longest I'd lived anywhere.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
At some point along the way, you you started going
by by Jenny, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
So that happened pretty early. I think I was six
or seven, and I just remember feeling like I needed
something to try to fit in, I needed something to
make me appear less foreign, and I figured Jenny was
the best way to do that because my name Jing
(04:15):
schren Gal was just impossible for the kids to pronounce.
So I don't know where I came up with the name,
but it sounded western enough, and so I went with it.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
It's interesting because, I mean, you clearly spent enough time
in China to start to develop and identity, even if
you weren't aware necessarily what your identity was, and then
you moved to these really homogeneous places. How did that
affect a perception of what it means to be Chinese?
Speaker 2 (04:47):
I mean, I think I tried not to be. I
was young enough and adaptable enough that it was pretty
easy for me to code switch. I think it's also
just in my nature to try to blend in, you know.
I think it felt more comfortable for me. It was
like a shield that I had, no matter what situation
(05:08):
I was in. So I didn't realize until much later
just how much of myself I had kind of buried.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
There were there conversations around your house or expectations about
where you might sort of go to school and sort
of make a career for yourself.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
I actually wanted to go to art school and I.
My parents were like hard, no, like, there's no way
you're going to do that. And so I think we
found a middle ground somehow in business school.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
And this sounds quite like a middle ground. I'm gonna
say it sounds like you conceded.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
But I think I had like there was like an
older girl I knew who went to business school and
I thought that was so cool, and I was like, yeah,
I want to do that, and I want to carry
a briefcase and you know, look important when I'm walking
down down the street. And I had no idea what
business school was going to be like either. And when
I came out of school, my first job was actually
(06:03):
at a giant company, Procter and Gamble, which my parents
were really happy about.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
What's your job at Proctic? In Gamble?
Speaker 2 (06:10):
So I was a brand manager. And at Procter and
Gamble they owned so many different brands, right, each of
them has kind of a brand manager that helms the
brand sort of and grows its market share over like
year over year.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Did it feel satisfying? Did it feel like you had
found your thing?
Speaker 2 (06:30):
I think it was a really great training ground for
someone fresh out of school, But pretty quickly I got bored.
You know, they have a way that they've been doing
things for one hundred years, and there's not that many
ways that you can kind of deviate and do your
own thing outside of that. So after I would say
like a year year and a half, I kind of
(06:50):
got what I could out of it, and I didn't
see myself there long term. So I started looking at,
you know, what else I could be doing. And so
actually my last year of college, I did an exchange
semester in Beijing. I stayed there for about six months,
and that was kind of my first time in China
as an adult, and I was really surprised by what
(07:15):
I saw, Like I went into that experience not expecting
to love it as much as I did. I felt
at that point so disconnected from China. But I found
myself in Beijing and was just shocked by how incredible
the city was. This was right around the time of
(07:35):
the Olympics. China felt like it was opening up. There
was so much energy, excitement in the air. You just
met the most interesting people from all walks of life,
from all cultures, you know, all of them just found
themselves in China at the time. And so I became
hooked to that energy. And when I went back and
started working at in Toronto at P ANDNG, it just
(07:59):
felt like night and day and I couldn't stop thinking
about China and yeah, so at the first chance I got,
I quit my job and moved to Beijing. Then a
friend of mine from Toronto hit me up and he
was working for BlackBerry at the time. So this was
actually before iPhones like became the number one smartphone because
(08:22):
Blackberries were at the time, and he was like, I'm
moving to Asia to start up the business in Singapore.
Do you want to come and work for me? And
I was like, yes, sign me up. So I started
working for BlackBerry and did some work for them in Beijing,
and then it brought me to Singapore. And that's how
(08:45):
I also kind of got into food because I just
like was traveling so much across China across Asia that
when I wasn't working, I was eating and I was
exploring and started a food blog on the side. I
think I always enjoyed good food, but it was never
in the foreground of my life, Like I don't think
(09:06):
my palette was really awakened until I went to China
in my.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Twenties, when did you decide to start working in food
full time?
Speaker 2 (09:15):
So I moved to Singapore with BlackBerry, then moved back
to China and with a different job I was. I
was in Shanghai. When I was there, I had started
to spend a lot more time on food. I had
my blog going. I had a lot of chefs reach
(09:35):
out when they would come to China wanted me to
take them around. I took Eddie Kwang around Shanghai Andrew
Zimmer and so I was on their show.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Wait a second, but so then how did they How
did they know.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
You just through my blog? I guess you know.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
So your blog got pretty pretty big.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was like one of the few,
like English language blogs about Chinese food in China. So
I had a lot of people reaching out to me
all the time. I was like starting to do food
like more with food media, and I think at one
point I just kind of knew I was ready to
go into food full time. So when I left my job,
(10:10):
I did not know what I was going to do.
But I was like working on a number of different things,
writing projects and media projects. But not long after I
met my business partner in my next venture, which was
my first restaurant. I flirted with the idea of opening
(10:30):
a restaurant. I never I couldn't conceive of like actually
doing it. You know, it just seemed like something so
out of reach. But I met this person who had
a lot of resources and also wanted to open a
restaurant but kind of didn't really have the idea for it.
And I was like, well, I have lots of ideas.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
And.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
You know, we ended up opening the first modern Chinese
fast casual restaurant in Shanghai that was like celebrating regional
Chinese cuisines.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
It was called Baoism, and we opened that, I think
in two thousand fifteen.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
What did you learn from that experience?
Speaker 2 (11:14):
So much? It was actually my first you know, entrepreneurial experience,
and through that process, I think I learned so many things.
But one of them was also the importance of like
picking the right business partner. Because my business partner at
the time, you know, who put up all the resources,
was like, one day after we had opened and it
was very successful, was like, you know, I think I
(11:38):
don't need you anymore in this business, and egos got
in the way and he figured that he could you
do it? Without me, and so it was a really
important lesson to learn, as like, you know, a twenty
something year old who had no idea how to like
structure or business partnership properly. It was a big lesson.
And the russaurant was very successful. You know, we had
(12:00):
won awards, We were covered in New York Magazine, we
were in Monocle, we were in like wallpaper Guide to Shanghai.
It was it really reached a lot of people, and
I wanted to do that even more and with something
tangible and that was personal to me.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
At this point, Was there any bit of you that
was doubting your move into the food world.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
I mean I was definitely scared. I didn't allow myself
to sit still enough to really process how scared, shitless
I was. I had just spent you know, two and
a half years of my life on this restaurant that
I thought was my baby, that was going to be
my future. I saw so much of my own identity
(12:39):
tied up into it. When I lost that, it just
felt like, you know, everything was kind of in a
very quick, shocking way, like pulled out from under me.
But I didn't allow myself to really process that trauma,
and I jumped right into the next thing, and that
was the only thing that I knew how to do,
(13:00):
and it was the only way I could cope.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
So you literally just jumped into the kitchen and just
start making dishes. And I learned a lot, right.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Like pretty quickly. I started to just cook, and I
started an underground supper club which I named fly by Jing.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
Why fly by Jing?
Speaker 2 (13:17):
By the way, so Chungdu giant food city. It's famous
actually for a type of restaurant called fly restaurants like
tengu got and literally translates to a fly restaurant, and
it's a type of restaurant that is hidden hole in
the walls mom and pop run and they're so named
(13:38):
because they're said to be so delicious that they attract
people like flies. So even though they're hidden, they never
do any marketing. It's you know, zero atmosphere. People seek
it out like flies because it's so delicious, and so
I wanted to capture that energy in the dinners that
I was putting on. And then the Jing was an
(14:00):
ode to my birth name, which at the time I
was still uncomfortable with, and I still went by Jenny,
but I think I was already starting to kind of
reach for thing that was personal, right, and that was
that felt like me. After having my restaurant being taken
away from me, I think I wanted to be very
clear that this was by Jing, you know, And so
(14:23):
that was how it started. So I would cook for
about twenty people at a time every night. I would
start doing pop ups with chefs around Shanghai, and very
quickly kind of word spread and I started doing pop
ups in cities all over the world. I was invited
to cook in like New Zealand, in Australia, in New York, La, Tokyo.
(14:45):
And you know, when I would collaborate with other chefs,
we would create new spins on the cuisines. And so
when I would collaborate with like a Mexican chef or
an Italian chef, for example, we would just like really
remix the flavors on new canvases, you know, on local
ingredients wherever I was. And that's kind of, you know,
(15:07):
where I started to find my foot.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Jing's a risk taker who left her job twice to
try her hand at the food industry. I'm supremely impressed
by the kind of courage that takes don't go anywhere more.
We Jing Gao. After the break, Jing's blog and Suparate
(15:33):
Club really gave her the platform she needed to feel
like she could put herself back into the entrepreneurial world again.
But of course it wasn't without its challenges. We have
more from Jingau.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
I knew that I didn't want to do a traditional
restaurant model. I wanted something that could reach even more people,
be scalable. I don't think at the time I thought
a consumer packash could. I think it wasn't until like
twenty eighteen that I started to actually think about a product.
I visited California, actually went to a trade show called
(16:08):
Natural Product Sex but West, which happens in Anaheim every March,
and it's like the biggest collection of consumer food brands.
I walked this show for four days and saw thousands
of vendors, just endless rows of food brands, and I
(16:28):
walked away from it feeling like really shocked. And I
just was like craving Asian flavors, and I was like,
why do I just want a bowl of noodles right now?
And I realized it was because after like four days
of walking around this hall, like I didn't have any
Asian flavors, and this was supposed to be the future
of you know, healthy natural eating in America, right, Like
(16:50):
these are the brands that buyers are going to be
putting on shelves at your whole foods, And so that
felt not right to me. I felt like something was missing,
and there was a giant opportunity I felt because there
are fifty thousand Chinese restaurants in America. It's actually the
most number of restaurants of any cuisine, wow, and actually
(17:14):
of any like fast food chain combined. It is an
incredible number of Chinese restaurants and it's clearly a testament
to how popular the cuisine is. But yet when you
go and look on store shelves, you really don't see
that same representation or accessibility. And I knew that. You know,
(17:34):
the reason why they weren't in the West was because
there was no demand, but that stemmed from like that
are not being any awareness, any education, Like people have
no concept of these incredible ingredients. And of course, if
all you see is like low quality, mass produced products,
that's what you associate with Chinese food. The time, you know,
(17:54):
I was I was cooking, and I was building all
these sauces in my pantry, and like one of them
was the Sochuan Chili Crisp, and I started to bottle
some of them and give it away to friends.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
And chili crisp is this secific kind of sauce. You
can explain what the chili crisp is.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Yeah, So chili crisp is a spicy, savory, sort of
crispy textured hot sauce that is an oil based sauce
and it's made by heating up oil and cooking dried
chilies and a number of different like aromatics and different ingredients,
and that becomes a condiment. It's almost like a hot
(18:33):
sauce that you can really put on anything. And in China,
every household has like their own version right that they've
been It's like a family recipe that's been passed down,
and they're all so different, you know. I've had ones
that have like mushrooms in it, that have beef in it,
that have like fermented bean paste in it, all types
of different flavors. There are literally thousands of different styles
(18:58):
in China, right, but there was nothing like it in
the US. There was one mass brand, Lagama, which is
you know, a billion dollar company in China. You know,
it was the only version that was at all available
in the US, and I think most Americans hadn't heard
of it. So I was like, there's definitely this gap
(19:21):
to be filled. You know, it's a delicious condiment. It's
good on pretty much everything. If billions of people in
China can love a condiment like this, why can't Americans.
So that summer, I actually went back to Shanghai and
started looking into scaling production.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
And what does that look like when you go back
to source ingredients for something like this.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
I already knew what ingredients I wanted to use, and
these were ingredients that I had sourced for, you know,
years leading up to that point. Exactly exactly what I
needed was a factory to be able to make it
for me, you know, because I was cooking large batches
in my kitchen, but you know that would take me
hours and hours, and you know I would hand bottle
(20:05):
hundreds of jars, you know, so I didn't know anything
about food production. I just went into a grocery store
sort of looking at jars that were on the shelf.
And in China, they it's mandated to like have factories
details like address and phone numbers on the jars, and
so I just started calling up factories and they would
(20:29):
be like, yeah, who is this, Like I'm interested in
making a hot sauce with you, you know, they would be like, Okay,
what restaurant are you with or like what organization? And
almost all of them didn't give me time of day
because they have so much business from just domestically in China,
(20:51):
they definitely had no time for someone like me. So
it took a lot of calling. It took a lot
of just like you know, asking for favors, asking for intros.
Finally I found a factory that was willing to talk
to me, started working with them on scaling the recipe,
which is very different from like cooking at home versus
you know, in a giant.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Can you explain that, Like, how do you go from
I have this recipe that works well for you know,
creating at home versus the recipe that can actually scale
and be produced at a larger volume.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Yeah, I mean it's just a lot of experimentation, a
lot of tweaking, even temperature, you know, temperature of oil,
which is so important when you're making chili oil because
the right temperature draws out the flavor versus temperature is
too high, it's going to burn the chili's something too low,
it's not going to draw out the flavor. Change the
temperature by a tiny little bit, and it has drastic
(21:43):
you know effects, and so something like that versus the
weight of different ingredients. It really just is trial and error.
So you start with a smaller batch, then you go
into a small drum, then you go to a medium one,
and then finally a big one, until you can get
the consistency that you want.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
And through that there's the possibility that you could make
an entire batch potentially.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
And that's how you have to waste everything. Yeah, gone
up in smoke. It's definitely happened when I burnt all
my chili.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
Lord. Yeah, and when you're working with the big order
that's fairly costly, I imagine, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
It can be for sure. How do I actually produce
a giant batch? It costs like at least twenty to
thirty thousand dollars and I definitely didn't have that to
produce a batch the minimum order quantity. Yes, like they'll
they'll help you figure out the recipe to the point
where you know it can scale, but then you need
to place your order and the minimum order quantity is
(22:43):
quite high.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Wow. So so when it gets to that point, what.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Do I do?
Speaker 1 (22:52):
From using Kickstarter to raise over one hundred thousand dollars
to start production of her Chili crisp to seeing her
dreams break and spill right before her eyes, what does
she do? Then we're back with Jing Gao, who's explaining
(23:17):
to us her founder's journey on Kickstarter.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
I had known some friends who had run Kickstarter campaigns
quite successfully. I called them up and I asked them,
you know how they did it? So I studied their campaigns.
After like a couple of months, I worked with some
friends and we filmed video. We went to chung Du
Film to video telling the story of what I wanted
(23:43):
to do, and finally got the page to a point
where I was happy. And yeah, we ended up launching
the kickstarter the summer of.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
That year, still the summer after the trade show. Yes, yes,
this is all happening.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Quickly, Yes, And I reached out to some journalists who
I knew were interested in Chinese food. I just cold
emailed bunch of writers that I thought might be interested
in this, and I had two people reached back out,
and one was a writer for SI War magazine. One
(24:18):
was a writer for New York Magazine. They somehow agreed
to cover the Kickstarter campaign on the day that it
went live, and so because of that coverage, we ended
up going viral and getting fully funded after just one day.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
That's an insane success story. Had you considered getting investors
by other means, like, had you present it to investors?
Speaker 2 (24:41):
You didn't know anyone that had money to give me, Like,
I just did not know a single person that could
give me that type of money. And so I felt like,
if I'm going to do this anyway, like I might
as well just do a Kickstarter and just you know,
have that be an indicator of like, is this even
going to work? I knew that there was a hunger
(25:03):
for it, just wasn't being presented right. And so my thesis,
I guess, was just that people were ready for a
new paradigm about Chinese food.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Amazing thesis. So we have this hugely successful best case
scenario kickstarter campaign. You get enough to fill a bunch
of orders, correct, Yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Ended up getting thousands of orders. And the great thing
about Kickstarter, it was great because you know, you have
a built in like initial customer base, and I ended
up getting a few thousand customers. It actually allowed me
to expand my offerings, like from just the Chili Crisp alone.
At first, I was just gonna do the Chili Crisp,
(25:43):
and I was like, Okay, well, if I hit like
fifty thousand, then maybe I'll add like Drone sauce to
the mix. And if I hit one hundred thousand, I'll
add Mollus spice. And people just kept like kept ordering more,
and so I ended up just creating like three products
from this campaign when I originally was planning on just one.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Were you were you nervous though? And filling these orders
that like well, and like people are pre ordering but
they haven't tried it yet, like these gonna be return
ye people. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
Actually, the more successful the campaign was, the more nervous
I was, because now you know, not only did I
have to do one product, I had to do three,
three times of complexity. There's still a lot of unknowns
with the production.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Yeah, well, because you had him produced at that.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
Yes, Because there's a lot of unknowns and I just
knew like even at that point, so early on, like
nothing ever goes the way that you plan it, and
so I knew that there was going to be a
lot of curveballs and oh yeah, a million, a million.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
What were some of the memorable What was some of
the most infuriated, Well.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Just you know, everything from the factory ordering the wrong
types of shallots, so you end up with like hundreds
of kilos of like a shalat that you can't use.
And then like just misunderstanding is about like the size
of the cap, the way that the bottle is sealed,
(27:13):
the machinery that's required. Every single decision point, there's someone
that's gonna tell you, oh no, we can't do that,
like that's not how it's done, and have no solution
to give you otherwise, right, And so it's like constantly
preempting the nose. And also, you know, it's hard to
do when you don't understand the business as like someone
(27:35):
who's never done manufacturing before, I don't know how the
machines work. You're supposed to tell me, but you are
telling me that. You're just telling me you can't do it.
And now I have to learn about what I thought
you were gonna show me to show you how I
would like it to be done. So what I realized
was there was always a way. There's always a solution
(27:58):
no matter what the issue was, right, and it might
look very different from what you originally had anticipated, but
it is going to get you closer to your goal.
Like even if it's not you know, the way that
you wanted to.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
It's only a few years ago. How's your business changed
from sort of building a brand identity around Kickstarter and
fundraising from Kickstarter to to where you're at now? What
change has occurred?
Speaker 2 (28:24):
Well, I have a team now. I started without a team.
I was just one person. I moved to La I
moved into an Airbnb in Silver Lake, and I waited
for the products to arrive because it was like going
to be on sea freight because of the number of
orders I had, like I had to fulfill it at
a third party logistics company. There's no way I could
(28:44):
like move palettes of product into my airbnb and do
it myself as much as I wanted to.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
And so were you able to afford that?
Speaker 2 (28:53):
I was able to afford it with it with the
Kickstarter funds. But yeah, that's where like another giant mishap happened.
The three PL ended up, you know, not protecting the
jars when they sent it out.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
It's real quick to three PL meaning third party.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
Party logistics company. Yeah, they literally shipped out thousands of
jars of chili crist like next to each other with
zero protective wrap in an envelope. And I discovered this
right before Christmas in twenty eighteen and started receiving kind
of the first angry emails from Kickstarter backers just being like,
(29:29):
what the hell is this? Like literally pictures of oil
pulled in an envelope.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
I gotta say, like, because when you say it's an
oil based hot sauce, I mean it really is, Like
you can make quite a mess of thing.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
I want to any spills.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
Mixed with broken glass in an envelope. It was just
a really bad situation. And so that was like as
quickly as it started, I was like, oh, this is
the end, Like this I cannot come back from this,
you know. But luckily, by some kind of miracle, only
about fifteen percent of the orders were broken, and the
(30:05):
rest of the customers were really happy. And that fifteen
percent of the the customers they were super understanding because
it was kickstarter, right, and like they know that stuff
doesn't go well all the time, and so it was
also like a really great chance to just talk to
them directly, and they, I feel, became even more supportive.
We were able to, yeah, to reship them product and so,
(30:26):
you know, we it was just me when I say we,
it was just me doing everything from answering customer service email.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
You don't know any one of the US. I imagine
maybe you know some people you know.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Exactly, I like, yeah, I mean I think I think must.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Have been lonely. Were you lonely?
Speaker 2 (30:44):
Definitely? And I couldn't go home for the holidays because
I had to answer customer service emails, you know. And
after I would say about a year hired, my first
employee went from there to now we have twenty employees
and it's it's been kind of an insane three and
a half years of growth.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Who was your first full time employee?
Speaker 2 (31:05):
So, Stephanie, she is kind of like a Swiss army knife.
I think your first employee needs to be that. She
did everything with me from early days, like we were
packing packages in my apartment, to customer service to ops,
like literally everything. I remember when COVID first hit. We
(31:28):
had a lot of uncertainty, right, Like we had no
idea what was going to happen? Is China US like
trade relation is going to crumble? Like am I ever
gonna is this business? Is this the end?
Speaker 1 (31:37):
You know?
Speaker 2 (31:37):
And with kind of anti Asian sentiment happening with more
and more just like hateful comments online about our products.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
And Chinese sentiment was absolutely yeah crazy.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
After exactly and so, and we definitely saw an uprising
in kind of hateful comments like on our Instagram and stuff,
and so there was a lot of uncertainty, but we
could never have dreamt of like kind of what came
after that, because the New York Times actually ended up
doing an article about us in April of that year,
(32:12):
so it was a height of COVID at the time,
and it was an article titled your quarantine cooking needs
Chili Crisp, and it was entirely about fly By Jing
and our story. And that was where everything changed. Overnight,
we sold out of like all of our inventory, which
(32:33):
was probably six months worth at the time, and we
started taking pre orders and the orders just kept pouring in.
It just didn't stop. There was so much support for
our brand and that just really I think gave us
the commission to kind of keep pushing forward, right, Like
we knew that despite everything that was happening, all the challenges,
(32:54):
because even at the time, like when we sold out,
we couldn't produce more product, like China was still locked down. Eventually,
when China kind of came back online, my manufacturer couldn't
bottle the product. They could only make the product. So
we had ended up having to look for a whole
news of hychin in the US overnight wow, to try
to just bottle the sauce. Finally, when the product arrived
(33:16):
in the US, we went to this factory near La
that I found who agreed to do the bottling.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
How do you ship chili oil on bottle? How does that?
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Oh, it's just like in a giant drum, like in
a twenty kilo drum. Yeah, So we ended up bringing
it all over here, bringing it to a local bottler here.
And on the day of bottling, me and Stephanie we go.
We're like dressed up in our lab coats with our hairnets,
and we are so excited and as soon as they
(33:48):
start running the machines, the chili crisp because it's so
thick clogs the machines and the whole thing breaks, and
they're like, and we're already late to fulfill our orders.
Like people had been emailing. People are like, where's my order?
I've been waiting with three four months and we're like, guys,
any like literally next week, next week, it'll be done
(34:11):
this Saturday. We're going to go and do the filling.
And now they're like, we have no more machines. So
the only option is to hand fill every single jar.
And I'm astounded that they even agreed to do that
because I thought, you know, this is something that I'm
used to in China, and in China, you know, they
(34:32):
they do that kind of thing. But I was like,
in the US, no one's going to be willing to
do that. But they did, and so thank god we
ended up then you know, having to write that email
to literally fifty thousand people that were waiting for their products.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
So how does hand bottling them? And again, if they're
if you're shipping this this this oil based chili sauce
in a drum, the separation that occurs is, I mean,
how do you now make sure you're getting the right
proportion of of.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
Yeah, increasing it's very manual. It's very manual. So I
think what they did was they actually separated the oil
for from the from the bits and then they would
do like the same weight for each proportion.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
Got it, like the bits of chili. Incredible. Was there
ever any question as to whether you guys might be
respond like financially responsible for the machinery? Thank god, No, no,
I never came into question.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Thank god. They were very kind to us. I think
they saw just like how it full we looked, so
they they Yeah, they were very kind. But yeah, so
that was kind of the I would say that was
like a very pivotal moment for the business because that
floated our business. Because the entire time I was bootstrapping
the company, I had no outside funding. The Kickstarter funding
(35:49):
was not that much. And so finally at that point
when we blew up like that through the New York Times,
that's when everything changed. And we ended up that year
tenexing the business from the year before.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
Wow, through through fundraising, through no through just that article.
Just through that article.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
Yeah, because we kept taking pre orders, right, and so
people would prepay for their products kind of like Kickstarter.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
It's an incredible kind of mix of luck and not.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
It's like you're having these sort of rough experiences, but
just you know, sort of like the right moment at
the right time, the right thing happens to sort of
be able to keep you.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
It all comes hand in hand, like literally every great
thing that's happened for us has come with giant challenges
in the opposite direction and vice versa, right, and so
it's it's it's just the rollercoaster of running a business
that you expect and.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
At some point in this process you used to end
up going by your real name ging right, Oh yeah, right.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
I it was during that time that, you know, when
when we really took quarantine seriously and you know, I
didn't leave my house for weeks. I remember having this
kind of real lifeation that I felt different, and I
(37:12):
realized it was because I guess I had been holding
up such a shield for so long, so for so
much of my life, that I didn't even recognize myself
without it. You know, I didn't have to have a
shield on when I was at home, when I didn't
have to go out and be someone to someone else.
You know, something in my mind or my heart sort
(37:36):
of just snapped into Place, and I realized that I
don't have to pretend to be someone else anymore, you know,
And you know, for so long, the name Jing didn't
really feel right to me. I felt like an impostor
almost with that name, and I felt more comfortable hiding
behind Jenny. I think what I realized was that feeling
(38:00):
of being an impostor was just like me not being comfortable,
you know, with who I was, and when I when
I clicked into place, it just felt so natural. And
so I've been really proud to reclaim.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
That I'm glad you killed Jenny and bro the forefront.
So what's next for fly By Ging.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
Yeah, so, after we grew the business ten x, we
actually ended up attracting investors, and we brought on a
private equity group in New York who's been really helpful
in giving us the resources to grow the team, to
expand into new channels, Like we want to be where
our customers are and bring them even more products, and
so we've expanded from just our own website to Amazon,
(38:44):
to stores like Whole Foods, Target, Costco, Sprouts, Wegmans, all
of these stores all across the country, and right now
we're in about three thousand, five hundred stores, but there's
literally tens of thousands more to go into and so
it really just is like growing steadily expanding our distribution
(39:04):
being where our customers are, Like people are shopping online
and also in stores and maybe also like at a
farmer's market. Like there's so many different touch points, and
we want to keep putting out great products, you know,
Like I think our core and what we're known for
is our Chili Crisp and our you know, Drone sauce
and Molla spice. But we want to just make it
(39:24):
easier for people to enjoy these flavors. So we are
actually launching a new product and it's a Chili Crisp
Vinaigrette Amazing, which you know, takes the flavors of chili crisp,
combines it with our aged black vinegar, soy sauce and sweetness,
and it becomes this like really versatile sort of dressing
(39:44):
that you can put on pretty much anything. We've got
to collab with Hot Ones, So we're in season nineteen.
I just you know, I became friends with Noah from Heatonist.
He's the one that runs kind of the Hot Sauce lineup.
Heatness is a great hot sauce shop in Brooklyn, and
we've been talking since the very beginning about trying to
(40:05):
do something and so I'm so excited it's finally happened.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
Hustle that you just kind of made that actually made
it works amazing.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
So look out for our sauce on it's like right
in the middle. It's the fifth one, you know, in
the middle. Yeah, it is in the new seasons.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Amazing.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
Yeah. So yeah, so really just like you know, growing
the team and uh putting out great products and really
just be on the forefront of also like having a
point of view and like representing the culture. You know,
I think there's been such a lack of voices in
the food space, in any space, you know, for people
(40:49):
that look like us, and really wanting to to be
a voice with a point of view and also to
create space for more voices like ours.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
I love that you're not running from from having that
point of view. Great, Well, I look forward to following
the fly by Jing story. It's not settled yet, a
lot of room to grow.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
So yeah, it feels like we're still just at the
very beginning.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
So yeah, in credible. Well, thank you for taking the
time to thank you, spep with us before we leave.
Is there any advice you might have for young women
entrepreneurs or either Chinese American or Chinese entrepreneurs trying to
make a consumer brand in America.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
Yeah, I mean I think that no matter what you do,
you're going to have people that tell you that there's
no space for that, that you know, it doesn't belong.
And I think, you know, you just have to create
your own space. So that would be my advice, just
like you know, create your own space at the table
when people tell you that there isn't cool.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Appreciate Jing Gao for coming on the show to share
the secret sauce of her success. Jing story is a
reminder that part of what makes successful people successful isn't
that they don't fail, It's that they learn from their
fields and in their fearlessness, they keep experimenting. If you're
interested in checking out some flyby Jing Chili crispsauce for yourself,
(42:18):
check the show notes for the website and send us
photos of what you cooked. Started from the Bottom is
produced by David Jaw, edited by Keyshaw Williams, Engineered by Bentaliday,
booked by Laura Morgan with production help from Lea Rose.
The show is executive produced by Jacob Boldstein, who's not
all up in the videos for Pushkin Industries. Our theme
(42:41):
music's by Bent Holliday and David Jaw featuring Anthony Eggs
and Savannah Joe Lack. Listen to Started from the Bottom.
Wherever you get your podcasts and if you want ad
free episodes available one week early sign up for Pushkin Plus.
Check out Pushkin dot fm or the Apple show page
for more information. If you like your show, please remember
(43:01):
to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app.
I'm justin Richmond.
Pushkin. If you look closely enough at any success story,
you'll see a lot of failure. Things go wrong, partner
split up, businesses fall apart, and the story of my
guest today, Jing Gao is no different. Jing's the founder
(00:36):
of fly By Jing, a line of chili crisp and
other condiments sold nationwide. After she lost her first food
business to a former partner, Jing set out to create
something that was all her own and that would create
space for the appreciation of Chinese food in America. That's
how fly By Jing was born. It became a success
(00:57):
through overcoming a series of obstacles. Jing Gao drops some
gems in this interview, So I recommend you get your
notepad out and pay attention. This has started from the bio,
hard earned success stories from people like us. Maybe you
could tell me a little bit about your childhood. You
(01:19):
grow up in Chungdu.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Yeah, so I was born in Chungdu. It's the capital
of Sichuan. And China is crazy about food, right everywhere
in China. And China is as big as a continent,
it is as big as Europe, right, and so there's
so many different regional cuisines. There's so many culinary traditions.
And even with all of that going on, like Cichuan
(01:41):
is known as like the foodiest of all the foody places.
People are just like absolutely crazy about food.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Yeah, would you say, it's a big part of the culture.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Huge part of the culture. People are just born, like
your baseline, born as like a food obsessed individual, and yeah,
people live for food. Tichran is also a super leisurely
type of place. It's very different from cities like Beijing
and Shanghai, where people are always on the go, and
just like very fast paced, Chundu is slow. People are
(02:13):
all about the art of living. They're always playing majong
in the park, drinking tea, you know, having long dinners
over hot pot. And I was there until I was
about five, and my father, who was a nuclear physicist
at the time, became a professor and he was asked
to go and teach at universities in Europe, and so
(02:34):
we moved with him to Europe when I was about five.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Where do you guys move?
Speaker 2 (02:39):
We moved to Germany. So I went to first grade
in Germany in the Black Forest. I was the only
non blonde kid at school. I of course didn't understand
a word, and I didn't understand a word for the
entire year that I was there, and I think I
had just started to pick up some German a year
(02:59):
in when my dad changed to another university in England,
and so we moved to England then, and I started
all over again with English and you know, kind of
finding my way around a new country, a new culture,
new kids who were again like did not look like me,
and did this kind of on repeat for a few
(03:21):
more years, to Austria, France, and Italy, and then finally
we moved to Canada, to Toronto, specific Toronto.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Yeah, and how old are you at that point?
Speaker 2 (03:31):
I think I was in like middle school, almost high.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
School and you settled there, right, Yeah, So.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
We ended up living there for I mean, my parents
were still there and we became Canadians. I went to university,
came out and started working in Canada as well, So
it was like the longest I'd lived anywhere.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
At some point along the way, you you started going
by by Jenny, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
So that happened pretty early. I think I was six
or seven, and I just remember feeling like I needed
something to try to fit in, I needed something to
make me appear less foreign, and I figured Jenny was
the best way to do that because my name Jing
(04:15):
schren Gal was just impossible for the kids to pronounce.
So I don't know where I came up with the name,
but it sounded western enough, and so I went with it.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
It's interesting because, I mean, you clearly spent enough time
in China to start to develop and identity, even if
you weren't aware necessarily what your identity was, and then
you moved to these really homogeneous places. How did that
affect a perception of what it means to be Chinese?
Speaker 2 (04:47):
I mean, I think I tried not to be. I
was young enough and adaptable enough that it was pretty
easy for me to code switch. I think it's also
just in my nature to try to blend in, you know.
I think it felt more comfortable for me. It was
like a shield that I had, no matter what situation
(05:08):
I was in. So I didn't realize until much later
just how much of myself I had kind of buried.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
There were there conversations around your house or expectations about
where you might sort of go to school and sort
of make a career for yourself.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
I actually wanted to go to art school and I.
My parents were like hard, no, like, there's no way
you're going to do that. And so I think we
found a middle ground somehow in business school.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
And this sounds quite like a middle ground. I'm gonna
say it sounds like you conceded.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
But I think I had like there was like an
older girl I knew who went to business school and
I thought that was so cool, and I was like, yeah,
I want to do that, and I want to carry
a briefcase and you know, look important when I'm walking
down down the street. And I had no idea what
business school was going to be like either. And when
I came out of school, my first job was actually
(06:03):
at a giant company, Procter and Gamble, which my parents
were really happy about.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
What's your job at Proctic? In Gamble?
Speaker 2 (06:10):
So I was a brand manager. And at Procter and
Gamble they owned so many different brands, right, each of
them has kind of a brand manager that helms the
brand sort of and grows its market share over like
year over year.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Did it feel satisfying? Did it feel like you had
found your thing?
Speaker 2 (06:30):
I think it was a really great training ground for
someone fresh out of school, But pretty quickly I got bored.
You know, they have a way that they've been doing
things for one hundred years, and there's not that many
ways that you can kind of deviate and do your
own thing outside of that. So after I would say
like a year year and a half, I kind of
(06:50):
got what I could out of it, and I didn't
see myself there long term. So I started looking at,
you know, what else I could be doing. And so
actually my last year of college, I did an exchange
semester in Beijing. I stayed there for about six months,
and that was kind of my first time in China
as an adult, and I was really surprised by what
(07:15):
I saw, Like I went into that experience not expecting
to love it as much as I did. I felt
at that point so disconnected from China. But I found
myself in Beijing and was just shocked by how incredible
the city was. This was right around the time of
(07:35):
the Olympics. China felt like it was opening up. There
was so much energy, excitement in the air. You just
met the most interesting people from all walks of life,
from all cultures, you know, all of them just found
themselves in China at the time. And so I became
hooked to that energy. And when I went back and
started working at in Toronto at P ANDNG, it just
(07:59):
felt like night and day and I couldn't stop thinking
about China and yeah, so at the first chance I got,
I quit my job and moved to Beijing. Then a
friend of mine from Toronto hit me up and he
was working for BlackBerry at the time. So this was
actually before iPhones like became the number one smartphone because
(08:22):
Blackberries were at the time, and he was like, I'm
moving to Asia to start up the business in Singapore.
Do you want to come and work for me? And
I was like, yes, sign me up. So I started
working for BlackBerry and did some work for them in Beijing,
and then it brought me to Singapore. And that's how
(08:45):
I also kind of got into food because I just
like was traveling so much across China across Asia that
when I wasn't working, I was eating and I was
exploring and started a food blog on the side. I
think I always enjoyed good food, but it was never
in the foreground of my life, Like I don't think
(09:06):
my palette was really awakened until I went to China
in my.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Twenties, when did you decide to start working in food
full time?
Speaker 2 (09:15):
So I moved to Singapore with BlackBerry, then moved back
to China and with a different job I was. I
was in Shanghai. When I was there, I had started
to spend a lot more time on food. I had
my blog going. I had a lot of chefs reach
(09:35):
out when they would come to China wanted me to
take them around. I took Eddie Kwang around Shanghai Andrew
Zimmer and so I was on their show.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Wait a second, but so then how did they How
did they know.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
You just through my blog? I guess you know.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
So your blog got pretty pretty big.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was like one of the few,
like English language blogs about Chinese food in China. So
I had a lot of people reaching out to me
all the time. I was like starting to do food
like more with food media, and I think at one
point I just kind of knew I was ready to
go into food full time. So when I left my job,
(10:10):
I did not know what I was going to do.
But I was like working on a number of different things,
writing projects and media projects. But not long after I
met my business partner in my next venture, which was
my first restaurant. I flirted with the idea of opening
(10:30):
a restaurant. I never I couldn't conceive of like actually
doing it. You know, it just seemed like something so
out of reach. But I met this person who had
a lot of resources and also wanted to open a
restaurant but kind of didn't really have the idea for it.
And I was like, well, I have lots of ideas.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
And.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
You know, we ended up opening the first modern Chinese
fast casual restaurant in Shanghai that was like celebrating regional
Chinese cuisines.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
It was called Baoism, and we opened that, I think
in two thousand fifteen.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
What did you learn from that experience?
Speaker 2 (11:14):
So much? It was actually my first you know, entrepreneurial experience,
and through that process, I think I learned so many things.
But one of them was also the importance of like
picking the right business partner. Because my business partner at
the time, you know, who put up all the resources,
was like, one day after we had opened and it
was very successful, was like, you know, I think I
(11:38):
don't need you anymore in this business, and egos got
in the way and he figured that he could you
do it? Without me, and so it was a really
important lesson to learn, as like, you know, a twenty
something year old who had no idea how to like
structure or business partnership properly. It was a big lesson.
And the russaurant was very successful. You know, we had
(12:00):
won awards, We were covered in New York Magazine, we
were in Monocle, we were in like wallpaper Guide to Shanghai.
It was it really reached a lot of people, and
I wanted to do that even more and with something
tangible and that was personal to me.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
At this point, Was there any bit of you that
was doubting your move into the food world.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
I mean I was definitely scared. I didn't allow myself
to sit still enough to really process how scared, shitless
I was. I had just spent you know, two and
a half years of my life on this restaurant that
I thought was my baby, that was going to be
my future. I saw so much of my own identity
(12:39):
tied up into it. When I lost that, it just
felt like, you know, everything was kind of in a
very quick, shocking way, like pulled out from under me.
But I didn't allow myself to really process that trauma,
and I jumped right into the next thing, and that
was the only thing that I knew how to do,
(13:00):
and it was the only way I could cope.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
So you literally just jumped into the kitchen and just
start making dishes. And I learned a lot, right.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Like pretty quickly. I started to just cook, and I
started an underground supper club which I named fly by Jing.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
Why fly by Jing?
Speaker 2 (13:17):
By the way, so Chungdu giant food city. It's famous
actually for a type of restaurant called fly restaurants like
tengu got and literally translates to a fly restaurant, and
it's a type of restaurant that is hidden hole in
the walls mom and pop run and they're so named
(13:38):
because they're said to be so delicious that they attract
people like flies. So even though they're hidden, they never
do any marketing. It's you know, zero atmosphere. People seek
it out like flies because it's so delicious, and so
I wanted to capture that energy in the dinners that
I was putting on. And then the Jing was an
(14:00):
ode to my birth name, which at the time I
was still uncomfortable with, and I still went by Jenny,
but I think I was already starting to kind of
reach for thing that was personal, right, and that was
that felt like me. After having my restaurant being taken
away from me, I think I wanted to be very
clear that this was by Jing, you know, And so
(14:23):
that was how it started. So I would cook for
about twenty people at a time every night. I would
start doing pop ups with chefs around Shanghai, and very
quickly kind of word spread and I started doing pop
ups in cities all over the world. I was invited
to cook in like New Zealand, in Australia, in New York, La, Tokyo.
(14:45):
And you know, when I would collaborate with other chefs,
we would create new spins on the cuisines. And so
when I would collaborate with like a Mexican chef or
an Italian chef, for example, we would just like really
remix the flavors on new canvases, you know, on local
ingredients wherever I was. And that's kind of, you know,
(15:07):
where I started to find my foot.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Jing's a risk taker who left her job twice to
try her hand at the food industry. I'm supremely impressed
by the kind of courage that takes don't go anywhere more.
We Jing Gao. After the break, Jing's blog and Suparate
(15:33):
Club really gave her the platform she needed to feel
like she could put herself back into the entrepreneurial world again.
But of course it wasn't without its challenges. We have
more from Jingau.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
I knew that I didn't want to do a traditional
restaurant model. I wanted something that could reach even more people,
be scalable. I don't think at the time I thought
a consumer packash could. I think it wasn't until like
twenty eighteen that I started to actually think about a product.
I visited California, actually went to a trade show called
(16:08):
Natural Product Sex but West, which happens in Anaheim every March,
and it's like the biggest collection of consumer food brands.
I walked this show for four days and saw thousands
of vendors, just endless rows of food brands, and I
(16:28):
walked away from it feeling like really shocked. And I
just was like craving Asian flavors, and I was like,
why do I just want a bowl of noodles right now?
And I realized it was because after like four days
of walking around this hall, like I didn't have any
Asian flavors, and this was supposed to be the future
of you know, healthy natural eating in America, right, Like
(16:50):
these are the brands that buyers are going to be
putting on shelves at your whole foods, And so that
felt not right to me. I felt like something was missing,
and there was a giant opportunity I felt because there
are fifty thousand Chinese restaurants in America. It's actually the
most number of restaurants of any cuisine, wow, and actually
(17:14):
of any like fast food chain combined. It is an
incredible number of Chinese restaurants and it's clearly a testament
to how popular the cuisine is. But yet when you
go and look on store shelves, you really don't see
that same representation or accessibility. And I knew that. You know,
(17:34):
the reason why they weren't in the West was because
there was no demand, but that stemmed from like that
are not being any awareness, any education, Like people have
no concept of these incredible ingredients. And of course, if
all you see is like low quality, mass produced products,
that's what you associate with Chinese food. The time, you know,
(17:54):
I was I was cooking, and I was building all
these sauces in my pantry, and like one of them
was the Sochuan Chili Crisp, and I started to bottle
some of them and give it away to friends.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
And chili crisp is this secific kind of sauce. You
can explain what the chili crisp is.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Yeah, So chili crisp is a spicy, savory, sort of
crispy textured hot sauce that is an oil based sauce
and it's made by heating up oil and cooking dried
chilies and a number of different like aromatics and different ingredients,
and that becomes a condiment. It's almost like a hot
(18:33):
sauce that you can really put on anything. And in China,
every household has like their own version right that they've
been It's like a family recipe that's been passed down,
and they're all so different, you know. I've had ones
that have like mushrooms in it, that have beef in it,
that have like fermented bean paste in it, all types
of different flavors. There are literally thousands of different styles
(18:58):
in China, right, but there was nothing like it in
the US. There was one mass brand, Lagama, which is
you know, a billion dollar company in China. You know,
it was the only version that was at all available
in the US, and I think most Americans hadn't heard
of it. So I was like, there's definitely this gap
(19:21):
to be filled. You know, it's a delicious condiment. It's
good on pretty much everything. If billions of people in
China can love a condiment like this, why can't Americans.
So that summer, I actually went back to Shanghai and
started looking into scaling production.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
And what does that look like when you go back
to source ingredients for something like this.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
I already knew what ingredients I wanted to use, and
these were ingredients that I had sourced for, you know,
years leading up to that point. Exactly exactly what I
needed was a factory to be able to make it
for me, you know, because I was cooking large batches
in my kitchen, but you know that would take me
hours and hours, and you know I would hand bottle
(20:05):
hundreds of jars, you know, so I didn't know anything
about food production. I just went into a grocery store
sort of looking at jars that were on the shelf.
And in China, they it's mandated to like have factories
details like address and phone numbers on the jars, and
so I just started calling up factories and they would
(20:29):
be like, yeah, who is this, Like I'm interested in
making a hot sauce with you, you know, they would be like, Okay,
what restaurant are you with or like what organization? And
almost all of them didn't give me time of day
because they have so much business from just domestically in China,
(20:51):
they definitely had no time for someone like me. So
it took a lot of calling. It took a lot
of just like you know, asking for favors, asking for intros.
Finally I found a factory that was willing to talk
to me, started working with them on scaling the recipe,
which is very different from like cooking at home versus
you know, in a giant.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Can you explain that, Like, how do you go from
I have this recipe that works well for you know,
creating at home versus the recipe that can actually scale
and be produced at a larger volume.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Yeah, I mean it's just a lot of experimentation, a
lot of tweaking, even temperature, you know, temperature of oil,
which is so important when you're making chili oil because
the right temperature draws out the flavor versus temperature is
too high, it's going to burn the chili's something too low,
it's not going to draw out the flavor. Change the
temperature by a tiny little bit, and it has drastic
(21:43):
you know effects, and so something like that versus the
weight of different ingredients. It really just is trial and error.
So you start with a smaller batch, then you go
into a small drum, then you go to a medium one,
and then finally a big one, until you can get
the consistency that you want.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
And through that there's the possibility that you could make
an entire batch potentially.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
And that's how you have to waste everything. Yeah, gone
up in smoke. It's definitely happened when I burnt all
my chili.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
Lord. Yeah, and when you're working with the big order
that's fairly costly, I imagine, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
It can be for sure. How do I actually produce
a giant batch? It costs like at least twenty to
thirty thousand dollars and I definitely didn't have that to
produce a batch the minimum order quantity. Yes, like they'll
they'll help you figure out the recipe to the point
where you know it can scale, but then you need
to place your order and the minimum order quantity is
(22:43):
quite high.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Wow. So so when it gets to that point, what.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Do I do?
Speaker 1 (22:52):
From using Kickstarter to raise over one hundred thousand dollars
to start production of her Chili crisp to seeing her
dreams break and spill right before her eyes, what does
she do? Then we're back with Jing Gao, who's explaining
(23:17):
to us her founder's journey on Kickstarter.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
I had known some friends who had run Kickstarter campaigns
quite successfully. I called them up and I asked them,
you know how they did it? So I studied their campaigns.
After like a couple of months, I worked with some
friends and we filmed video. We went to chung Du
Film to video telling the story of what I wanted
(23:43):
to do, and finally got the page to a point
where I was happy. And yeah, we ended up launching
the kickstarter the summer of.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
That year, still the summer after the trade show. Yes, yes,
this is all happening.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Quickly, Yes, And I reached out to some journalists who
I knew were interested in Chinese food. I just cold
emailed bunch of writers that I thought might be interested
in this, and I had two people reached back out,
and one was a writer for SI War magazine. One
(24:18):
was a writer for New York Magazine. They somehow agreed
to cover the Kickstarter campaign on the day that it
went live, and so because of that coverage, we ended
up going viral and getting fully funded after just one day.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
That's an insane success story. Had you considered getting investors
by other means, like, had you present it to investors?
Speaker 2 (24:41):
You didn't know anyone that had money to give me, Like,
I just did not know a single person that could
give me that type of money. And so I felt like,
if I'm going to do this anyway, like I might
as well just do a Kickstarter and just you know,
have that be an indicator of like, is this even
going to work? I knew that there was a hunger
(25:03):
for it, just wasn't being presented right. And so my thesis,
I guess, was just that people were ready for a
new paradigm about Chinese food.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Amazing thesis. So we have this hugely successful best case
scenario kickstarter campaign. You get enough to fill a bunch
of orders, correct, Yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Ended up getting thousands of orders. And the great thing
about Kickstarter, it was great because you know, you have
a built in like initial customer base, and I ended
up getting a few thousand customers. It actually allowed me
to expand my offerings, like from just the Chili Crisp alone.
At first, I was just gonna do the Chili Crisp,
(25:43):
and I was like, Okay, well, if I hit like
fifty thousand, then maybe I'll add like Drone sauce to
the mix. And if I hit one hundred thousand, I'll
add Mollus spice. And people just kept like kept ordering more,
and so I ended up just creating like three products
from this campaign when I originally was planning on just one.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Were you were you nervous though? And filling these orders
that like well, and like people are pre ordering but
they haven't tried it yet, like these gonna be return
ye people. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
Actually, the more successful the campaign was, the more nervous
I was, because now you know, not only did I
have to do one product, I had to do three,
three times of complexity. There's still a lot of unknowns
with the production.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Yeah, well, because you had him produced at that.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
Yes, Because there's a lot of unknowns and I just
knew like even at that point, so early on, like
nothing ever goes the way that you plan it, and
so I knew that there was going to be a
lot of curveballs and oh yeah, a million, a million.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
What were some of the memorable What was some of
the most infuriated, Well.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Just you know, everything from the factory ordering the wrong
types of shallots, so you end up with like hundreds
of kilos of like a shalat that you can't use.
And then like just misunderstanding is about like the size
of the cap, the way that the bottle is sealed,
(27:13):
the machinery that's required. Every single decision point, there's someone
that's gonna tell you, oh no, we can't do that,
like that's not how it's done, and have no solution
to give you otherwise, right, And so it's like constantly
preempting the nose. And also, you know, it's hard to
do when you don't understand the business as like someone
(27:35):
who's never done manufacturing before, I don't know how the
machines work. You're supposed to tell me, but you are
telling me that. You're just telling me you can't do it.
And now I have to learn about what I thought
you were gonna show me to show you how I
would like it to be done. So what I realized
was there was always a way. There's always a solution
(27:58):
no matter what the issue was, right, and it might
look very different from what you originally had anticipated, but
it is going to get you closer to your goal.
Like even if it's not you know, the way that
you wanted to.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
It's only a few years ago. How's your business changed
from sort of building a brand identity around Kickstarter and
fundraising from Kickstarter to to where you're at now? What
change has occurred?
Speaker 2 (28:24):
Well, I have a team now. I started without a team.
I was just one person. I moved to La I
moved into an Airbnb in Silver Lake, and I waited
for the products to arrive because it was like going
to be on sea freight because of the number of
orders I had, like I had to fulfill it at
a third party logistics company. There's no way I could
(28:44):
like move palettes of product into my airbnb and do
it myself as much as I wanted to.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
And so were you able to afford that?
Speaker 2 (28:53):
I was able to afford it with it with the
Kickstarter funds. But yeah, that's where like another giant mishap happened.
The three PL ended up, you know, not protecting the
jars when they sent it out.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
It's real quick to three PL meaning third party.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
Party logistics company. Yeah, they literally shipped out thousands of
jars of chili crist like next to each other with
zero protective wrap in an envelope. And I discovered this
right before Christmas in twenty eighteen and started receiving kind
of the first angry emails from Kickstarter backers just being like,
(29:29):
what the hell is this? Like literally pictures of oil
pulled in an envelope.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
I gotta say, like, because when you say it's an
oil based hot sauce, I mean it really is, Like
you can make quite a mess of thing.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
I want to any spills.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
Mixed with broken glass in an envelope. It was just
a really bad situation. And so that was like as
quickly as it started, I was like, oh, this is
the end, Like this I cannot come back from this,
you know. But luckily, by some kind of miracle, only
about fifteen percent of the orders were broken, and the
(30:05):
rest of the customers were really happy. And that fifteen
percent of the the customers they were super understanding because
it was kickstarter, right, and like they know that stuff
doesn't go well all the time, and so it was
also like a really great chance to just talk to
them directly, and they, I feel, became even more supportive.
We were able to, yeah, to reship them product and so,
(30:26):
you know, we it was just me when I say we,
it was just me doing everything from answering customer service email.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
You don't know any one of the US. I imagine
maybe you know some people you know.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Exactly, I like, yeah, I mean I think I think must.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Have been lonely. Were you lonely?
Speaker 2 (30:44):
Definitely? And I couldn't go home for the holidays because
I had to answer customer service emails, you know. And
after I would say about a year hired, my first
employee went from there to now we have twenty employees
and it's it's been kind of an insane three and
a half years of growth.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Who was your first full time employee?
Speaker 2 (31:05):
So, Stephanie, she is kind of like a Swiss army knife.
I think your first employee needs to be that. She
did everything with me from early days, like we were
packing packages in my apartment, to customer service to ops,
like literally everything. I remember when COVID first hit. We
(31:28):
had a lot of uncertainty, right, Like we had no
idea what was going to happen? Is China US like
trade relation is going to crumble? Like am I ever
gonna is this business? Is this the end?
Speaker 1 (31:37):
You know?
Speaker 2 (31:37):
And with kind of anti Asian sentiment happening with more
and more just like hateful comments online about our products.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
And Chinese sentiment was absolutely yeah crazy.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
After exactly and so, and we definitely saw an uprising
in kind of hateful comments like on our Instagram and stuff,
and so there was a lot of uncertainty, but we
could never have dreamt of like kind of what came
after that, because the New York Times actually ended up
doing an article about us in April of that year,
(32:12):
so it was a height of COVID at the time,
and it was an article titled your quarantine cooking needs
Chili Crisp, and it was entirely about fly By Jing
and our story. And that was where everything changed. Overnight,
we sold out of like all of our inventory, which
(32:33):
was probably six months worth at the time, and we
started taking pre orders and the orders just kept pouring in.
It just didn't stop. There was so much support for
our brand and that just really I think gave us
the commission to kind of keep pushing forward, right, Like
we knew that despite everything that was happening, all the challenges,
(32:54):
because even at the time, like when we sold out,
we couldn't produce more product, like China was still locked down. Eventually,
when China kind of came back online, my manufacturer couldn't
bottle the product. They could only make the product. So
we had ended up having to look for a whole
news of hychin in the US overnight wow, to try
to just bottle the sauce. Finally, when the product arrived
(33:16):
in the US, we went to this factory near La
that I found who agreed to do the bottling.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
How do you ship chili oil on bottle? How does that?
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Oh, it's just like in a giant drum, like in
a twenty kilo drum. Yeah, So we ended up bringing
it all over here, bringing it to a local bottler here.
And on the day of bottling, me and Stephanie we go.
We're like dressed up in our lab coats with our hairnets,
and we are so excited and as soon as they
(33:48):
start running the machines, the chili crisp because it's so
thick clogs the machines and the whole thing breaks, and
they're like, and we're already late to fulfill our orders.
Like people had been emailing. People are like, where's my order?
I've been waiting with three four months and we're like, guys,
any like literally next week, next week, it'll be done
(34:11):
this Saturday. We're going to go and do the filling.
And now they're like, we have no more machines. So
the only option is to hand fill every single jar.
And I'm astounded that they even agreed to do that
because I thought, you know, this is something that I'm
used to in China, and in China, you know, they
(34:32):
they do that kind of thing. But I was like,
in the US, no one's going to be willing to
do that. But they did, and so thank god we
ended up then you know, having to write that email
to literally fifty thousand people that were waiting for their products.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
So how does hand bottling them? And again, if they're
if you're shipping this this this oil based chili sauce
in a drum, the separation that occurs is, I mean,
how do you now make sure you're getting the right
proportion of of.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
Yeah, increasing it's very manual. It's very manual. So I
think what they did was they actually separated the oil
for from the from the bits and then they would
do like the same weight for each proportion.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
Got it, like the bits of chili. Incredible. Was there
ever any question as to whether you guys might be
respond like financially responsible for the machinery? Thank god, No, no,
I never came into question.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Thank god. They were very kind to us. I think
they saw just like how it full we looked, so
they they Yeah, they were very kind. But yeah, so
that was kind of the I would say that was
like a very pivotal moment for the business because that
floated our business. Because the entire time I was bootstrapping
the company, I had no outside funding. The Kickstarter funding
(35:49):
was not that much. And so finally at that point
when we blew up like that through the New York Times,
that's when everything changed. And we ended up that year
tenexing the business from the year before.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
Wow, through through fundraising, through no through just that article.
Just through that article.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
Yeah, because we kept taking pre orders, right, and so
people would prepay for their products kind of like Kickstarter.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
It's an incredible kind of mix of luck and not.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
It's like you're having these sort of rough experiences, but
just you know, sort of like the right moment at
the right time, the right thing happens to sort of
be able to keep you.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
It all comes hand in hand, like literally every great
thing that's happened for us has come with giant challenges
in the opposite direction and vice versa, right, and so
it's it's it's just the rollercoaster of running a business
that you expect and.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
At some point in this process you used to end
up going by your real name ging right, Oh yeah, right.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
I it was during that time that, you know, when
when we really took quarantine seriously and you know, I
didn't leave my house for weeks. I remember having this
kind of real lifeation that I felt different, and I
(37:12):
realized it was because I guess I had been holding
up such a shield for so long, so for so
much of my life, that I didn't even recognize myself
without it. You know, I didn't have to have a
shield on when I was at home, when I didn't
have to go out and be someone to someone else.
You know, something in my mind or my heart sort
(37:36):
of just snapped into Place, and I realized that I
don't have to pretend to be someone else anymore, you know,
And you know, for so long, the name Jing didn't
really feel right to me. I felt like an impostor
almost with that name, and I felt more comfortable hiding
behind Jenny. I think what I realized was that feeling
(38:00):
of being an impostor was just like me not being comfortable,
you know, with who I was, and when I when
I clicked into place, it just felt so natural. And
so I've been really proud to reclaim.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
That I'm glad you killed Jenny and bro the forefront.
So what's next for fly By Ging.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
Yeah, so, after we grew the business ten x, we
actually ended up attracting investors, and we brought on a
private equity group in New York who's been really helpful
in giving us the resources to grow the team, to
expand into new channels, Like we want to be where
our customers are and bring them even more products, and
so we've expanded from just our own website to Amazon,
(38:44):
to stores like Whole Foods, Target, Costco, Sprouts, Wegmans, all
of these stores all across the country, and right now
we're in about three thousand, five hundred stores, but there's
literally tens of thousands more to go into and so
it really just is like growing steadily expanding our distribution
(39:04):
being where our customers are, Like people are shopping online
and also in stores and maybe also like at a
farmer's market. Like there's so many different touch points, and
we want to keep putting out great products, you know,
Like I think our core and what we're known for
is our Chili Crisp and our you know, Drone sauce
and Molla spice. But we want to just make it
(39:24):
easier for people to enjoy these flavors. So we are
actually launching a new product and it's a Chili Crisp
Vinaigrette Amazing, which you know, takes the flavors of chili crisp,
combines it with our aged black vinegar, soy sauce and sweetness,
and it becomes this like really versatile sort of dressing
(39:44):
that you can put on pretty much anything. We've got
to collab with Hot Ones, So we're in season nineteen.
I just you know, I became friends with Noah from Heatonist.
He's the one that runs kind of the Hot Sauce lineup.
Heatness is a great hot sauce shop in Brooklyn, and
we've been talking since the very beginning about trying to
(40:05):
do something and so I'm so excited it's finally happened.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
Hustle that you just kind of made that actually made
it works amazing.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
So look out for our sauce on it's like right
in the middle. It's the fifth one, you know, in
the middle. Yeah, it is in the new seasons.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Amazing.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
Yeah. So yeah, so really just like you know, growing
the team and uh putting out great products and really
just be on the forefront of also like having a
point of view and like representing the culture. You know,
I think there's been such a lack of voices in
the food space, in any space, you know, for people
(40:49):
that look like us, and really wanting to to be
a voice with a point of view and also to
create space for more voices like ours.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
I love that you're not running from from having that
point of view. Great, Well, I look forward to following
the fly by Jing story. It's not settled yet, a
lot of room to grow.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
So yeah, it feels like we're still just at the
very beginning.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
So yeah, in credible. Well, thank you for taking the
time to thank you, spep with us before we leave.
Is there any advice you might have for young women
entrepreneurs or either Chinese American or Chinese entrepreneurs trying to
make a consumer brand in America.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
Yeah, I mean I think that no matter what you do,
you're going to have people that tell you that there's
no space for that, that you know, it doesn't belong.
And I think, you know, you just have to create
your own space. So that would be my advice, just
like you know, create your own space at the table
when people tell you that there isn't cool.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Appreciate Jing Gao for coming on the show to share
the secret sauce of her success. Jing story is a
reminder that part of what makes successful people successful isn't
that they don't fail, It's that they learn from their
fields and in their fearlessness, they keep experimenting. If you're
interested in checking out some flyby Jing Chili crispsauce for yourself,
(42:18):
check the show notes for the website and send us
photos of what you cooked. Started from the Bottom is
produced by David Jaw, edited by Keyshaw Williams, Engineered by Bentaliday,
booked by Laura Morgan with production help from Lea Rose.
The show is executive produced by Jacob Boldstein, who's not
all up in the videos for Pushkin Industries. Our theme
(42:41):
music's by Bent Holliday and David Jaw featuring Anthony Eggs
and Savannah Joe Lack. Listen to Started from the Bottom.
Wherever you get your podcasts and if you want ad
free episodes available one week early sign up for Pushkin Plus.
Check out Pushkin dot fm or the Apple show page
for more information. If you like your show, please remember
(43:01):
to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app.
I'm justin Richmond.
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