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