How I Built This with Guy Raz - How I Built Resilience: Vivian Ku, Restaurateur

Episode Date: March 25, 2021

Vivian Ku is a Taiwanese-American restaurateur who owns three different Taiwanese restaurants in Los Angeles. After the pandemic halted her plans for expansion, Vivian decided to close her two restaurants until May and pivoted her expansion plans into a breakfast pop-up. Vivian talks to Guy about why she decided to serve Taiwanese food and the pros and cons of opening a restaurant during a pandemic. These conversations are excerpts from our How I Built Resilience series, where Guy talks online with founders and entrepreneurs about how they're navigating turbulent times.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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into their businesses this past year. And you can join us each Thursday at 9 a.m. Pacific 12 Eastern on the How I Built This Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube pages to hear the conversation and ask questions as well. And today, my conversation with Vivian Koo, owner of the restaurant's Pine and Crayne, Joy, and today starts here. Vivian is a first-generation Taiwanese American, and she's opened three Taiwanese restaurants in Los Angeles. In the midst of the of the pandemic with many restaurants closing, Vivian decided to open a breakfast pop-up called Today Starts Here in L.A.'s Chinatown. We talked about her childhood growing up on a farm and how she's leading three different restaurants during the pandemic. But first, I asked Vivian how

she was doing in light of the recent shootings in Atlanta and the rise of violence against Asian Americans in the past year. I always, when I hit something I don't understand, try to process it in a way where there's a silver lining. And I really had a hard time yesterday. I was like, there is no silver lining here. You know, I couldn't really make sense of it. It felt like in a lot of ways we were going backwards, like worse than when I was growing up.

And part of the reason why I wanted to share Taiwanese food because it's part of my culture. And, you know, having it shared with a wider audience, I think it's really, there's something I really enjoy out of having people kind of be more open-minded or learn something about someone's culture. just because they wanted a great bite to eat. I think it's such a human thing.

And that's been a lot of the joy of running the restaurant. I remember seeing this white nine-year-old boy come in to order woodier mushroom salad to bring to his classroom. And it was his birthday. And I was like, I was trying to bring in cupcakes to fit in. And we've come so far. And then yesterday was like, that is completely the opposite. And it's just a few bad actors that make the whole thing

seem extra, extra bad. I do believe that humans are good and that that's not representative of the whole entire picture. And I think hopefully we'll be better allies for one another. I know during the summer when BLM was going on, you know, I think a lot of kids my generation had to explain to, you know, our parents and aunts and uncles, like what it was all about. And I think, you know, this will all band all of us together and hopefully also realize that, you know, it's, we all have a role to play here and whether it's, you know, more people feeling like they need to inter into their, you know, local politics or be involved, I think, you know, but it's really hard to make sense of it. Yeah. And I mean, a lot of the conversations, certainly in the last year and certainly in the last

few months have been about representation and the impact that representation has on empowering people, right? And that's what you do through your restaurants. I mean, whether consciously or unconsciously, you're bringing, as you say, your heritage and your culture and your family's culture through food to people in the Los Angeles area. Tell me how you, I know you started with a restaurant called Pine and Crane in Silver Lake in L.A. Tell me how you came to that place. How did you, how did you first decide to open up a Taiwanese restaurant? I knew I wanted to open a restaurant, and it didn't have to be necessarily Taiwanese food. I just really like the idea of creating a place and having people come together.

I like the energy of a restaurant, and I like the idea of running a restaurant. But Taiwanese food made a lot of sense because, you know, ultimately, it's the food that I hold most near and dear my heart. And then also I felt like it was very underrepresented at the time, but had so much to all. offer. You know, I'll always like to say that Taiwanese food is organically designed to appeal to the masses because of the way, you know, history and migration, you know, with all food kind of like shaped its culinary history and where it's going. It just made a lot of sense to me to, you know, share something that I'm from. And then also it was something that, you know, could be shared with more people. Yeah. I'm curious for people who don't know, I mean, probably the most famous to non-Taiwanese folks,

Taiwanese cuisine is beef noodle soup, right? Or bow sandwiches. Tell me a little bit about the food that you make at your restaurants. Pine and grain, you know, it has a very heavy northern Chinese influence on the menu because you have my maternal side, they went from mainland China to Taiwan in 1949 when there was a civil war. And they came from this region where they ate a lot of wheat because wheat was the main agricultural product. So a lot of like dumplings, buns, pot stickers, and my grandmother would always

joke about how, you know, they would move over to Taiwan. And then all of a sudden they were neighbors with native Taiwanese and how like all the neighbors would kind of want to come over and learn like how to make these things because it was more of a rice-based diet. And like for a machetele, they made it from rice instead of noodles made from wheat. Taiwanese food just has a lot of different influences because, you know, you have the aborigines, you have migrations, from China in earlier years. You have the Japanese occupation for 50 years where they thought they would have the island forever.

And then you have 2 million people from all over China, such a large landmass, kind of gather together onto this island and all become neighbors with one another. So I think it makes for a very interesting culinary melting pot. Yeah. You grew up in Bakersfield, California, which is like kind of the capital of America's food basket, right? Bakersfield and Modesto, like Fresno, these are like sort of the big cities in the Central Valley of California. Was your family in the agriculture industry? We actually moved to Bakersfield

for that reason. So when I was around five or six, my dad decided to buy a farm and we all moved over. And, you know, the earlier years, especially when he was growing all sorts of stuff, that was when I was a lot younger. So a lot of memories are planting seeds and like harvesting and playing with plants and things like that and was really nice. But then, And, you know, school started and then I became probably less and less involved over time. But I also started to sort of, I think, grow up and kind of see like, oh, this is a really hard industry. And like my parents would have to try.

And there were, you know, definitely rough years in there. I think ultimately, you know, they ran a small business. A lot of people my family owned small businesses, not necessarily in food. And I did like how, you know, even in a moment of difficulty, they ultimately got to decide what was the best response. But yeah, I grew up in Bakersfield. Yeah. And how did you, because I know you went and studied at Harvard and so I have to assume you're a pretty good student in high school. And how did you decide to go into the restaurant industry? Because I have to imagine that there probably were people, maybe even your parents who were like Vivian, this is nuts. This is like

the most unstable, like the scariest thing to go into. Did you get any kind of pushback like that? A little bit, sure. You know, I originally went into the industry because some of the very basic reasons, like everyone else, like I loved food, I love going out to eat, I loved creating something. I loved how people are generally very happy when you feed them. And I was like, that's a good way to make a living. I didn't get as much of that, I think as a lot of, I think Asian American kids especially got. My grandfather is one of my favorite humans ever.

He was just had so much oomph and was a very principled person. And I remember from a very early age, you know, he would say something like along the lines of, you know, there are no inferior jobs, only inferior people. It doesn't matter what you do. It's how you do it. Yeah. And I think that message was really powerful to me at a young age because I think, you know, it sort of gave me the first hint where it's like, you know, the things society value are sometimes not necessarily. correctly correct and that if I were stuck in a situation, it's my response to it that truly mattered. I remember a time when I like, I don't know, got second place in a math

competition or something and, you know, it was a little bit grumpy. And, you know, my grandfather was like, okay, what's going on? And I was like, oh, I got second place. I thought I would have gotten first. And his response was like, oh, first place is for losers anyways. And like, it's not a very grandfatherly response, I think. and not what you would expect. And I would get first place and then I was like the best in his eyes still. But I think he was someone who thought like you didn't need to be first place in life to be someone admirable and that there's like so much more to a person than just getting first place. Tell me about when you decided to open your first restaurant.

Now you've got two plus a pop-ups, a three. How did you, I mean, it takes a lot of courage to start anything. Were you nervous? What were the anxieties you had about opening it up? I think fear of failure was huge. You know, I convinced my parents to let me go to culinary school. I'm so grateful to them. But, you know, they actually said, you know, we will support you in this endeavor. And, you know, I had borrowed money from my parents, my aunts, my boyfriend at the time, who's now my husband.

And, you know, I, like, borrowed this money and I was ready to go. Oh, and, you know, it was about time to sign the lease. And at that time, I was, like, not sleeping well. I, like, had lost some weight and just was very shaky. And my mom was pretty much like, okay, well, what happens if you don't do this? Yeah. And then I think, you know, it's regret minimization. You know, I was literally thinking about it.

And I said, I think I would cringe slightly every single time I step foot inside a restaurant. And then she was like, okay, well, then you have to do it. So for me, it's kind of, you know, and then once you sign the lease, you know, sometimes it's just like that one thing to get through. But it's too late to back out. And then you just pretty much have to focus on, okay, well, how am I going to make it successful? So it's sometimes just that little push. When we come back, more of my conversation with Vivian Koo and how she navigated running two restaurants and opening a pop up in the midst of a mass pandemic. Stay with us.

I'm Guy Raz. And you're listening to how I built this Resilience Edition. from NPR. Hey, welcome back to how I built this resilience edition. And I'm talking with Vivian Koo. She's the owner of the Los Angeles restaurant's Pine and Crane, Joy, and Today Starts Here. With a pandemic decimating the restaurant industry this past year, I asked Vivian how she kept her restaurants and staff afloat. We've had a lot of ups and downs at the beginning of the pandemic when we had closed.

And I had, especially banked on a PPP loan that turned out, like I didn't make it the first round. So I was super worried. And I think it's not lost on me that, you know, had we been in fine dining or had we been a bar, our journey so far would have been many times more difficult. And I think a lot of that just comes down to luck. You know, we happen to be in a segment of the industry that's a little bit more price point friendly, a little bit more takeout friendly. So it's been a lot of ups and downs. You know, we closed for roughly two months. And then we came back.

And when we first came back, it was actually great. A lot of people showed up and really generous with gratuity and the team was doing well. And then we started to navigate into this period of time when we started to have a lot of cases of COVID all around us. So then we had to start getting tested on site every single week and decide, you know, there was not really a lot of guidance. So every single time we would have to come together and sort of check in with everyone on the team and see where they were at and decide. you know, what was the best thing for everyone involved. So the entire team, the restaurant, you know, we try to be open for the community as well. But it was a lot of coming together over and over again being like, what is the best decision now? What is the best decision now? And then now,

as we're opening back up, I think, you know, everyone has a little bit of concrete hope, especially because most of our team have had their first vaccination shot. But everyone is so tired. Yeah. Everyone's running out of steam and it's been over a year and we haven't really, you know, you just keep going and there hasn't, there haven't been opportunities to recover. You know, everyone will need a really good vacation. But my hope is that we just push through. And as things open up, you know, we don't have, we're holding off on indoor dining and we'll open up outdoor dining at Pine and Green soon, but we don't have outdoor dining at Joy. So the road back is a little bit unclear at this moment for us. You did something that seems a little counterintuitive, which is in

October. So really, you know, as the pandemic was still raging and then it would, it would become worse, especially in Los Angeles. You opened a breakfast pop-up restaurant called Today Starts Here. It's been really successful. Did you have the plan to do this? Or was that kind of born out of the situation with the pandemic? Did you just think, you know, let's open a pop-up, a breakfast restaurant? Yeah, I think, you know, when you look at it, it seems like we've expanded during the pandemic. But we did sort of downscale, like from our original plans. February 2020 was a super exciting time for us. You know, I had to finish signing a lease that I had personally guaranteed.

And then we were in the middle of this lease for Chinatown that is today starts here. We were almost done. And I was looking at a different spot. And we had a week where we were like, oh, my goodness, this is a small. so exciting. We'll be working on maybe as many as five projects by the end of the year. And then the pandemic hit. And then, you know, immediately I was like, well, let's push all of that away. But, you know, we had already started the conversation of like, oh, who would we promote to be a manager on our team? And we've already had those conversations. Yeah. And who would we

move to Chinatown to run this project? So we took a break for two months. But when we came back, you know, and I was able to talk to the landlord and be like, look, Can we try like a month to month situation? There's a lot of downsides to opening during a pandemic, but there's a lot of upsides too. You know, because no one came inside, we can kind of just, you know, we just scrub down the space, put some old and new pieces of equipment together and got to start up rather quickly. Parker than we normally would have been able to. And then I think people were also very understanding given it was a pop up in a pandemic.

Yeah. It kind of allowed us to really keep our entire team, promote. promote people who we had planned on promoting. Also, there's a lot of benefits to having a bigger team at a separate location. So coverage, if we needed, was a little bit easier. It had a lot of value for us to try to just be in that space. And then I think once things calm down a little bit, we still have a lot of work to do there because we'll have to build out the space and think about how to be there in a more sustainable manner.

Has that model, though, that pop-up model? model, almost kind of like an informal model, like what we're doing now, this resilient series, we started this last year when the pandemic hit. And it's been really great. We've learned so much about the show and about our audience by doing this. By doing that pop-up restaurant, I have to imagine you learned a lot about what could work and what might be more efficient in your business, right? Because it's just breakfast and it's a pop-up. So presumably, there's room to do, the kinds of experimentation that you might not be able to do as easily in a brick and mortar location with critics coming in and all kinds of pressure. Is that, am I right about that?

Yeah, I mean, there's pros and cons to having it be a pop-up. I think it's definitely not profitable on running breakfast alone, so we'll have to figure out something there in the longer term. And I do think, especially during the pandemic, a lot of people have been very entrepreneurial and, like, cooking out of, you know, their homes and sharing pop-up kitchens. And I think goes kitchens were already part of the industry before this happened and I think will be a bigger part of the industry. I'm not as interested in those kitchens because you lose so much of the things that drew me to the hospitality industry in the first place. But it's true. Like we were thinking, you know, if we did breakfast in the morning and then at night the space is available. If anyone

on our team wanted to do a pop up, that would be a really good opportunity. We really wanted to pursue this because there's just so much potential. We're not really sure what it is yet, but it's like we can put our heads together and think of creative things that we can do to make things work. Vivian, you know, I keep hearing about the travel industry. And by the way, I just had a curiosity, I happened to look at airline stocks the other day as a gauge to see where they are. And they're at 52-week highs, right? Because there's an anticipation that people are going to flood the zone over the next few months as more and more of us are vaccinated. I'm not yet. So I shouldn't say us, but as more and more people are.

This is a question from Oliver, and it's a counterintuitive question, but it's an interesting question. I mean, do you think that in some strange way now might be a good time to think about opening a restaurant because the country will reopen and people are just going to go crazy, wild, when they're freed from being separated from others? I mean, my hope is that the Restaurants Act will help a lot of people who have. I lost their opportunities during this time were really struggled, especially those in fine dining. My hope is that they'll be able to come back because I think once again, like, we would have had a much harder time had we been in that space.

And a lot of them were places that were more well managed, more loved, had better teams, maybe better food, and all those things. And so my hope is that they get to come back. But yeah, I think, you know, sometimes in the event that, you know, they don't get to come back, My hope is that there will be a new generation of restaurants that'll pop up from this. I think, sadly, there might be a lot of inventory available on the market.

So it is a good time to start a place. And I think, you know, you kind of, I think a lot of people have endured this pandemic, right? So there's the fact that you can make it through and then start something kind of, you're almost more confident going into it because you've seen yourself go through something difficult. Yeah. I think it'll come back. I think maybe this is too optimistic, but, you know, people have been really creative in their homes. And like, so I've spoken to several people who are starting concepts.

So I'm hopeful. Vivian, a lot of people watching are in your industry. And really, I hope this is helpful. So thank you for watching. This is Vernon by Facebook. As a fellow food business owner in Los Angeles, Vernon owns Offset Coffee Company and Pinky's Hotbox. Vernon asks, what are some interesting ways that you found to drive additional traffic to the restaurants while also better managing expenses? We actually have not focused a ton on that during this pandemic, probably as much as we should have.

I think when the pandemic happened, when we came back towards the end of May, we changed out our point of cell system to make it more contactless and also just a better system overall. So that was helpful. And then we got on a lot of different delivery platforms because we're like, okay, well, it's takeout and delivery now. But other than that, I think so much of it has, you know, so much of my energy has been on like, what's the best thing to do next and like keeping the morale of the team going, trying to make it through. It was kind of like, you know, as long as we make it through and we have most of the team intact, especially like have them, it's okay. I think if we're all a little bit physically tired, but not be also mentally trained. So, you know, trying to. to keep everyone's spirits in somewhat decent shape. Yeah. Vivian, when you think about this past year and what you've learned as a manager, as a leader, I mean, this year must have been a crash course for you as a leader because there's no playbook, right? There's no handbook.

No one says, hey, Vivian, in five years, it's going to be a pandemic. Here's the playbook. Just follow the playbook. You got to write it as you're going along. What is something that you want to take with you that you have learned about yourself as a leader and maybe applied to your businesses that you want to keep going once we are back in sort of some version of normal. Yeah, no, I've been so appreciative of everyone who's trusted me to make these calls along the way. You know, a lot of, I think the team just really showed up.

And I think it was important that I was able to make sure that they felt that I had their best interest. One takeaway is that, you know, it has to make sense for everyone. A business, I think, is good so long as everyone who is helping it grow benefits. You know, for me, it's making sure that we grow in a way, you know, or are on a trajectory in which we sort of live up to that. I, like, knew that going in, right? Like, everyone knows, like, back of house is important, front of house is important. Everyone on the team is important.

I really couldn't have made it through alone, and it's a team endeavor. That's an excerpt from my live conversation with Vivian Koo, owner of the restaurant's Pine and Crane, Joy, and Today Starts Here. If you want to see the full interview or any of our past live interviews, you can find them on the How I Built This Facebook page or at YouTube.com slash NPR. And if you want to join our conversation live and maybe even ask questions, they happen every Thursday at 9 Pacific. noon Eastern. If you want to find out more about the How I Built This Resilience series or other virtual NPR events, you can go to nprpresents.org. This episode was produced by Liz Metzker, with help from Ferris Safari, J.C. Howard, Bruce Grant, El Manion, Gianna Capadona, John Isabella, Julia Carney, Neva Grant, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is Janet Ujong Lee.

Thanks for listening. Stay safe, and I'll see you in a few days. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This Resilience Edition from NPR.