How a son turned his dad’s food stall into the No. 2 Chinese restaurant in the US

my father took his savings and started this little tea shop a bubble tea shop and started selling our food on the side because he wasn't satisfied with the money that he was making from bubble tea alone I would hear stories like oh the lines are crazy you know in the summertime people line up from the basement all the way up the stairs around the corner of the street to eat our coal noodles I think Thea moment came later when we were sort of discovered quote unquote by Anthony Bourdain's crew um for filming for no reservation this place is unbelievable this place is great at that point it felt like this food is not just for flushing this food is for every the secret ingredient to Shan Famous Foods is now it's not something crazy it's just it's recipes based off of food that's found in Xian so spices and sauces but adding some things that are not found in Shen that might be found nearby Shan that's sort of what makes our product unique people have sort of fallen in love with their dishes and their flavors the family that founded Shan famous really found their roots and first made like a stand in the United States very much deeply within the Immigrant community and flushing in a food court where the food um was only served to other immigrants from the same parts of China where they knew the food sh used to be the capital of ancient China with the trading from the capital city to the Middle East and uh you know beyond uh a lot of different cultures get brought back and assimilated into the local culture and that's why it affects the food as well and the people from northern China brought a whole new range of ingredients and flavors but also styles of cooking which used a lot of wheat-based dishes particularly noodle dishes um and lamb dishes crisp chunks of lamb seasoned with cumin dressed with hot peppers and pickled jalapenos this had to be like a Muslim thing right the flat red the distinctive Taste of the region is spicy and sour we're doing mostly noodle dishes like flower based dishes we do take hints of other flavors such as flavors from Citron where there's like tingly from cetron peppercorn that type of flavor and spicy comes you know show themselves a little bit in our food I was born in C and I lived there for 8 years until I came to the US and sometimes I would be able to you know check out the you know the street foods I did like the skewers I did like you know the L PE like cold noodles on the streets that's the only thing I really ate and that's sort of my memory of Cen and after that coming to the US it was like cultural shock there is no more of that food the father brought the recipes from China and built up and you know opened the stall and started started the [Music] business he operated very frugally he didn't have a computer system he didn't have staff it was him and one or two other people in the stores every day you know he only bought food as needed he didn't have spoilage he didn't have Overstock of stuff so uh really cut down on the costs I became very excited because of the food that he was serving I get to take my friends there I get to eat there it's nothing fancy you know it's a food court and Jason was somebody who wants to bring American sort modern American restaurant business techniques to his father's business and in doing that he sort of broken the mold of the traditional Chinese restaurant and really found like a niche where his restaurant can flourish and what's the best piece of advice that your dad gave you what he taught me was that bad things just let it cool down for a bit um it might turn into a good thing and good things jump on it do it right now so our numbers have definitely changed over the years you know from just locations alone we came from one location 2009 to uh what is it now 10 or 11 you know looking back uh reviewing the numbers over the years we've our revenues has definitely grown just as a benchmark our uh 45th Street location last year was uh I believe grossing around 1.4 million this year we nearly nearly doubled that number our average ticket is only around $8 $9 uh over all of our stores cuz we're very fast and uh very casual usually you could go in there bu yourself grab something to go so it's a low uh you know average ticket but our ticket numbers are very high almost all dishes at Shan famous cost less than $10 making it in you know the New York City Food World a great bargain it very store to store but I would say at least 2 to 300 tickets at an average store at a busier store 600 700 800 tickets a day I mean in with with generations of other Chinese restaur tourists when they expanded outside of chinatowns they made the dishes Bland um to American tastes um but Shian famous hasn't like held anything back and it's still you know exactly the same recipes and that's really really impressive our food sort of translates through cultures uh mostly because I think the timing is right um people are become a lot more adventur I think that this is like the way represents the wave of the future in Chinese food not everyone can make it in New York but once you do make it in New York I think it gives you extra confidence to make it elsewhere

Channel: Business Insider

Views: 1,009,071

Keywords: Business, Insider

Id: 3C3nz108IIU

Length: 5min 44sec (344 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 05 2016