Checkout Chats: Jen Liao, co-founder of MìLà

I’m sorry but If you don’t like soup dumplings, please don’t talk to me….

The journey from a local brick-and-mortar restaurant to a national eCommerce CPG brand is definitely fraught with challenges. Yet, Jen Liao, co-founder of MìLà, has navigated these waters with a blend of innovation, cultural authenticity, and some serious entrepreneurial spirit.

MìLà, originally known as Xiao Chi Jie / XJC, began its journey in Bellevue, Washington, with a simple yet ambitious mission: to bring authentic Chinese street food to American tables.

The initial goal was just to recreate the nostalgic flavors she and her husband, co-founder Caleb, missed from China. The pandemic, however, spurred a pivot that would expand their reach dramatically.

The shift to a DTC model wasn't without its hurdles, especially when you’re shipping cold-chain! There were some major operational changes, including establishing their own manufacturing and mastering the logistics of frozen food shipping — a rarity in the DTC space.

Central to MìLà's identity is a commitment to cultural authenticity, which Jen fiercely maintains. This dedication means sticking to traditional recipes and methods, even when expanding into retail environments that might be less familiar with authentic Chinese ingredients, flavors, and recipes. Which I think is incredibly honorable.

Looking forward, Jen is enthusiastic about further innovations, such as limited edition flavors and expanding their product line.

Jen Liao's story is a testament to the power of resilience, adaptability, and staying true to one’s roots. As MìLà continues to grow, it serves as an inspiring example of how traditional flavors can find a new home in the global marketplace!

MìLà has seen some significant growth since launching…

• 5x YOY growth 📈 

• Remained 100% vertically integrated 🏭️ 

• 50%+ repeat purchase rate on DTC 🙌 

• Are now in select Costcos, Targets, and Sprouts in the U.S. 🏪 

• They brought on actor Simu Liu as their Chief Content Officer, who is helping spearhead conversations around third culture and food 👨 

Below is the full transcript of my conversation with Jen Liao, where we explore these and more about the journey of MìLà! 😁

Interview Transcript:

Nate Rosen Can you share more about the inspiration behind MìLà and how your upbringing influenced the brand's mission?

Jen Liao We started as a restaurant that opened in October 2018. So we still have that brick and mortar location up and running; it's in Bellevue, Washington. And during COVID we had shut down for just a few weeks. And during that few weeks, we started to experiment with other ways that we could keep the business going. And that's when we started to do frozen soup dumplings. So we really started with, you know, a very local radius and packed them in a Ziploc bag and a brown paper bag and then dropped them off at people's doorsteps. And we had a Google form and a PayPal link. And that was kind of it to start with. And then by the end of 2020, we found ourselves shipping nationwide. So it had expanded pretty quickly in terms of geography and word of mouth and demand. We also started to test, in the middle of 2020, more paid ads in an e-commerce style. And it seemed to be working. So we just got to work on scaling that and building out our operations. In terms of upbringing, both Caleb and I (Caleb is my husband and co-founder), our parents are from China, and we were born in the US. So growing up, we would go back to China quite often to visit our families and relatives. As for the restaurant itself, it got started because there are just some street foods that you can't find in the US in a good format. And we had started it to eat those really great foods that we missed. That nostalgia, those flavors… we wanted to bring them over and just have them for ourselves. So it began in almost a selfish way. And then because of the fact that we knew how it tasted, we wanted to recreate it; we started with a very high bar for what we wanted the food to taste like. So we were kind of like, if it doesn't taste exactly like what we want, there's no point in even having this concept to begin with. That's how it all started. It was really meant to be Chinese street food, more of like a night market style. And then as we've grown on the e-commerce side, we have expanded our product portfolio outside of just street food. It's a broader Chinese food portfolio, and there's so much opportunity there. Neither of us are from the food industry, so we didn't pay too much attention to the landscape before that. But there's a dearth of options, especially newer options (that are not from incumbents who have been doing the same thing for quite a while).

Nate Rosen So the pivot from brick and mortar to nationwide shipping, especially given the circumstances around COVID and everything that happened there: what were some of the challenges that you faced during that transition? How'd you overcome them?

Jen Liao It's just continuous improvement, and there are similar things that we continue to work on even now. So, for example, I think building out the back end to support frozen shipping, that's just not really a thing that exists. There's not a lot of frozen food DTC companies out there. It's really expensive to ship that way. There's some ice cream subscriptions, but even that, you have to be buying, you know, like $70 to $80 worth of pints every single time for the shipping to work out. And so we had to kind of figure out all the warehouses and then all of the shipping partners and all of the shipping logistics to get it to someone's doorstep without melting. And then we also have been vertically integrated from the start, so we manufacture our own soup dumplings. So we had to build a factory in order to do that. And we are currently moving into our new factory to expand on our scale as well. So those two are continuous things that are always happening. And then for other pieces of nationwide shipping, I think it was just taking a look at how we speak to our customers and what that demand looks like. Because I think, you know, one brick and mortar location in Bellevue, Washington (when there's a large Chinese population that already understands this food) is very different from educating on a broad mass audience level.

Nate Rosen Yeah, no, I think that that piece right there is actually really interesting and sort of, I think, leads me to my next question. So obviously it's evident that the authenticity and cultural representation are central to your brand's identity. How are you navigating the balance between staying true to what you set out to build? And potentially adapting to a wider consumer preference, especially as you reach a broader audience outside of just Bellevue, Washington?

Jen Liao Our north star is remaining true to what we believe is authentic the whole time, so we actually do not make any compromises on adapting to a wider audience in that way. So some of our foods are very traditional. Like the soup dumpling, there's a format. People know exactly what it tastes like, but there's some variation, right? There's some that have a size variation, some that are Taiwanese in flavor, some that are more Shanghainese in flavor. We have more of the Taiwanese-style soup dumpling that's a little bit more neutral and savory, versus sweet and savory and larger. And that's a traditional item that we have. The things that we're doing that are maybe more innovative and more inclusive, for example, relate to going into retail. We did make them clean label, for instance, since MSG is still a no go for grocery stores, no matter how hard we try to talk to them about it. I think there's starting to be a shift in perception and acceptance on that. So for us, in that case, it was like: if we can find a good flavor agent that mimics MSG and doesn't compromise on taste, then we'll do that. But if we can't find it, then we just have to decide to say no to the business, basically. So we did find a really good replacement; it tastes exactly the same, and so we did that moving into retail. 

And then in the US, there's obviously a large vegan, vegetarian, pescetarian, kosher, halal audience. We can't address all of them right from the get go, but I think that is also authentic to us because we grew up in the US. This is the market that we live in. And so then we ask ourselves as third culture kids, if there were vegans and vegetarians in China, what would that look like? How would this taste? What would the format be? There's just never been that demand there. So it's not like we're altering this necessarily to be American. We are American. And what does that look like for a product that doesn't already exist? How do we innovate on that? Some of the flavors for limited edition items we release we also approach in the same way. For example, we had a pho soup dumpling at Lunar New Year and it sold out very fast. We had partnered with the first pho restaurant in Seattle to make sure that we got the flavor correct. And that was very authentic to us, because we cared about representing that flavor and culture the right way and doing justice by it, because we grew up tasting really great pho in the US. So it's not really compromising for the purpose of adaptation and mass appeal. But I think there are different market demands that allow us to look at innovation a little bit differently, and that's how we're approaching it. And then we test whether these products work or not. And it could be that the acceptance isn't there yet, and that's okay. We just wouldn't mass release it into retail nationwide, for example. We might just do it DTC, and we would do a smaller run of it. 

Nate Rosen That's great. I think it's awesome. I'm assuming that the DTC piece, to what you're talking about just now, helps with if you want to do special drops and do what Last Crumb is doing, which is sort of rare in a lot of cases in the CPG world, there's not a lot of opportunity to do that. I mean, I guess with maybe ice cream, but Last Crumb is really the only one that I can think of that leverages DTC to do these special drops, especially with food, which is so hard. I think it's great. And I also think something to your point is education is a big piece of this. How have you found that having a celebrity investor and celebrity involvement from Simu has aided in expanding the mission and the culture that you're trying to share through food?

Jen Liao Yes, I think it has. Before Simu, I think Din Tai Fung, for example, has done an amazing job of popularizing soup dumplings and kind of setting the gold standard for what a soup dumpling looks like, how much it costs, and how hard it is to make. There's definitely a level of education, but the accessibility wasn't quite there. And so when we came in, I think a lot of people were familiar with soup dumplings, but maybe hadn't tried it or couldn't find it in a lot of different places. So that definitely helped us, as far as we can tell; we have been somewhere around 5x the market since we started to sell. I’m not sure if it was due to us or other players as well, but it has grown a lot in the last three years. And we're about 40% of search terms for soup dumplings right now, where people will add “MìLà” to their search. So there's definitely a large consumer education piece around that. And we invest heavily in social media and other organic platforms in order to be able to tell the story. And that has helped us, obviously, to grow the market, which is beneficial to us. One interesting thing is we did try to do this with skewers, called “shao kao” in Chinese. That’s an example of a limited product line that we stopped and discontinued because I think it was very hard to teach the American audience about it. Everyone knows what skewers are. They know that format, they know what skewers taste like. But for the appreciation of this flavor itself and the willingness to pay up to get it right, that wasn't there because there aren't even restaurants here that serve them, and so there's no comparison or benchmark. I think if we invested a lot of marketing dollars heavily into it and just hammered it, sure, we could grow that market, but you have to feel where the audience’s interest is and what that product market fit potentially is or is not, and go with that a little bit. 

So then moving into Simu, to start with, our hope was really to bring a lot more education and awareness to the Chinese food space generally and Chinese culture (so not necessarily just on a product level). On a product level, there was the bet of, ok, we're rolling into retail, we do want to work with Simu, have a brand TV spot that we've never done before, and de-risk a little bit of this entry into the retail category. Because we just want to come out at it very strong, and he can help us tell that story. And you just have more shots of people remembering the brand. There are very few brands that people actually remember the name of. And so we're like, okay, hot air balloon on the dumpling bag, great. Mint green and red color stripe, that's another thing. Simu’s dumplings, great, that's fine. If we're known for any of those, that just gives us more chances of success as we go into this, and then people can slowly learn our name as well. So that was a very tactical thing to begin with. And then because he obviously talks about Chinese culture and has that as part of his own central platform, that was just a very good convergence for us to be able to think about what kind of storytelling we could be able to do over the next few years. When we’re brainstorming, he also comes up with ideas around how we can not just talk about product attributes, but talk about something fun surrounding the product that brings awareness to the product itself, and differences that you might see in different cuisines or regions where this product exists. And so he then contributes to ideas along those lines, to be able to educate the consumer beyond what they already know.

Nate Rosen Amazing. I want to ask a question expanding on this a little bit. So how has it been working with a celebrity partner like Simu? It seems to me that he's integrated himself more into the brand than I've seen some other celebrities, especially after an investment or bringing them on as a Chief Creative Officer. Can you share a little bit more about the collaboration with him and the impact it has on MìLà beyond the education piece?

Jen Liao We're very proud of the partnership that we've set up, because, like you said, a lot of celebrity partnerships are more like a brand ambassador type of relationship where you do a couple marketing spots, you do a couple IG Reels, and that's it. It was really important that if we were investing the dollars and equity and the time in bringing somebody on, that they were aligned with our company; basically, they're part of our company. And that's what Simu wanted as well. When we had started talking about it, he was interested in things like, How does this business work? How do you build a business? How do you invest in a good business? How does this whole CPG industry work? How do I tell the story in a bigger way? And so at the very beginning, the interest and values were aligned, and I think that was a really good starting point. And we've been very disciplined about making sure we loop him into a lot of different decisions. We share a lot of our board updates, our monthly updates, our quarterly updates with him and his team to keep them in the loop. And so then it's top of mind for him around what can be done to help boost something, or how he can get involved where he owns the idea and the initiative. That ownership is very different from someone telling you, like, hey, show up and say these lines. And so I think we've just done that, but it obviously takes time and effort. It's another person that is on your team that you're working with. He's been very receptive and interested in the business, so we've been able to make that work. 

Nate Rosen Yeah, it seems like he's having a lot of fun with it, too. At least from what I've seen online. I feel like you can tell when somebody's phoning it in when they're not. I think it's great. He definitely seems very interested in the brand, which is good. Fun, too. I mean, I have to imagine it's also fun for you as well.

Jen Liao Yeah, I think one thing that has really helped in this is asking, what does each side want from this? Like, they're both at the table for something. And really, truly understanding that root of “why” is so important to get a match. So it's less about, “here's exactly what the contract says, and let's do it by the letter of the law” and more about the spirit of how you drafted it. And so let's say right now it's evolved beyond that, and this doesn't really fit what we're doing anymore. It doesn't work to force that. So let's evolve it in a way that feels good and natural to both sides and still be very productive. I think that is a different dynamic because then you do feel like a partner and you're not being told, “here are your deliverables.”

Nate Rosen Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So, reflecting on your journey with MìLà so far, what has been the most surprising aspect of starting this business for you? Is there any particular, I guess, challenge or milestone that might have stood out?

Jen Liao I think building a great team has been very rewarding the whole way. That's not necessarily surprising, but I think the degree to which that's the most important piece has been surprising. I think another aspect is also just for Chinese food specifically; like I said before this point, I hadn't really paid too much attention to it because my parents made it at home. I went to the Chinese grocery store, so it didn't feel like there was necessarily this gap in the industry. And as we've gone into it, I think we're just kind of surprised by all of what's happened in the US and how it's evolved over time, where there's just no production lines or capacity. Like, 8% of all food restaurant-wise is Chinese food, but only 2% of grocery is Chinese food. So there's a pretty big gap in terms of what's available for consumers to purchase versus what their natural eating behaviors look like, and how it's evolved over time. So we've enjoyed learning a lot of that macro piece.

Nate Rosen That's really interesting. That does not surprise me. But, wow, that's really interesting. I learned something, too. Is there anything else you want to mention?

Jen Liao I think that's it.

Nate Rosen Amazing. You have built a very impressive company. That, I think, has really taken off. And it's delicious, which I think is really important, too. Thank you again!