Hey everyone, welcome back to Looking Outside.Today we are going down a slightly different path.I love highlighting entrepreneurs on the show.I love covering product innovation that's doing something different.
And perhaps more than anything else, I love covering complex cultural topics.So today we're going to look at the intersection of all three of those things.Speaking with founder and CEO of Fly by Jing, Jing Gao.Welcome to the show, Jing.
Thanks for having me.So excited about this conversation, in part because obviously we had a very quick chat before the show.Your story is amazing, but also the product is amazing.
It's very rare that I have someone on the show whose product I haven't just tried, but I actually eat it regularly.Like, I love it.I'm a huge fan. Thank you.I'm so happy that you love it.
We're going to talk about that a little bit later, but let's start with a little intro into who you are.
So I am the founder and CEO of Flyby Jing.It's obviously namesake of the company.I started the company about five years ago. as its current kind of iteration, which is a sauce and condiment company.
But prior to that, I was living in China, where I was running Fly by Jing as an underground supper club.The story of how I got here was like very, very long.It starts when I was born.I was born in Chengdu in China, and I
kind of grew up all over and through different pathways found myself in China again after growing up in the West and sort of reconnected with myself and my culture through food.
And that led me to eventually quitting my job, opening a restaurant and starting Fly by Jing.So it was a very personal journey to where I'm at now.
So you were born in Chengdu and then you came and lived a lot of your life in the US and I think other parts of the world.
Yeah, so I grew up in Europe, moving to a different country almost every year of my life because my dad's job.And yeah, and then eventually in Canada.
And then you decided to go back to China.Did you think growing up that's what you would do?And I'm thinking specifically, you know, a lot of migrant children try to assimilate and disconnect from their heritage.
I don't know if you kind of went through that phase or were you always quite keen to go back?
Yeah, definitely.I felt completely adapted to the West.Growing up, I lived in Germany and England and Austria, France, Italy, then Canada.Couldn't feel more separate from my Chinese identity.And it was actually an accident that I ended up in China.
It was a tech job that I was working at that moved me there. I totally didn't expect to uncover all the layers and find myself in a way when I was in China, but that's what happened and food actually was the unexpected medium or the vehicle.
And because you grew up in lots of different Western countries, were you always eating Asian or Chinese cuisine throughout that time?Or was it something that you reconnected with when you went back to China?
It was definitely something I reconnected with.We definitely ate my parents' cooking at home, but it was adapted because we couldn't find the same ingredients outside of China that my parents were used to.So it was like, you know,
some kind of pseudo Chinese, but just whatever they could make work.
So I think I've always been used to that idea also of taking what's traditional in terms of flavor profiles and things like that, but applying it in a new way and in a way that makes sense for where you're at.
And when you went back to China, did you have that realization when you got there that even the ingredients themselves changed the flavor profile of food and changed cuisine completely?
Yes, absolutely.I first got into food just by like eating it.I loved exploring all the flavors in China and just was astounded by the diversity of flavors and the complexity.And China is such a massive country.It's really like a continent, right?
But that sort of love for the flavors turned into a desire to learn more about it and to kind of also find my own expression or my own place within it.And so I studied with Incredible Chef in Sichuan.
I learned a lot of the traditional kind of techniques and the craft of it and also about ingredients and the sourcing of it.
And that was kind of the process where I learned how integral ingredients and ingredient quality is to the end flavor of something.
that there's so many, so many grades of quality within even the same ingredient that most people just are not aware of, right?And also just the amount of like really artisanal, small batch, incredible ingredients that there were in China.
You don't really think of, from an outside perspective, you don't really think of China as having that.That's something that you think, oh, is more like something you find in Japan or in like European countries.
But actually, it really was eye opening to see the level of craftsmanship that existed in China.And so to have worked with that incredible chef, I had access to these ingredients that most people normally don't.
That was really what opened my eyes to the possibility with Chinese food.
And you've carried that over into Flyby Jinx.
I know that there's a video online that you can watch where it kind of tells the story of how precisely you sourced the actual chili ingredient and how it's not something that you were willing to compromise on is not using cheaper substitutes, but really choosing the very best.
And it kind of makes sense because it's. the very core of a chili crisp or the chili sauces that you make.But what was that journey like?Obviously, you had lived in China.
You had gotten a lot closer to the ingredients and the craftsmanship and the food culture, I imagine, inside of the nation.But then finding an ingredient to then package.
That was part of the challenge of how do you translate something that you might make in a
the small kitchen, the quality of ingredients that you would use to cook for your loved ones, right, versus what a lot of large companies put into their products that are mass produced.
And so in that process, I really saw just why or how the products that end up on shelves tend to be watered down eventually.There is a lot of compromise that can happen between the two.
And at every step of the way, there is an opportunity or kind of a temptation to compromise in that way.And so, for example, I had a lot of resistance from the manufacturing partners to even using the ingredients that I wanted them to use.
because they were not their existing suppliers.They were ingredients that were more expensive, typically, than end products on shelves.So they found it inconceivable.Like, why would you do that?And a lot of them refused to do it.
The challenge was really sticking to your core and, like, kind of what you believe in.And so the ingredients was the main thing, is, OK, insistence on using the same level of quality that I would in my kitchen.
And then the other complexities are in kind of scaling up production, making it in a wok.And your home kitchen is very different from a giant, you know, cauldron at a factory.
The steps had to change different temperatures, different order of events in order to get to the same end result.But I would say that, yeah, it took several months to figure out that we ended up in a place that was very close to how it started.
Like I said before, it's delicious.And you can really notice the difference between your, specifically your Chili Crisp product than the competitors.I mean, all, all delicious.
I enjoy all of them, but yours, I think has a very like distinctively unique profile and you can taste the quality. Now the business is incredibly successful.So firstly, congratulations on that.
When I was reading some of this stuff, I'm like, wow, this is insane.Like partnerships with Jenny's ice cream, Shake Shack.You're in 2000 Walmart stores.You're in over a thousand Target stores.
I mean, that's like an insane amount of mass access that you now got for this product.So how does that feel now versus, I guess, when you started the company in 2018?
Yeah, it's incredible to be here, you know, five years in.I think when we started, we were one of the first modern Asian food companies in America and definitely the first modern Chinese company.And there was a lot of
kind of challenge and resistance, right?When we first launched, first of all, I bootstrapped the business.I didn't have investors or access to resources and funding to be able to enter retail, let's say, right?
And retail is a pretty difficult channel to be in, and it's typically quite a closed sort of network.It's hard for outsiders to kind of just come in. And not only was I new to this industry, I was also new to this country.
Like I had never lived in the U.S.before.I lived in Europe and Canada and I lived in China for about 10 years before I moved here.So a lot of challenges like that.
And when previously the Asian aisle was really just like very low priced products, there's a lot of resistance to a premium priced Asian product, right?Some people found it hard to accept that could even exist.
But over five years, we really helped to create a movement, I think, that reinvigorated that aisle of the grocery store.And now it's kind of an exciting aisle to go down.
There's so much newness, so much innovation, and a lot of brands that are, you know, being driven by second, third generation immigrant people like myself.
And together, I think we're sort of evolving the culture in this country, evolving people's palates, people's minds, expanding people's minds.
So it's a very different environment today where you can find a product like ours in, we're actually in, we just got expanded into 3,500 Walmart stores.So it's incredible to think about the access we have to the kind of mainstream consumer, right?
In the early days, I was told no by hundreds of investors who said that Chinese food is too niche, could never make it to the mainstream.And yet now Chili Crisp, is one of the fastest growing categories within condiments in America.
So pretty wild and really rewarding.
Yeah, that's insane.And what's really interesting for me, and I'm keen to hear your observation on this, is like the first time that I encountered your product is when my husband and I moved
to the US from Australia and we were dying for a chili crisp because like in Australia you could get it at every supermarket.
So we went out like looking for this thing that took us actually a really long time even just to find any of them in the local grocer and then discovered yours and then was like amazed at the fact that it was higher quality, more premium, all natural, all of these things, amazing.
But I think that's kind of like a very distinct difference between a Chinese cuisine in America and Chinese cuisine in Australia.And obviously it's influenced by the population.So in Australia, 5.5% of the population is Chinese, 1.4 million.
And it's significantly smaller inside of America.2% of the population are Chinese in the US, according to my quick research here.
So, you see a significantly smaller amount of Chinese cuisine inside of stores, the dedicated space in grocery and restaurants as well.So, three times more likely to bump into a Chinese restaurant in Australia than you are in the U.S.
Was that surprising for you when you came to America?
I'm actually surprised to hear that Australia has, you're more three times as likely to run into a Chinese restaurant in Australia.
I wonder if there's a difference in the type of Chinese restaurant, because as we know, Chinese American food and Chinese American restaurants, it's kind of its own category, right?So you can't really say it's Chinese.It's an evolution of
something that's kind of unique to this country.
There are actually 50,000, more than 50,000 of those types of Chinese American restaurants or any kind of Chinese-ish restaurants in America, which surprisingly makes it the highest number of restaurants of any kind in the country.
way more than McDonald's, Starbucks, whatever, all of them combined, which that was a statistic that really surprised me.So in a way, if you think of it that way, it's like over 50,000 Chinese restaurants in America.
It is like the most prevalent cuisine.
But because of the way that Chinese food evolved in this country, starting from like the 1800s with the Chinese Exclusion Act, and there's a number of kind of policies that were put in place that actually encouraged the proliferation of Chinese restaurants in the country, but then in its own kind of flavor as well, right?
Like the way that it proliferated was due to certain loopholes in immigration. And a lot of adaptation was made for the American palate, the addition of a lot of sugar and the evolution incorporating local ingredients.
So eventually Chinese American food became its own thing that also had a lot of baggage along with it and perceptions that people have formed about it. So I think the general consensus was that, OK, those types of restaurants are cheap.
It's not that they started cheap.It's because the expectation was that they had to be cheap, right?They had to be cheap in order for them to attract customers.And then that ended up working against them, right?
Because now the perception is that they're necessarily cheap and that they're unhealthy and low quality and all kinds of these these other perceptions.
But what I knew was my personal experience of running these fly-by-drink supper clubs where I had traveled to places like New York, LA, and then also to Australia, to New Zealand, to other countries where
you know, a lot of my diners, my guests were eating Sichuan, these real Sichuan flavors for the first time and just seeing their eyes light up and realizing that these flavors were really universal.They just had no access to them.
And so I think I knew from that, like firsthand experience, that these flavors would be popular.But there's nothing like it here.And there's a lot of misconceptions to overcome.
You mentioned that the cuisine has been adapted for the American palate and also ingredients, etc.
There's a really interesting conversation taking place right now around Mexican food in America and whether that's actually truly Mexican and how it's kind of, not necessarily watered down, but it's definitely, it doesn't have that hit and that spice that authentic Mexican has.
And I imagine that Chinese cuisine is kind of similar.Do you find that it does kind of like a punch?
Chinese American food.Yeah.I mean, yeah, it's its own beast.I can't claim to be an expert on Chinese American cuisine.There are people who are and it's a whole it's its own thing.I mean, I think there's a lot of merit to it as well.
It's its own subculture.It's done a lot.It's contributed a lot to the fabric of this country and to the immigrant experience of Chinese Americans.So there's a ton of value there.Is it
Anything like the Sichuan food that I experienced and learned about and love from living in Sichuan?No.But I think that they both kind of have their place in the landscape.
And that's really what I wanted to demonstrate with Fly By Jing as well, is opening people's minds and eyes and palates to the fact that there can be nuance and complexity and multitudes of what Chinese food can be.
And it kind of is connected into, I think, what is a bit of a tagline for the company, which is not traditional, but personal. Yes.
Obviously offering a traditional type of product, but then kind of modernizing it and adapting it to be obviously more personally aligned with what I think maybe the supper club was delivering and your own personal take on the traditional cuisine.
How much of that influenced the very start of the design of the brand and the sources?
So I never really started out with the idea that I was going to start a sauce company.It wasn't something that I planned, sat down, planned and made a business plan, envisioned.It was very organic and it was the result of a quest, right?
Or like a personal journey to getting to know myself and getting to my roots.It started out with just eating and exploring Chinese food when I was living there.And then eventually I quit my job and opened a restaurant and
started Fly by Jing as kind of a side project, a pet project, where I was just like really having a lot of fun doing these pop-ups.
And the name Fly by Jing was a reference to a type of restaurant in Chengdu known as fly restaurants that are hole-in-the-walls that are so good that they attract people like flies.
I thought to myself, how do I create this experience for people on a more broader and accessible level?
When I thought of that, the idea of bottling up the sauces was the first one that came to me, and figuring it out step by step, eventually doing a Kickstarter to kind of launch the idea, still not knowing is there an actual business here, because
For me, it was just like test and learn.I wasn't even reflecting what was actually happening.I was just taking small steps.One step would lead to the next.I moved to the U.S.
because the Kickstarter did so well, and I thought, OK, there's something here.Let me move there and create this direct consumer business. built a Shopify website, started shipping jars, and got retailer interest.
It wasn't until much later, when I even realized the impact of what this was doing, the amount of conversation that this kind of spurred, people who had all kinds of opinions about the product, the brand, right?
A lot of love for what we were doing, a lot of people who instantly understood.
that we wanted to change the conversation about Chinese food and really supported that, which is why the Kickstarter went so viral, but also a lot of resistance, like I mentioned.
So I think in reflection, way kind of past the point of starting this business, that's when I realized, like, Oh, so it was a very personal thing that led me here.
And I wanted people to, to understand that because I think there was such a preoccupation of people here in the West, Western people, and also Chinese people here to kind of keep Chinese food in a box, right?
It's like this precious thing, whether you grew up eating it in Chinatown, or you grew up eating your grandmother's cooking.There's a lot of baggage that comes along with how people viewed Chinese food or ethnic food broader.
And it was kind of constricting.It wasn't allowing Chinese food to evolve.And as we know, things that don't evolve die.
And what I was seeing in China by living there, eating there and seeing the next generation have their take on Chinese food, I was seeing a lot of experimentation, a lot of innovation.People were pushing it forward in a really exciting way.
And I was seeing that especially at those fly restaurants.And yet over here, we were so protective of this thing.That was what I really wanted to open people's eyes and minds to is that
It can evolve, and there can be hundreds, thousands, millions of expressions of something.I'm someone who was born in Chengdu, but lived in eight countries in the West, and I lived in China, but I'm Canadian, now I live in the U.S.
And this is just an experience that is my own, and it's a flavor that I developed because I liked it. It just so happens a lot of other people liked it as well.So there's a place for that.
I think when we look at something as super monolithic, we don't allow for diversity in expressions and thoughts.And by taking a stance and putting our stake on the ground and saying this is not traditional, but it's personal,
we are hopefully also creating the space for others to come in and do the same.And I think that's kind of what happened over the past five years is more and more companies came in and did the same.
You're not just talking about fusion and like mixing different cuisines together, but almost like to be able to explore and experiment more broadly concepts around culture and ethnicity and whether things
sometimes are put into restrictive boxes of what they are or what they aren't.And we get so wedded and so stuck to these labels and these ideas versus allowing things to just be what they are or yet to stretch into their potential.Absolutely.
So I love that as well, also in the context of something that you've spoken about before in interviews, the hierarchy of taste and this, I believe, NYU study that was done around how there's almost like a categorization or a segmentation of different taste profiles or cuisines.
Am I repeating this back correctly?That kind of, again, like limits how they're perceived?
Yeah, exactly.It's a sociologist at NYU who actually wrote a really good book on this topic called The Ethnic Restauranteur.And it explores how some restaurants can command a lot higher prices for their food than others.And
there's kind of this sliding scale of different countries' cuisines, you know, and at the top of it is French and Japanese, where you would expect to pay top dollar for a meal, and then at the bottom you have Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, and then all of the ones in between.
And so his theory is that the value that we place on these cuisines is actually based on our perception of the socioeconomic status of immigrants from those countries. The thing is that it's not static.
It's something that evolves based on the change in socioeconomic status of immigrants from those countries.So, for example, a hundred years ago, when Italians first came to America, their food was looked down upon.
They were considered cheap and low quality.But yet today, a hundred years later, You can go to a restaurant and pay $40 for a plate of pasta.Right.So it's just showing you that it's dynamic.
I really think we are seeing that shift with like currently with Asian cuisine.
And it's because of companies, brands, restaurants, founders, chefs, like us, like a lot of others that are changing, helping to shift the perceptions and change the conversation.
It's very eye-opening to see the veils that are placed in front of us, and most people don't even reflect upon that.It just is a given, right?
And it's what caused a lot of people, I think, in our early days to say to us that this is too expensive, this should cost $1.And a lot of the times our response to them would be to hold up a mirror and ask them, why do you think that?
I think, you know, once people reflect on that, they come to their own conclusions.
Yeah, I think that the ability for us to just even reflect and a lot of us are migrants.I'm a migrant.I was born in Poland and then I grew up in Australia.
And I had to reframe my own thinking even of what Slavic food was like growing up actually was very ingrained in that cuisine.And then I think as a teenager, I kind of rebelled against it and had these
externally influenced perceptions of it and then I fell back in love with it later on in life.
That all requires you to be really open to reflecting on yourself and then obviously reflecting on the things that are outside of you, which I think also is slightly connected to another question that I had for you around backing yourself.
Obviously you've had a restaurant, so you're a restaurateur, entrepreneur, you've created this product.You've just written a recipe book, which won a James Beard award.Amazing.I bought it.I was hoping to hold it up on the show, but it's on the way.
It's coming. And previously you had a whole life at major organizations like PNG and lived in so many different countries.So you've been able to pivot and almost reinvent yourself.
I think a part of the reinvention was also going back to Jing from Jenny and kind of changing your name or how you were presenting yourself to the world. So, what's next for you?
Do you feel like your opportunities and your ability to create something that maybe seems like a high risk is greater now because you have a greater level of confidence in yourself and you can back yourself more now?
That's a great question.Yeah, I like the way you put it.I think that is definitely the case.I'm the type of person that learns by experimentation.I learn by kind of like throwing myself in the deep end and then taking those learnings back with me.
And there's been a definite evolution and I love learning.I love kind of evolving.The journey never ends.And you talked about reclaiming my birth name, Jing.And to me, that was like a big step in reclaiming my identity, my sense of self, my
confidence, but that was just the beginning of a long journey.It wasn't like a switch just turned on when I reclaimed the name.It's a continuous learning experience.
I recently had a baby, and I think that's probably the biggest learning experience of one's life.It could be.It's life changing.It's altering your entire sense of self.It opens up a lot, I think.
And I would say instead of turning you into someone else, it's really unveiling and revealing who you are, more of who you are.And a lot of that comes with that is kind of more trust and confidence in your inner voice, right?
And that's where creativity kind of springs from.So I think I am excited to see where Things go like even with Flyby Jing five years in, we are working on kind of a brand evolution as well.
You know, I think as I have grown so much, like completely almost unrecognizable from the early days, the company needs to evolve just in the same way.So, you know, so we're undergoing that exercise, which is very energizing and fun for me.
And yeah, but I do think that even just every day as I'm being a mother, it's kind of opening up all kinds of other aspects of myself that I'm excited to explore when it comes to creation in my work.
And I love how you answered that question with all of these very personal reflections that influence us much more than the external ones.
Yes, absolutely.I think that your external is a reflection of what's internal.So it's all connected.
Based on that and everything that you've done so far, I can't wait to see what you do with Flyby Jing and the evolution of the brand.So definitely keep an eye on that. an avid supporter.So Jane, thank you so much for sharing your journey.
I do have one last question for you, and obviously this is just something that's a part of who you are naturally, being a learner, but what is your go-to when you want to look outside?
Well, I love to actually be outside.I do think that nature gives us the most in terms of learnings, and I love to do that as much as possible.
But on the topic of looking inwards, I think that's something that I've been doing a lot more of recently, especially after having a baby.You don't get as much time to do the things that you normally would do.
But for me, I think there's a whole universe to explore within ourselves.
I think sometimes I have found that anytime that I've had a lot of questions or uncertainty or fear or anxiety, like when I quiet down and look inward, the answers have always been there.
Do you have a place or a method of connecting with that part of yourself?
Meditation is a key for me to do that. There's so many forms of meditation, but just taking a pause, I think, is the easiest route to it.And it doesn't have to be some kind of one hour plus meditation.
Even just pausing for three minutes in your day is, I think, very helpful.I like the saying of a spiritual teacher. that miracles happen in the pause, in the pauses.
So just remembering that and remembering to make time for those pauses, because that's where miracle can spring from.That's great.
Miracles happen in the pause.And hopefully with a four and a half month old, you get a few moments of pause to yourself.Thank you so much for taking a moment.Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Thank you so much for having me.
Thanks for listening.If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review, or share the show, and I will see you next time.Until then, keep looking outside.
Sign in
