![]() When you’re producing at scale, quality of ingredients will suffer for the bottom line. The general wisdom in CPG and the food world is, ‘Get out something that is good enough.’ The reason why I had so many issues with manufacturing the first time around, as I documented in my essay, was because the existing systems ensure that mainstream, mass market food products all taste watered down. So it’s a no brainer to me to really, really get that right. With food, whether you’re a chef in a restaurant or an entrepreneur making food products, the quality of ingredients, what goes into it, and its taste are intertwined. People need to have a reason to talk about it independent of paid ads. The product needs to have built in virality. The greatest marketing tool is the product itself. To me, the product needs to speak for itself. “I only want to create something if I know there is a reason for it to exist. What is your product development strategy? Sam Sifton said your sauce is “nearly twice as expensive and perhaps three times as good” as the next-best competitor. Her answers have been lightly condensed and edited. Here, Gao shares her playbook for building an authentic brand, creating new products, and tackling distribution. It’s the story of her reconnection to Chinese cuisine, and the force behind her mission to elevate Chinese food in the minds of everyday consumers - beyond cheap take out. ![]() This year we’ll be doing 10x our sales from last year.”įor Gao, the business isn’t just another Shopify store. As soon as people received their products, you could see them come back on the site and order more. “That week, we did more sales than all of last year combined,” Gao says. In April, New York Times Food Editor Sam Sifton declared: “ Your Quarantine Cooking Needs Condiments.” His recommendation? Pick up a jar of Fly By Jing. I braced myself for dark times ahead.”īut as quarantine wore on, Americans’ relationship to food began to change. “Increased tensions rose from xenophobia, trade relations soured, and overtly racist comments started popping up on our social media pages,” Gao wrote of the experience. Customers loved the unique tastes and spices of Sichuan Chili Crisp, even spooning it over ice cream. Still, she kept at it.īy 2019, Gao, a former Shanghai-based chef, had launched her direct-to-consumer brand Fly By Jing to rave reviews, growing 60 percent month over month. Her jars’ labels, printed in Hong Kong, had to be applied by hand. Ingredient approvals were time consuming and costly. Convincing her Chengdu manufacturer to use those ingredients rather than that of typical suppliers was even harder. It had been an uphill battle since the day Gao launched a Kickstarter for her spicy Sichuan Chili Crisp sauce in 2018: Sourcing precious ingredients from the countryside of China - cold-pressed rapa oil, fermented black beans, fried chilies, and rare tribute peppers - was difficult. ![]() In the earliest days of the pandemic, Jing Gao worried for her business. ![]()
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