Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Dao Au. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Dao, appreciate you joining us today. So, naming is such a challenge. How did you come up with the name of your brand?

KOI CHA – Tapioca Drinks & Snacks was founded with an inspiration from the Legend of the Koi Fish. An ancient tale tells of a Koi Fish swimming upstream a waterfall. God recognized the Koi Fish for its perseverance and determination and turned it into a golden dragon, the image of power and strength. I just love the tale so much that I want the KOI fish to be the logo of the company. CHA is a slang word for tea. I combine the two things that inspire me to come up with the name KOI CHA. Like the Koi Fish, I want KOI CHA to earn the reputation and recognition for the high-quality beverages and services among many existing bubble tea brands.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Hi everyone, my name is Dao Au. My husband and I are the founders and owners of KOI CHA – Tapioca Drinks & Snacks in Houston. I was born in Vietnam and came to the US in 2008 through a scholarship as an exchange student for my junior year in high school. During my college life, I also worked part-time at a bubble tea shop where my love for bubble tea started to grow up in me, little by little. This is also where I met my husband. I graduated from the University of Houston with a Bachelor’s Degree in Accounting. I was a tax accountant at the largest independent CPA firm in Houston for four years. Lots of my clients are small and big business owners in various industries. I noticed that I always get excited when discussing the operation of a business, the revenue, the expenses, and the figure with the clients. There is a voice in my head that says, “Me too! I want to be a business owner”. That is when I started to take my love for bubble tea seriously.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

When it comes to business, there is this statement “It takes money to make money.” I have to say raising capital is one of the struggles that we were facing at the beginning since we didn’t have enough business history to borrow money from a financial institution. Luckily, my partner who is also my husband, has a Bachelor’s Degree in Finance from the University of Texas in Austin. He suggested to apply and use promotional credit cards to pay for things that we can pay with credit cards and saved the cash that we borrowed from our family and friends for building the store and others operating expenses. With the help from our friends and family and a $50k Chase credit card, we were able to raise just enough money to start up the business.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Although, my experiences working at a bubble tea shop has helped me a little; building a brand, building a store, building customers, building everything from scratch are way beyond my experiences. There are so many things that I did not know. It took me a little over one year to brainstorm and develop my business plan, find a location, build the store, set up the company, and decide on the store name as well as the menu items and pricing.

I remember when KOI CHA – Tapioca Drinks & Snacks was 3 months in the business, the corona-virus outbreak happened. It was a shock for us and of courses for everyone. Our sales were great at the beginning but we had a big drop due to the lockdown. In order to adapt to the social distancing practice, I have to quickly find a way to start online ordering and delivery service, which I never thought of in my business plan. Instead of crying or complaining about it, I see this as an opportunity to launch our website www.KoiChaHouston.com. With the new website, our sales have gone back up. We’re just so thankful to receive the support from the community and we’re still able to open our store to serve our beloved customers.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.KoiChaHouston.com

Image Credits
DAO photography