We recently connected with James Chang and have shared our conversation below.

James, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

Like everyone else I used to buy all my chili oil from the mass produced companies. The biggest issue for me doing this was always the indigestion that i had afterwards. Then one day i happened to look at the nutrition label and was shocked at how many preservatives and additives was in each jar of chili oil. This really set me down this rabbit hole of chili oil and experimentation. Growing up I always worked in my father’s various restaurants and learned a lot of the basics of cooking in a commercial kitchen. However, my father never really cooked or ate spicy foods so I took it upon myself to learn how to make chili oil. My first batch that was offered for sale was batch#6 (batches 1-5 were all experimental batches) I went from selling 60 bottles to now averaging over 500+ bottles a batch. Each batch is always a bit different from the previous batch.

James, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I think i literally was born into the food service industry. My whole family is into food one way or another. From my grandmother and grandfather’s rice shop in Taiwan, my father’s different restaurants, and my cousin’s high end Kaiseki restaurant in Taipei, it was predestined for me to continue the food tradition. I always pride myself on not serving/selling anything that I wouldn’t eat. I’m also constantly improving and searching for better flavors and materials. To me, without innovation and and heart will lead to stagnation. I’m also very blessed in how much jchang.kitchen has grown in the past 2 years. I went from just a idea to now booking private dinners. As my social media presence grows I also want to be a safe place for all. We at jchang.kitchen are an equal rights company with more than a fiscal goal, We want to grow as a socially responsible company.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

Instagram and social media. We at jchang.kitchen are a very grass roots company. We have spread our popularity by word of mouth and local media publications.

Do you sell on your site, or do you use a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc?

We currently use square as our online ordering site with shippo as our shipping platform. Since we are still a small company this makes the most sense to us. We still pack everything by hand including shipping

Contact Info:

• Instagram: www.instagram.com/jchang.kitchen
• Facebook: facebook.com/jchang.kitchen

Image Credits
https://www.pilsenphotocoop.com/