We recently connected with Keegan Fong and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Keegan thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights 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.
Woon was born out of a desire to share my mom’s food and story. Growing up, my mom would host my friends and cook for them. She quickly earned the nickname, “Mama Fong”. Years later, I found myself working in apparel marketing. I really enjoyed my job and being able to create and tell stories to sell a brand. However, as years went on I felt the need to tell an authentic story. I’d come home from work and loosely work on a business plan for a noodle shop featuring my mom’s recipes. That idea quickly became a pop up concept called Woon. My family popped up around LA on my days off for 4 years until I decided to pursue a brick and mortar concept full-time. That’s when the current location of Woon was born in 2019. Now, we are looking to open our second location in Pasadena and have a line of pantry goods.
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?
I am the founder and owner of Woon, a homestyle Chinese food restaurant located in Historic Filipinotown, Los Angeles. Our focus is on my mom’s original Shanghainese/Cantonese recipes that my sister and I grew up on. We are a counter service concept that serves natural wines, import beers and a focused menu which features our stir fried chewy noodles. I like to say that Woon is a non-traditional restaurant in the sense that I don’t come from the food and beverage industry. Our approach to a restaurant is a bit different in terms of hopsitality, branding and presentation. The goal has always been for our brick and mortar location to be a reflection of my upbringing and the crossroads of me being an Asian American today. It’s an intersection of the traditional and modern. I also like to say that Woon is the gateway to Chinese food…we are happy being the introduction to a cuisine which runs very deep and complex. Our purpose is to satisfy those needs of Asian Americans like myself who were born in the US, but also introduce people to what immigrant Chinese food is…my mom being the one who immigrated from Shanghai by way of Hong Kong over 60 years ago.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
I left a very successful career in a pretty niche industry. Namely, marketing for skate and surf apparel brands. I was great at my job, but I was also jaded. I had always felt the need own my business, or at least try to own my business. I also wanted the greatest challenge because I felt like I had stopped learning at my previous job. So, I chose the food and beverage industry, one that I had zero knowledge of, so that I could learn something from the ground up. It was the most challenging time in my life, but it was also the most fulfilling. There were definitely more times of stress and constant problem solving, but it always felt good to come out on the other side having more experience and knowledge. To this day, I face endless problems, but all these problems create solutions.
How did you build your audience on social media?
Social Media is a large part of our business. I think we would be much less successful without it. I still handle the social media myself because it’s the part of the business that comes most natural to me due to my previous career. However, it’s something that does take experience and a specific feel for. Audiences now can see right through your message and if it is authentic or not. Nowadays, transparency and authenticity is what earns the audiences engagement. We try to focus less on the curated aspect of social media (although some of that comes naturally) and focus more on what message or story we are trying to get across.
Contact Info:
- Website: woonkitchen.com
- Instagram: @woonkitchen
Image Credits
Tiffany Leah Cheung, Andrew James Peters