We were lucky to catch up with Minnie Luong recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Minnie, thanks for joining us today. Innovation comes in all shapes, sizes and across all industries, so we’d love to hear about something you’ve done that you feel was particularly innovative.

I think for any entrepreneur, the most innovative thing is to take real steps to chart your own path without knowing what the outcome will be. If you are courageous and passionate enough to not accept the status quo of your current situation you are innovating in your own life and you will naturally bring the people around you on that journey as well. As far as Chi Kitchen is concerned, I think creating our Fermented Sesame Slaw, which was the 2022 SOFI Gold Winner Award in the competitive pickles and olives category, was pretty cool.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I was raised in a food obsessed family that grew and preserved our own foods, because the Asian ingredients that my family enjoyed were not readily available in our local supermarkets. Our family life centered around our family meals, which inspired me to pursue a career in food. While working as a chef in Los Angeles, I decided I wanted to start a healthy Asian food business, so I quit my job, moved my family back to my hometown of Providence, Rhode Island to join its vibrant food scene and start our own handcrafted fermented Asian foods company, now known as Chi Kitchen.

At Chi Kitchen, we make handcrafted fermented foods with Asian flavor profiles, including traditional Napa Kimchi, Vegan Kimchi, Fermented Sesame Slaw, Kimchi Pickles. All of our products are gluten-free, low in calories and loaded with billions of beneficial probiotics. Our Sesame Slaw and Kimchi Pickles are completely unique products, the first of their kind on the shelves and beloved by our customers.

The problems we solve for our clients are helping gut health issues and saving them time in preparing meals. Common gut health issues our clients face are bloating, constipation, fatigue, indigestion, and other GI symptoms. Our fermented products were tested by Brown University biologists, and were found to contain 1.8 billion probiotics in each spoonful. Healthy probiotics found in our ferments are essential for optimal gut health and our overall well-being, so we taking our customers through a flavor journey and providing them with essential nutrients for their gut. Additionally, our products are perfect for people who don’t have much time to make healthy meals but still want to eat nutrient-dense foods. That’s where we come in. Our products are ready-to-eat, because all you have to do is take it from the jar, or bucket, and put it right onto the plate! Our retail 16 0z. jars are sold in Whole Foods and local grocery stores across New England, and our food service 1 and 5 gallon buckets supply university dining halls, local eateries and James Beard award-winning restaurants throughout the East Coast.

What sets us apart from others is that we are a Chef-driven, certified Woman and Minority-owned business. We take pride in this; the food industry tends to be male-dominated, so to be a woman-owned business, run by a minority woman who is a first generation American – we are breaking barriers with every step we take. Additionally, all of our products are handcrafted. We quite literally make and package all of our fermented products by hand.

What I am most proud of is our resilience in the face of obstacles. There is so much to know about running a successful food business, from manufacturing, to distribution, to promotion and marketing, to managing people. It’s a lot of responsibility to wear so many hats being a small business, so I’m very proud when I look back and see all the skills and experience I’ve developed on this journey to build our business. We’ve had to pivot many times; when we thought we’d get a life-changing deal and it fell through, we had to pivot and focus on other ways to boost our business, such as doing food service for meal kit services. We are currently working with one of the largest plant-based meal kit services, Purple Carrot, to provide several of their meals with our Vegan Kimchi.

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

We decided early on, by necessity, to manufacture our own products. Initially we started in an incubator kitchen, called Hope & Main, and within a year we were able to build out our own production facility, which we expanded in 2019. Owning our own manufacturing allows us to control the quality and food safety that is important to our brand, and this capability is an asset from a business standpoint. Because our products are hand-crafted we rely heavily on Lean manufacturing principles of continuous improvement, which is one of our core values.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I escaped my birthplace as a “Boat Person” and lived in two different refugee camps by the time I was 3 years old when I came to the United States with my father who raised me as a single parent. I didn’t speak any English when I started school, and it was very cold in Boston. I had never owned a coat before, everything was foreign to me, including the food. My father and I had to teach ourselves how to survive in this new climate and luckily we had some kind people who were able to help us figure things out. This early childhood experience has really shaped who I am today. I have practiced those skills of resilience in my personal life and in my business. When I feel that something is not going the way that I want it to I ask for help; I talk to people who care about me who remind me of how far I’ve come.

Contact Info:

• Website: chikitchen.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chikitchenfoods/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chikitchenfoods/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCn941bJ1V9VSEb7IA9wXoXw
• Other: https://www.specialtyfood.com/news/article/chi-kitchen-wins-gold-award-in-2022-sofitm-awards-127185/ https://heyrhody.com/stories/hey-rhody-may-2023,100939 – We’re featured on page 50 and our photo is on the cover!

Image Credits
Marianne Lee Farm Fresh RI