Little Ruckus: Rule Breakers + Tastemakers

Hot & Sour Soup for the Soul is now Little Ruckus.

The goal of this podcast continues to be on spotlighting the rule breakers + trailblazers who've yet to saunter into the mainstream limelight BUT we're evolving. We are expanding our coverage to spotlight the boundary-pushing humans behind the next consumer obsession.

Join us for tales in persistence, pivots, and pop culture in the making. This is the little ruckus before the big racket.

We're chatting with Andrew Chau, the co-founder and CEO of Boba Guys, a national boba brand that’s bridging cultures through deliciously disarming beverages. If you live in the Bay Area, LA, or NYC, you’ve probably passed by -- or through -- a Boba Guys store. Today, Boba Guys has 18 immaculately designed retail locations, but as with most start-up stories, it has humble beginnings. Co-founder and CEO Andrew Chau grew up in ‘80s New Jersey, in a working-class neighborhood that was home to primarily Jewish and Italian families, where his parents ran a Chinese restaurant. Outside of food, the only Asian representation he saw were in Bruce Lee action films, courtesy of VHS tapes he'd rent from a video shop in a neighboring town. This changed when he moved to California, attended UC Berkeley, and got his start in marketing at retail and CPG companies, spanning Target, Walmart, Timbuk2, and Clorox. While running a boba brand had never been a part of the 5 year plan, when Andrew met his future co-founder Bin at Timbuk2, the two got to brainstorming what they could create together while sipping boba drinks, and soon, the boba concept became inescapable. Andrew kept his corporate job for the first 3 years of Boba Guys, before cutting the cord and going all in on growing the company. That said, if you ask Andrew what business he's in, it doesn't stop at boba. Boba Guys is ultimately about bridging cultures. Even with their national retail footprint, tens of thousands of Yelp reviews, and millions of loyal customers, Andrew has stayed true to the mission. Boba Guys doesn't franchise, nor have they taken outside money. Co-founders Andrew and Bin are in it for the long haul.

We’ll talk with Andrew about his experience growing up Asian American in the ‘80s, the always worthwhile but often painful lessons he’s learned while making Boba Guys a household name, and unconventional ways for driving change in ways that feel authentic to who we are -- whether that be brazenly outspoken, stoically committed, or something in between. Stay tuned for an unfiltered conversation with one of the most forthcoming CEOs whom we’ve had the pleasure of chatting with, Andrew Chau.

More Andrew:

Which do you think more often about: “Me” or “We”? Historically, whether we belonged to the school of individualism or the school of collectivism had to do with the cultural context we were brought up around, whether we grew up with more Western or Eastern influence. Today however, between a global pandemic, planetary climate change, and national civic movements that are resurfacing racial disparities which many had previously thought had already been squashed, the “We” -- collective effort and collective gain -- appears to be something we’ll all need to get comfortable with. Out with the notion that individualism and collectivism are mutually exclusive. In with the power of paradox, of holding the tension between “Me” and “We” within ourselves. 

In this episode, we get into harnessing the power of not “Me” vs. “We”, but “Me” & “We”. First, we get interactive, with a few real-time tests to gauge where we currently are on that scale spanning from individualist to collectivist. Then, we talk actionable steps to building our ability to flex between the two. This is a space where the multifacetedness of & > the restriction of Or. Let’s get to tapping into the power of paradox.

Studies mentioned:

MIT undergrad. FAANG internships. Antitrust economic consulting. Stanford PhD candidacy. No question Allison Koenecke is an academic force. Beyond impressive institutional associations -- which she seldom spotlights -- what has made her a true force of nature (or shall we say, software?) is the research she's leading to address equitability in mainstream technologies. Specifically, Allison's bringing visibility to the blind spots tech companies have been operating with while training their machine learning models. For instance, did you know voice assistants (i.e. Siri, Alexa) register twice as many errors when processing African American colloquial English? Allison is a researcher who's working towards a tech future that is built on the foundation of a more diverse set of colors, creeds, and communities. Beyond chatting about her journey to and within her PhD candidacy at Stanford's Institute for Computational & Mathematical Engineering, we talk about parental expectations, leading teams, and quick tips to getting more done during the day.

More Allison:

Today’s guest is Ruoyi Jiang, founder of Chop Suey Club, a concept store in NYC's Lower East Side that is simultaneously redefining what “Made in China" looks like and partnering with local Chinatown businesses to ensure their cultural currency for generations to come. Once upon a time, Ruoyi was a middle schooler living in China, who decided to drop out of school to pursue a professional golf career. Today, she is the founder of a frontrunner in the NYC boutique scene and beyond. Along the way, she snagged a B.F.A in Photography & Imaging from NYU and a trip to the Met Gala (you know, that annual event who's guest list is overseen by Anna Wintour, Editor-in-Chief of Vogue).

We chat with Ruoyi about the business dynamics of Chinatown, untangling appropriation and appreciation, and navigating life’s yin & yang, all while growing the business of a brick-and-mortar in the midst of a pandemic.

More Ruoyi: