Nadia Liu Spellman, Dumpling Daughter

[00:00:55] Sanjay Parekh: Today's guest is Nadia Liu Spellman, the founder of the Boston based dumpling restaurant chain, Dumpling Daughter. Inspired by her mom's home cooking, Nadia founded the original restaurant in Boston in 2014 and now has three locations in the greater Boston area. Nadia, welcome to the show. 

[00:01:13] Nadia Liu Spellman: Thank you for having me.

[00:01:15] Sanjay Parekh: So I'm excited to have you on, mainly because I've actually been to your restaurant before, a very long time ago now, since I'm not in Boston. But before we get into that and talk about the restaurant, give us a little bit about your background and what got you to where you are now. 

[00:01:30] Nadia Liu Spellman: I grew up in a restaurant family. My parents owned the most famous Chinese restaurant and the most upscale Chinese restaurant in the 80s, arguably, in the country. And so I grew up in this space that I felt was very glamorous. Julia Child was a regular, Yo-Yo Ma, the governor at the time, Martin Yan, famous celebrity chef, and it was such a pleasure and joy to be able to enjoy this incredible hospitality and food.

My mom is also an excellent home cook. She never cooked in a commercial kitchen. She was more of a tastemaker for the restaurants. And so she would cook at home and she would instruct and give feedback to the chefs. And I was spoiled by this good food, and it really ingrained in me the pleasures of dining and hospitality, the idea of family eating together.

But when I think back to my childhood throughout my years, as early as college, I realized that my favorite moments in food was at my grandmother's house, making dumplings with my family and enjoying the dumplings and then getting to take frozen dumplings home to enjoy later on. So, many years ago, I would say even in college, I saw a need to share this culture and experience with more people. I was very lucky to be a Chinese child, to enjoy the dumplings, plentiful amounts of dumplings. I feel like it's a responsibility to pay respect to the legacy that my parents built and celebrate what they did together in Boston and continue it in my own way, which is through Dumpling Daughter.

[00:03:31] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, I love it. and I will say as a personal kind of plug, we happened upon your restaurant, it's now been years, four or five years, when we were in Boston and they were fantastic. We really did enjoy it. I think we actually, in the span of a couple of days, ended up coming by twice and there was a threat of maybe even going a third time. You know you can go to a restaurant just too many times in a certain number of days before, then you get worn out. So, we were trying to take it to the very edge before we were like, okay, we're dumpling down. 

[00:04:07] Nadia Liu Spellman: That's nice to hear. 

[00:04:09] Sanjay Parekh: So, is this your first entrepreneurial venture for yourself or have you done entrepreneurial things? Maybe like when you were a kid. 

[00:04:20] Nadia Liu Spellman: I was not the kid with the lemonade stand. Sorry to disappoint. I was more challenged by my father to think outside the box, whatever situation I was asked to do. I was instructed to think bigger, think, is there an easier way? Is there a smarter way? How can I do this in the best way that I can? And it all started with packing takeout at my parents’ restaurant. Not that I was necessary, but I really liked being in the kitchen and smelling the aromas from the woks. And my father asked me to cook dinner on Sunday nights for our family and said, "You need to cook a dinner from scratch."

And when I started getting tired of spaghetti with red sauce, which was Prego at the time or Ragu brand, I said, "Dad, I am bored at what I'm cooking." And he said, "Well, I'll take you to the library and you can look at some cookbooks and figure out some more things to cook." And so, I was always challenged and definitely reinforced when I did a great job. So, it was rewarding to learn and think bigger, and the better way or the more tastier way. And then ultimately my father asked me to write a business plan for a Japanese restaurant that he actually opened in Newton Center, Massachusetts. 

[00:05:48] Sanjay Parekh: Oh, wow. In your story though, I think there's a huge miss. And maybe this is from being a kid. You had access to Julia Child. Why did you not just ask her like, "Hey, I need you to come over and help me cook Sunday dinner?" 

[00:06:03] Nadia Liu Spellman: My earliest and last memory of Julia Child was actually when I was 11 years old. It was her 80th birthday and she celebrated it at my parents’ restaurant. 

So, I was only 11 and I would look up at her and think, "Wow, she's so tall." And actually, she is six feet tall — taller than my dad. I was very little, but I knew she was a big deal. 

[00:06:36] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, I had no idea that she was that tall. You don't get that sense of size on TV when she's cooking. Okay, so let's talk about — so obviously there were entrepreneurs in the family because your parents we're entrepreneurs. They started these restaurants as well as a restaurant based on your business plan, the Japanese one. What about you? How did you start Dumpling Daughter? Where did the idea come from? Were you doing something else beforehand and launch into this? 

[00:07:09] Nadia Liu Spellman: I really wanted to make frozen dumplings accessible to the western world. About 20 years ago I was sitting with my father, and I said, "I think that people should enjoy dumplings as a meal and not just as an appetizer." The Chinese restaurants in this country introduce it as an appetizer, and it is an actual activity. It is an experience. It is a family activity. And I think that more people should have this. And my father said, "Well, it's really a work of art. The dough, the stuffing, you have to make them by hand. And the frozen kind that you would make in the factory is just not good enough. It cannot replicate the dough that you make from scratch."

And at the time it was all Japanese style gyoza wrappers, very thin, very skinny, long stuffing, not the style that my grandmother made, the original kind. And Chinese started making dumplings 4,000 years ago. So, I wanted to sell frozen dumplings, but how? And fast forward, I got married, I was living in Boston where my parents have their history and I bumped into Stacy, of Stacy's Pita Chips.

She had just sold her pita chip company for a couple hundred million dollars to Pepsi. And I told her, "How'd you do that? I really want to start selling frozen dumplings in the supermarket." And she said, "wow, that sounds really foreign. And how do you cook them?" And I said, "you boil them like pasta."

And she said, "I don't think many people know that they can boil dumplings or let alone go get them in the frozen market. They're not really popular." She said, "I think because of your story, you should open a restaurant where you serve that exact product. And create a following and a brand and make it so that people never forget the name or their experience. And start that way and see if you can get a following that then you can take that product to a distributor or a buyer and say, look, I have a restaurant. It's proven." And so I took her advice. My parents did not want me to open a restaurant. They thought that it was a tough life and never a day off. So they really told me not to and I went against them. It's the only time I've really gone against their word. 

[00:09:57] Sanjay Parekh: Well, that's fascinating because at the beginning of your story I was like, yeah how did you move into restaurants then because of that?

Because restaurants are notoriously very difficult businesses to start and launch. I don't know what the stats are, but I mean anything entrepreneurial you have tough odds against you, in terms of surviving and thriving a few years out from that. But I do want to dig into one thing. First of all, I love the name of the company, Dumpling Daughter. Where did that name come from? Why did you decide on that? 

[00:10:29] Nadia Liu Spellman: It's great to have creative friends. When I was writing the business plan, we would sit around and brainstorm as a group. And it went on for months and the business plan was unnamed and I knew I wanted to have a name that would instigate someone thinking, "Well, why? Why is it named that?"

And the reason why is because this is a continuation of what my parents did and an ode to them. And so my friend, James said, “Dumpling Daughter.” And everyone was nodding and it was clear, there was nothing better than that. 

[00:11:11] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, it's a great name and it definitely does stand out. So good pick there. So when you were launching this, then, you decided okay, so we're going to do restaurants first, and then back our way into the frozen dumplings to sell in stores and everything. Was there anything that made you nervous about trying to say, other than mom and dad saying don't do it, don't be in the restaurant business; anything else that kind of made you nervous and how did you ever overcome that? 

[00:11:46] Nadia Liu Spellman: Nervousness comes from doing something you've never done before. Not knowing if it's going to work out, the unknown. And there's a side that says, if there's an unknown, do everything you can to prevent all the unknowns from happening. You want to control your future. And so, how am I going to take this on and almost make it perfect to the point where it can't go wrong?

And that's where planning comes in place. I think that, my uncle taught me that poor planning is probably the worst thing that you can do, but there's a saying that can't come to mind right now and I should have written it down and I will think of it, but I think that planning is super important when you have a very focused vision and a goal. You see white space in the market, you see a need. And how are you going to fill that with as little error as possible? And that comes back to planning. 

[00:12:55] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. The challenge though, with planning, is the other side of it that entrepreneurs often face. So, there's that famous, I think it's Mike Tyson quote, right? "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face."

And so, how do you deal with all of that chaos and all of those things that happen as an entrepreneur? How did you, you’re embarking on something, and from your family side, you've experienced the restaurant and all of those things, but there's definitely a lot of things that you'd probably never had to deal with before. So how did you manage getting through all of those problems, especially in the early days? 

[00:13:36] Nadia Liu Spellman: A failure to plan is a plan to fail, right? 

[00:13:42] Sanjay Parekh: That's the quote. Yeah, definitely. 

[00:13:45] Nadia Liu Spellman: I would say that the hardest things that you come across while opening a business is what makes you learn and grow. And it sounds so corny. But it's corny because it's true and it's been said so many times by people that have been successful and unsuccessful. I think that if you go into the business saying, if I don't do this, I'm going to have regrets, and if I do it and if I fail, it's okay. I tried. I really do believe that it's those punches that you're referring to in the face that you're not expecting, how do you get out of it in the most graceful way? And how are you going to learn from it and prevent it from happening again? 

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[00:15:04] Sanjay Parekh: When you were contemplating this and looking to start your first location, I'm assuming when you started, it was just one location, right? You didn't try to open three, do something crazy like that, open three at the same time? So, it was one location. How did you fund it? How did you figure out where to do it? Like, how did you think through this process for yourself? 

[00:15:27] Nadia Liu Spellman: I had the freedom to be creative. My father — not my father, my husband. So, I had the freedom to be creative. My husband always told me that, “I will take care of you. You don't have to work.” And it made me want to work more, but also it was the example that my mother set as a very self-sufficient, capable woman.

And it was the lesson from my father of, a woman must be successful and self-sufficient no matter who she marries, which goes back to my husband saying, you don't have to work. So, I have a lot of good advice and a lot of supportive people behind me, and that allowed me to really have the space and freedom to create.

It took three years to write the business plan and find the first location. It was so hard to find the perfect location with the right landlord that I almost didn't try. Because, as a woman, it was really important for me to have children. And I was hitting 33 years old and I thought, I want to have children and I want to start.

And so, I was panicked. And I almost stopped so I could start a family. And I knew that if I had children before the business, I would give some of myself to the business, but all that I could to my children. So, it was very important for me to give birth to Dumpling Daughter before anything else. 

[00:17:01] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Interesting, and definitely a challenge like for any of us that are parents, fathers, mothers. It's a challenge kind of trying to balance all these things. So let's dig into that.

How do you think about — you've got three restaurants now, not just one. You've got the frozen side of it. There's a lot of stuff and you've got kids, too. So how do you balance your time and make sure that nobody's getting shortchanged in this?

[00:17:31] Nadia Liu Spellman: I'm really glad that I started my business before my children, because I dedicated 120 percent of myself, and my husband helped me a great deal when we started.

And when I had children, they had to fit into my life, right? There's no choice. There's no going back. You now have your business, and you now have your kids. And they have to fit into my life, but I also make so much room for them. When I look at my schedule, I make sure I get a certain amount of time with them every day, every week, and that's just the way it is.

So, I schedule them first and then all the other meetings and events and appearances come after. And that's what grounds me and keeps me, as a mom, as a wife, as a sister or a daughter. And as a leader for my staff, right? I have to be happy with my personal life first, which is my children, my husband, and then I can do the rest and it's easy.

But one thing that is really important is wellness, health and wellness. Being a healthy person, being a mindful person, having that practice of gym, eating well. I do a lot of meditation. These things all came about as life got busier. I did not meditate ten years ago when I started my first restaurant, but as you grow and as your life gets busier, you realize you need more things to keep you balanced. And so, I've found that in my journey. 

[00:19:18] Sanjay Parekh: So, I love that you've moved in this because I wanted to ask you about this too. So, you meditate, you work out, it sounds that's how you manage stress. Is there anything else that you do because running three restaurants, running this and then having kids, it's all stressful. How do you manage the stress for yourself beyond those things or is it, those things are enough, meditation and working out?

[00:19:46] Nadia Liu Spellman: I would preface this by the things that I'm saying right now, I did not do nine years ago. I've learned along the way because I've needed to learn, right? So many executives and business owners, from a small business owner to a major executive, suffer from burnout. And thinking that working really hard and working long hours is the key, but actually it leads to breakdown.

And I'm really lucky that I've always had a very good sense of what I'm doing in the present moment, what my schedule looks like, not overloading myself, respecting myself. Because I know that if I take good care of myself, I will be able to take care of everything else. But if you let yourself go and you let yourself get stressed out to the point of burnout, you're not going to be there for anybody.

So it was those points of stressing out that I then seeked something more. When things get really busy, you figure out what is my ultimate kind of relaxation? What do I need right now? Do I need an hour to go for a walk? Do I need five minutes to go to the back of the restaurant outside and take deep breaths for five minutes?

You need to listen to yourself and say, what do I need right now? Serve yourself, then you can serve others. And I've learned that from a little tip that my aunt gave me of breath work. The first month of opening my restaurant. Luckily, she is a very well-known spiritual Buddhist author, but I was lucky to have her come in and tell me, "Go outside and take five minutes and take deep breaths for five minutes a day. It will change everything and refresh you." And so that tip helped me through the first year. And as you get busier, you learn, what do I need to stay healthy and happy so I can be present for everything else? And now it's getting more severe, right? Meditation, yoga, working out at the gym, having a trainer that keeps me accountable, and even walking meditation, reading about the art of living. Things like this really keep you mindful and present in the moment and better in everything you do. 

[00:22:29] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. So, you've got an interesting business that, to me, it feels like a challenge, for keeping these things separate because you work in food and it's like you can't go a day without thinking about food.

Even if you're not in the business, if you're on vacation. How do you separate those things for yourself? Right? Like I could imagine being at home cooking a meal and then you start thinking like, "Oh, maybe we should make this at the restaurant or that at the restaurant." That probably happened to your parents. How do you keep those things separate? 

[00:23:04] Nadia Liu Spellman: They actually aren't separate. They're very blended for me. And I would say that the driver of the happiness and the success all comes from doing something that I'm truly passionate about to my core. I don't think that I could do much else. Truly. I knew I wasn't going to be a doctor. I knew I wasn't going to be a lawyer. I went to an undergraduate business program because I thought, I don't have to go to school for too long. I don't have to get an MBA. I'll just go to undergraduate program. I really felt like owning my own business was going to be my future, but in what?

And I was advised by my father to dig deep on your truest passion, because if you do that day in and day out, yes, it's tiring, but at the end of the day, you're so glad that you did that because you love it. You love it. And when you love something so much, it's not hard work. Sometimes I have this energy to work until one in the morning and I sleep five hours and it's fine.

And sometimes at nine o'clock, I say, I need rest and I go to bed. So, either way though, the driver is the fact that I love what I do and I love food and I could never get enough of talking about it, reading about it, eating it. I just, it's very much a part of my DNA and because it comes so naturally and it's my calling, it's easy. No matter how stressful, it's still easy. So like the key is to find balance. 

[00:24:47] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. When I am doing something, doing a startup, doing a company that I'm super into, I can tell when everything is jiving for me because it is the last thing I think about at night before I go to sleep. And the first thing I think about in the morning. Is that the same way for you?

[00:25:03] Nadia Liu Spellman: Yes, I live and breathe what I do, and obviously my kids, but I live and breathe what I do. But I set boundaries. So, when I get my kids ready in the morning, I actually don't look at my phone and it's on silent until they go to school. And I look at it and then I work out and I don't look at it during my workout. So I have about 40 minutes of no device and then the rest of the day I am hooked. I am worried. 

[00:25:35] Sanjay Parekh: So I'm assuming that's something that you realized along the way. It wasn't something maybe that you did at the beginning, right? Was this something that you learned? 

[00:25:43] Nadia Liu Spellman: Yes. I wish that somebody had given me all of this advice at the beginning. I think I would have actually grown much faster and made less mistakes if I knew about all the things that I do today, but that's the natural process. Nobody's going to give you all the answers. And everybody's answers are different, but I think there is a really nice blueprint of how to live life and have balance, most importantly.

And so, yeah, do what you love and really dive in and work hard when you feel like, I have the energy. But when you're tired, just stop, right? Give yourself a moment. 

[00:26:25] Sanjay Parekh: I think the challenge of having those answers from somebody else is that everybody always believes, well, that works for you, it doesn't work for me. and I need to do it differently. And then eventually people find their way and come around.

Okay, let's take a little bit of a retrospective. You've been doing this now for a good while. If you could go back in time and do something differently, what would that be and why? 

[00:26:51] Nadia Liu Spellman: I have had so many advisors and people along the way in my life that have helped me. Small, big, you name it.

I wish that I had taken the time to write it down. To write down the people, the date, how they helped me. Why it was important that they helped me at that moment. Almost like a journal of how this came to be. I wish that I had done that. Because now when you're raising money and you're raising money for your series B or C or you're talking to people, you're pitching new investors, you're noting who you're writing to and who to catch up with.

I wish that I had done that with actually the people that invested their time in me, down to a teacher in elementary school days. I think I could take the time to do it one day, but I wish that I had done some journal entries early on because it's really nice to have that and to look back and maybe to reach out to people and thank them. I think it's a very nice full circle of life, to go back and thank people that helped you. For me, I'm so grateful because my mom, my dad, these were my first advisors. My mom held my hand through the first opening. I could not have done it without her. But when you think back of all the people that helped, it would be really nice to just send a quick thank you or send some frozen dumplings to them. 

[00:28:47] Sanjay Parekh: “Here's what your help ended up creating many years later.” That is great advice. I've thought about the same thing too and it's hard when you're an entrepreneur and you're in the thick of it and there's just so much going on to be able to be like, wait a minute, let me write down, you know, a couple of notes about this because you're just go, go, go. And that reflection is a great kind of thought right there.

Okay last question for you, Nadia. What would you tell someone who's thinking of taking the leap and launching something like what you did? You know a side hustle or a full-time business. What advice would you give to them? 

[00:29:19] Nadia Liu Spellman: There's so much that you can do to minimize risk. I think that the first thing is, because at the end of the day, starting your own business is the number one most risky thing you can do or leaving your job. A side hustle is one thing, but leaving your job to pursue that side hustle is risky and scary. I would say before going into anything, you have to feel very confident that you are filling a need. That I would say out of 100 percent of your feelings, you should feel 80 percent confident this is going to do great.

And it truly is because I've talked to people, I've done my research, and I feel like this is going to do great. 20 percent fear. Once you're 50/50, oh gosh, maybe you should rethink it. You got to feel really, really good about it that you're going to really fill a need. And obviously it goes without saying that it has to be something that you're naturally passionate about.

Not just because, "Oh, you see a need. I don't really care for that product, but I see a need. I'm going to make it." People can see through that. And I think what sells, whether it be to the customer, to an investor, to an advisor, anyone that you're networking with, when you're authentic and you're telling a real story, and it comes from an organic place, people can tell. And that's what sells. 

[00:30:54] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Nadia, this has been fantastic. How can our listeners find and connect with you online? 

[00:31:00] Nadia Liu Spellman: They can follow us @dumplingdaughter on Instagram, on our website, which you can also buy our products and my cookbook at www.Dumplingdaughter.com and on Amazon, our book, our sauce, our plushie dumpling toys are all on Amazon. So, there's a lot of touch points. And then of course our three restaurants in the Boston area. 

[00:31:29] Sanjay Parekh: Awesome. Thanks so much for being on today. 

[00:31:32] Nadia Liu Spellman: Thank you so much for listening.

[00:31:40] Sanjay Parekh: Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the Side Hustle to Small Business podcast powered by Hiscox. To learn more about how Hiscox can help protect your small business through intelligent insurance solutions, visit Hiscox.com. And if you have a story you want to hear on this podcast, please visit Hiscox.com/shareyourstory. I'm your host, Sanjay Parekh. You can find out more about me at my website, SanjayParekh.com.