From hostess to CEO, how Norma Chu is making an Asian food empire

This is part of a series at Food Dive of Q&A’s with iconoclasts in the industry doing interesting things and challenging the status quo in the food industry. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Name: Norma Chu

Where do you live: Between Shanghai and New York City

Occupation: Founder, CEO, DayDayCook

When DayDayCook was listed on the NYSE in 2023, it was the culmination of founder and CEO Norma Chu’s two great loves — Asian food and finance. Chu, who started her career in banking, launched DayDayCook in 2012 first as a platform for home cooks wanting to expand their recipe repertoire. Now, the company offers easy, convenient ready-to-heat, ready-to-cook, and ready-to-eat products. The company focuses on innovative and healthy meal solutions and describes itself as a “leading content-driven consumer brand.”

The Hong Kong-born entrepreneur moved to the U.S. with her parents when she was 11 years old. Learning a new language and being immersed in an entirely foreign culture was daunting, but cooking traditional foods and sharing meals was one way to make any place feel like home.

DDC is expanding at a rapid pace — both in the US and China. This summer, DayDayCook acquired Nona Lim, the San Francisco-based producer of fresh, better-for-you noodles, broths and stir-fry kits. Both women-led companies share a focus on delivering convenient, nourishing, and authentic Asian fare. Nona Lim was the first to make fresh ramen available in mainstream retail groceries for home cooking and is now available across the United States. Other brands under the DDC portfolio include Yai’s Thai,

FOOD DIVE: What was your first job?

NORMA CHU: My first job was as a hostess at a local Mexican restaurant. We moved to Seattle when I was in eighth grade and Beatrice, one of my best friends in middle school, was Mexican, and her dad owned the restaurant.

I was new to the US and I realized all my friends had part-time jobs, so I told my mom that I didn’t need any more pocket money— I was going to get my own part-time job and make my own money. I started working at Beatrice’s dad’s restaurant. It’s called Tapatio Mexican Grill, and it’s in Newcastle, Washington. It was kind of funny that you walk into a Mexican restaurant and there’s a Chinese girl at the door, but my friend’s dad, my first boss, was the nicest man ever.

FOOD DIVE: What inspired you to focus on your current work?

CHU: It started when I moved back to Hong Kong. Cooking was one of my passions — cooking and the stock market. I realized that a lot of my friends, didn’t cook; they thought cooking was really difficult, or it wasn’t cool. So I wanted to change that perception.

So that inspired me to start creating content and encouraging the younger generation to enjoy cooking. That started it and everything we have done since comes back to that original mission, which is to promote cooking culture — in particular, Asian cooking culture. By starting with content, and through the products that we create, we’re really thinking about how do we make cooking easier and more accessible and more fun.

You can replicate our recipes within 10 or 15 minutes using our very simple instructions — then you can DIY your own ingredients and that’s the whole concept: to make something that seems complicated a lot easier and encourage people to try more Asian cooking at home.

FOOD DIVE: What is the biggest change you have seen in the industry?

CHU: The demand for convenience is more apparent now than ever before. Back when we started creating recipe content I knew short-form content was on the rise. But today, about ten years later, people’s attention spans are even shorter.

Back then I would make videos that were around three to five minutes, and then you would cut the highlights into one minute. But now it’s like five-second or 30-second videos. And I think it’s the same in terms of how much time people want to spend in the kitchen.

And the second trend is the demand for a bigger variety of recipe options at home—and what we call the discovery journey. I think it’s a new trend that we see where maybe pre-pandemic, people were more used to cooking from this fixed recipe library that they were very comfortable with. It’s always a combination of eight to ten dishes. But then now, more people are willing to try new things in their home kitchen, which drives a lot more room for innovation and room for products like ours to go mainstream. I think these two trends are more apparent and they’re global.

People also want food that tastes good and is good for you. Convenient meals and prepackaged meals have been around for a very long time — that it is not new. But I think the supply chain and the ability to create these convenient meals has really leveled up in the past decade or so. Today, what consumer wants, they can actually get — which is premade meals that both taste good and are actually good for you.

FOOD DIVE: What was harder than you thought it would be? What was easier?

CHU: I’m very fortunate in that I’ve always had advisors and investors who have become really great mentors along the way. One of my early investors told me, very early on, in 2016, the year I met him. Being a founder and creating a company, you’re building a world. You’re setting the rules and inviting people to join this ecosystem—customers, your team, your partners. He put my mindset into the right perspective: the most difficult thing to do and the most rewarding, is figuring out who you are. This was back in 2016—four years into the whole journey.

I thought that was really zen, but now 10-12 years into the journey, I realize that it’s really true — the whole process right from day one to now, including the IPO, including the listing. It’s all about understanding who you are yourself and how you face obstacles and challenges and how you see opportunities. Because that, fundamentally, is what the journey is all about, it covers both what I think is harder and easier for me.

Having self-awareness of your strengths and weaknesses makes everything a lot easier, because when I discovered those, it made it easier to know what kind of team members I need to hire to make up for my weaknesses.

FOOD DIVE: What is a misconception that people have about you when they first meet you?

CHU: There are two that come to mind. First – that I have always been in the food industry given my passion for it. However, after graduating from college, I started out in finance, which is my other passion. Eventually, I was drawn back to cooking and launched DayDayCook. My financial background has been a great asset in helping me to manage my company and also take it public.

Second – people sometimes think that I do not have time to cook in my personal life given that I run a company in the food industry and how busy I am. But I make time to cook because I truly believe in the joy of cooking.

FOOD DIVE: What do you think will be the biggest change in the industry in 10 years?

CHU: One of the trends I see is, right now global flavors or international flavors is still a category — and it’s a growing category in a lot of grocery stores. Because of the changing demographics and rising demand for global flavors in general, I wouldn’t be surprised if in 10 years, global flavors will not be a category anymore. It’ll just be merged with all the other categories. You won’t see “Thai” barbecue or “Japanese” barbecue sauce just being stuck in the global flavor aisles — you’ll just see them mixed in with all the other barbecue sauces. So I think that will be a big change in our space over the next 10 years.

FOOD DIVE: What do you wish someone would have told you about your current role or position when you started?

CHU: Today, when I mentor other entrepreneurs I ask the same questions I was asked: Are you committed to do this for the next 10 years? Because the next 10 years are just a starting point. And do you have the mental toughness to commit to your mission, through whatever up-and-down cycles, within or outside of your control?

Because if you want to build a company that lasts for decades, if not over 100 years, you definitely want to build this company right the first time. Sometimes when we, as entrepreneurs, start out we don’t necessarily think about that commitment.

You always start off really passionate about it, but I don’t think that 12 years ago, I was thinking about it lasting for 100 years just yet. But once you get into it and start building out this ecosystem, then you realize, yeah, the first 10 years is just the first baby steps. And I think it’s really important to get into that mindset early.

FOOD DIVE: What would be the foods of your last meal?

CHU: My last meal would be some of the dishes that I have with my family a lot. That includes a pork belly stew for sure — like my mom makes. My dad makes so many really good dishes, but one of them was actually a very simple egg and tomato stir-fry. And one of my favorites to make is mapo tofu — a spicy tofu dish. Just three very simple dishes that my family makes. One-hundred percent comfort food.

Source: fooddive.com