April 15, 2025 • 33 mins
Growing up in New York City's Chinatown, Cory Ng and his friends were entrepreneurial from an early age, selling items like T-shirts, ice cream, and bikes. For their next chapter, Cory’s group decided to open a restaurant called the Potluck Club. The paperwork, construction and approvals were overwhelming, even before a contractor ran off with $50,000 of Cory's money. Fortunately, his entrepreneurial drive, along with a little bit of luck, became his recipe for success.
Join Ben and Jessica Young, Head of Product for Chase Payment Solutions, as they chat with Cory about running a company with his best friends, his own legacy of family-run small businesses, and his hopes for the future of Chinatown. Jessica even has her own special connection to Chinatown. These are The Unshakeables.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Ruby.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
On this show, we talk about the trials of small
business owners, their struggles, their obstacles. But for every moment
of crisis, there's a moment of pure bliss. For Corey
Ng and his Chinatown restaurant Potluck Club, that moment came
recently on the rooftop of Radio City Music Hall in
New York City.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
We did one of the best, most awesome gigs we've
ever been called to do, was me and Chef Zahn.
We catered and cooked a dinner for the NBA. People
loved it. I'm having one of those moments where we're like, Yo,
we have been working so hard and it's really paying off.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
For a restauranteur The work never stops. After this catering event,
he hopped in a car to go back to the restaurant.
He's got his windows down wind in his hair and
he's savoring in the moment of quiet.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
I get a call from the restaurant.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Moments over, Yo, I don't know how to.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Make it stop He's just cursing his head always. I'm like, what? Man.
It was just like water gushing from the ceiling, like
full blast.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
And that water is gushing from the ceiling at Cory's
Restaurant during dinner service, when the water's unstoppable Income The Unshakeables.
Welcome to The Unshakeables from Chase for Business and Ruby
Studio for iHeart Media. I'm Ben Walter, CEO of Chase
for Business. On The Unshakeables, we're sharing the daring moments
(01:43):
of small business owners facing their crisis points and telling
the stories of how they got through it. As you
heard at the top. Today we're talking to Cory Ng
of the Potluck Club. I also have a guest joining us,
a new voice. I'm pleased to welcome to the show
for the very first time, my colleague Jessica Young, who's
head of product for our Payments team. Jessica, Welcome to
(02:03):
The Unshakeables.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Ben, It's an honor to be here. I have so
enjoyed listening to the podcast. I've religiously followed every episode
of the season, and I've been so inspired by the
stories of these brave small business owners. And I just
love the diversity of clients you've had on the show
as well, from the fashion small business owners to the
battery storage to now a restaurant.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Now. I'm lucky I live in New York City and
I've eaten at some of the best restaurants in the world.
But when it comes to how restaurants really work, the
inner workings, and what it takes to run one efficiently, well,
I knew it would be a good idea to have
Jessica join us.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
I just loved hearing Cory's story, and I can't wait
to actually dine at the Potluck Club later tonight.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
I bet the food's going to be good.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Sure, he'll be delicious.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
I'm very lucky to have Jessica on my broader team
because in Chase for Business, we try to bring the
best of what we have to small businesses, and payments
can be a big part of that. So Jessica, it's
great to have you on the show. On today's episode,
pot Luck Club from Chinatown right here in New York City.
(03:11):
Other than crises, we spend a lot of time on
this show talking about the qualities of an entrepreneur. I
think a lot of what a person needs to be
a successful business owner are inherent in someone's personality. They
just need to be cultivated over time. Corey and his
friends are proof of that. Pot Luck Club is just
the latest venture for them.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Potluck Club is a restaurant on one thirty three Christie
Street in Manhattan's Chinatown. I've started with four of my
other friends. We've been friends since we were kids, twelve
thirteen years old, all born and raised in Chinatown. This
isn't our first endeavor. I started when I was young,
fourteen fifteen, doing small things that of course didn't make money.
But you're just doing things creative and you think you're
(03:54):
going somewhere. We're just trying to hustle and do something
for ourselves. But started as we're printing T shirts. We
would sell them at school. We did that, we had
a bike shop, we had a bike company, and after
that we went into ice cream shops. We had no
idea what we're doing, but we felt great about it,
and I'm saying it was the idea of creating something
from nothing.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Cory and his friends all grew up in Chinatown, and
if you haven't been, it's culturally and energetically unique, even
for New York City. It's a neighborhood with a strong
sense of community and work ethic. As adults, Cory and
his friends wanted to stay connected to Chinatown.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
We wanted to build a space in Chinatown, in our
community that raised us, that celebrates our culture but brings
it to the future. Our parents came in the sixties
and the seventies, and we're witnessing Chinatown, especially in Manhattan,
shrink at a very rapid pace every single day. This
is Lower Manhattan. All the money is there, so gentrification,
real estate development is happening every single day.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
When starting their businesses, Cory and his friends mostly followed
their instincts and impulses, chasing the ideas that felt good
to them. In twenty seventeen, they opened up an ice
cream shop called Milk and Cream, which got them into
the food and beverage industry. After seven years, they decided
to shut it down. How did you know it was
time to move on?
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Sales started to change, It started to decline a little bit.
We started thinking about the seasonality of it more and
it wasn't the best during the winter. And then during
that downtime of that business was the initial birth and
idea of what we do now Potluck Club.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Just like all their other ventures, this friend group was
at the center of the idea.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Zahn Chen, who's the chef of both restaurants, I've known
him since thirteen, fourteen years old. During the pandemic, everyone
was stuck at home. He actually lived with our other
partner and best friend, Ricky.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
And with restaurants closed, Zahn just cooked it home. Ricky
saw the potential right away.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
We always knew he could cook because he was a chef.
He worked for other people. But that's when Ricky was like, yo,
he can really cook.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
At the same time, Cory's mom was getting ready to
retire from her business, a produce and sausage distribution company.
Cory's family owned the building she worked out of. It
was the perfect place to put a restaurant, but it
also came with a sense of history that Cory just
couldn't shake.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
That's how I grew up in that business. That was
my summer camp. I grew up in that exact space.
My friends, of course, they understand the pressure, but for me,
it was a lot.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Cory and his friends knew it would be challenging, but
they knew they.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Could do it. We are just five group of friends
that want to do things, and we just got each
other's back, and we just like every chance we get
or whatever opportunity comes along within our life. We just
kind of make the best of it, and we put
all all into it.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
And Potluck Club, the space and the concept reflect that
sense of community. It's built into the core of the
restaurant itself. Describe Potluck Club. Clearly, it was your way
of contributing to your neighborhood and to Chinatown, which means
so much to you. But the restaurant itself, what's the concept.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Oh man, it's a love letter to our community. So
we are Cantonese American kids born in the eighties and
nineties of New York. We're not from Hong Kong, we're
not from Asia. We have deep roots of it. We
watched all the Jackie Chan movies growing ups, Stephen Chow movies
grow up. That's our culture. We are Cantonese kids born
and raised in New York during the millennium. You've got
(07:21):
the Internet, you got TRL you got pop culture. So
it's a mix of both worlds, and that's what we
want it to feel like, especially if you are that person.
You are a Chinese kid born in the millennium, you
come and you go, I get this immediately. We want
to celebrate our culture, be unapologetic about it, and just
show people, hey, this is what we're about, so that's
(07:41):
what it is for us. We want to do it
in a cool, fun way and also bring Chinatown into
the future. There isn't a lot of young millennial entrepreneurs
building in Chinatown nowadays. No one expects a place like
this in Manhattan's Chinatown right now because the rest of
it is still run by the old guard and they
ran it out of necessity.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
What a great story, Jessica. I say that every time,
and it's easy to say that. But Cory is just
a bundle of energy.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Absolutely, his whole vibe. I loved everything about it. You
could just hear the passion in his voice.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Cory has an energy and an aura that he puts
off that is pretty contagious.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Now, this story it's about Potluck Club, yes, but it's
also about a group of friends. They were entrepreneurial and
had successful ventures together, but it seems like they were
mostly operating on vibes to begin with. And vibes might
be fine to start with, but then you need actual,
real information to make something happen. One of the things
that we have been focused on on Chase, but certainly
(08:42):
not just us, is helping small businesses get access to
the right kind of intelligence and data. So can you
talk to us a little bit about how small businesses
are using data to make good decisions?
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Yeah, I think data is critical for making fact based
decisions small business owners like Corey he really qualitatively understands
his target customer segment, but also quantitatively understanding your customers
is really valuable as well. So for example, understanding simple
things like what zip codes are your customers coming from,
(09:14):
are you attracting primarily repeat customers or mostly new customers
to your business, and getting a sense for the demographic
profile of your customers as well, which likely changes over time.
As Cory mentioned, Chinatown's demographics have changed over time, and
so getting some of that quantitative data around who your
customers are can help you make better decisions when it
(09:36):
comes to simple things like where to invest in your
ad budget, if you're trying to attract customers from other
geographies that you might not be attracting today. And we
and other organizations offer that ability to see not just
your data, but how others in the industry, your peers
so to speak, are performing as well. So that can
give you some interesting insights of oh this other restaurant
(10:00):
or me is really attracting this other demographic that I'm
underpenetrated in that could be an opportunity for expansion. There's
also insights around payments, so just understanding busiest time of day,
day of week, and those types of data insights can
help business owners make staffing decisions that can also help
to reduce overall operating expenses. And I know Cory talked
(10:21):
a lot about feeling like you have to put out
a different fire every day when you're running a business,
and running a restaurant in particular, And I think one
thing that's great is there's been so much innovation in
software and inventory management's a great example where it can
help you to prevent the avoidable fires.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Let's talk a little bit about that, because when you
ask people what's your favorite small business, they always answer
their favorite restaurant around the corner, or a bar or
something that they go to a lot. But we haven't
had a lot. We haven't had any restaurants on the
show yet. And the statistics around restaurants are pretty sobering.
So it's one of the most common types of businesses
that get started, but sixty percent fail within the first
year and eighty percent fail within the first five years,
(11:00):
some of the differences between the ones that succeed and
the ones that don't. I mean, obviously, if you make
good food you have better odds, but it's a lot
more than that.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
Yeah, I think to your point, good food is perhaps
the baseline ingredient to make a restaurant fun there, but
you have to build upon that. You have to ultimately
be able to run the restaurant effectively. So as a
consumer or customer myself, at a restaurant, it's not just
about the food itself, but the overall experience. And I
think the good news for restaurants is that there's been
(11:29):
a lot of verticalization of software, and in particular for
the restaurant industry, there are great point of sale offerings
out there that are specialized for some of those unique
challenges and needs that can help restaurant owners. And that
seamlessness of restaurant software can then result in an and
dining experience where you're avoiding some of those potential pitfalls.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Well, if you're going to have a dining experience, you
have to have a restaurant. And in Cory story, he's
not quite there yet. More about how that all came
together and so what did it take to get it started?
I mean you had to build a place out right. Oh, yes,
it was a sausage factory. Yes, it was actually very
very tough.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Building Potluck it was probably one of the hardest feats
we've ever had to overcome. You're building during a pandemic
where no one's moving, and already New York is tough
to do businesses. You need to have insane amount of permits.
You need to clear every single step with the DOB,
which I respect. I respect because things got to be
up to code, things got to be safe. But a
(12:33):
DLB is a system where you can submit something to
the t and they don't have to get back to you.
If you don't get an answer back, you can get
an approval. You ain't doing it. And if you do
things in between without that approval and someone catches wind
of it, they will stop work order you. So you're
losing money every step of the way. And sometimes when
they tell you something's wrong, if you submit a plan,
(12:55):
they just say it's wrong. You figure it out. I'm
just trying to open a business.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Man. Opening a business is hard enough, and Cory's right,
New York City itself presents some unique pressures on that,
but Cory also felt pressure from his community the legacy
of Chinatown that he wanted to uphold.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
I had to deliver because this is something that was
a legacy for my entire family for forty years, and
I have to be able to know that I can
come to play and come to deliver for my family
as well.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Cory had a child of his own at home and
would be raising the next generation on the same spot
his mother and grandfather had raised him, so if they
were going to open a restaurant, they had to do
this right right away. The buildout was challenging. They asked
for recommendations in their Chinatown network and found a contractor
who would convert the kitchen.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
To do all the ducting and all the exhausts for
the kitchens and stuff. We pay them a good amount of money,
and every week it just still looks like rocks and rubble,
and they're like, "oh, I got to get the duct up".
I'm like, okay, this looks like you're doing it. And
he's going, yo, I need a file the paperwork. He's like, ah,
I understand that, and paperwork takes time, and you're dealing
with the city but then there's nothing absolutely happening. So
(14:06):
by the time we caught up to be like, yo,
what the heck is going on? He was in cohoots
with the engineer who had an official engineer Stamp, who
put stuff in the dB and it was a full con.
They literally took like fifty thousand dollars of our money.
We were left in very very bad shape.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Did he just make off with the money? You never
saw him again?
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Yeah, yeah, he disappeared. And this made it even worse
because one he went off with the money, he filed
the paperwork halfway through. You don't know what he's into.
So we have to find someone who is going to
replace him, and we talked to every single person we knew.
Everyone said no immediately. They're like, you can't pay me
(14:46):
enough to come in the middle of a tornado, and
we had nothing to show for it. It was still
complete rubble and wires and nothing like, not a lick
of paint, no color. We're like, yo, this place is
not opening, and mind you, we were a couple hundred thousand.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Eventually they found a contractor willing to take the project on.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
He was at the bottom of our list, but he
was the only guy that said yes, it was a
tough job, and he explained to us how tough it was,
but he was willing to seek it through. We turned
the Titanic around. We did not hit the iceberg. We
were very very close, and it took so much time,
so much effort, so much money to turn it around.
(15:29):
It was really the coldest winter of our life, but
we all believed in it. We all feel like we
had to keep going. So the power of not giving
up is real, y'all. We never give up on each other.
We just continue going and going on with a smile
and try our hardest. And of course we've gotten older, wiser, smarter, better,
(15:49):
faster throughout the years and hopefully we can continue to
do that.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Potluck Club finally opened in June twenty twenty two. Zahn
and his younger brother were in the kitchen. The rest
of the group was running around up front.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Doing all the front of house management, learning that on
the fly we were running full skeleton crew because we
were still They're gonna kill me for saying this but
when we opened, there was probably like two to three
grand of working capital runway in the bank.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
That's not unusual for a restaurant.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Like, I'll be like, you guys are crazy, but yo, listen,
we just kept our head down, worked seven days a week, up,
down everything, did it and called the way out of it,
called out of it, crawled out of it.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Getting from idea to opening was a major hurdle, but
as any small business owner knows, the problems never really stop.
You just have to keep going.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Every day you're putting out fires. Business school can't teach
you the things that will happen to you daily. That's
why I learned the most.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
The things that happen are good and bad, and they
often go hand in hand. As you heard at the
top of the episode, Cory recently had a gig that
took it comes to the top of Radio City Music Hall.
He and Chef Zahn were catering a dinner for the NBA.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
We're like lugging all the food and I was like Yo.
This is crazy, right, So we're doing that. Did it
hit it off? People loved it. I had to go
back to the restaurant to go host someone, so I
got in a car and headed down to FDR. I'm
having one of those moments where were like, yo, we
have been working so hard and it's really paying off.
(17:28):
I know, I'm looking at the city. I'm having my
Carrie Bradshaw moment. No, I'm serious, I'm so serious. Right
five minutes into that ride, I get a call from
the restaurant.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
You know what happened next? Water gushing from the ceiling.
Imagine a waterfall pulling water into the kitchen and still
having tickets come in because it's dinner service. So to
give you a taste of it, just think about the
most stressful thing that's ever happened to you at work,
and then think about your phone and email notifications going
off every few seconds at the same time, and then
there's also a waterfall in your office and it's pooling everywhere,
(18:03):
but you're still working. I'd imagine it kind of felt
like that.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
It was out of our control, was even from us.
But it's as if the NBA thing never even happened,
Like it completely raced out of my brain. I'm going
straight back to the restaurant and I get there as
soon as I open the door, and this is happening,
and he's like, you gotta deal with it.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
How did you fix it? Did you shut off the
water to the place.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Yeah, we called the super so you finished the night. Yeah,
of course we did not close, and yeah, guests did
not know, but we knew. Internally we knew. Oh seriously,
moments like that, the man up top will always humble you.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Oh and speaking of divine retribution, the contractor who had
scammed them, he finally got caught.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
He was on the ten o'clock news mug shot. This
guy has been doing this type of stuff all over
the city. Not all contractors are bad, it was just
this guy, Jessica.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
These guys really had the perseverance gene. I mean, they
stuck through an awful lot. Unfortunately. I wish I could
tell you that that story of the pipes bursting was unusual.
But I mean we've heard from just about every business
owner on here that that happens. Between the two of us.
We have hundreds of thousands and millions of clients who
do this every day. What's the difference maker and someone
(19:19):
who gets through those things and someone who doesn't.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
I think part of it is having that personal resilience,
so the small business owner themselves also having the right
team and support system around them, the fellow business owners
and partners. I know Cory is running this business with
his close friends and then also just again back to
sort of that innovation and tools at the business owner's disposal,
(19:43):
like someone who's made that investment and has the stability
of their operations running smoothly can navigate some of those
rougher waters a bit more seamlessly. But I know you've
encountered many small business owners as well. It's sort of
your take on that.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
My take the people who get through it, Yes, clearly
they are wired in a certain way, but I think
it comes back to the passion and the why behind
the business. So for Corey and his team, failure wasn't
an option because it's their community's success or failure. I
loved the story and the passion that he has for
his immigrant family and the generations and how they've continued
(20:20):
to improve on their own well being. It's classic American
dream kind of stuff. When the why is really strong
and the reason for the business's existence is deeper than
I need to make a living, so I'm going to
run a business. You tend to grit through a little
bit better.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
Yeah, And you could really hear the emotion in his
story and that greater purpose to your point, and how
passionate he was about wanting to make his family proud
and to do the honor of this legacy that he's
been given.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Yeah, it's a really good point. I asked Cory about
legacy during our conversation and what the future holds for
Potluck Club. I know that part of why you started
it was obviously to build a business with your friends.
Part of it was community, right, tell us how you
give back to the community.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Oh yeah, So it's funny. I don't think we had
our hearts set on it in the beginning because we
had to really make it work first, Like you're trying
to build a business, businesses to make money to give
yourself honest living. But we always had the intentions of, yeah,
we want to continue celebrating community, give back to our community,
and be flag bearers for Chinatown. So yeah, now every
(21:23):
month we feed around two hundred and fifty to three
hundred seniors. We partner with our good friends more than
a meal who fight food and security in the city.
So they don't only do it in Chinatown, they do
it in all five Burrows. But every third Thursday in
the month, we open our doors to all the seniors
of our community. They get groceries, produce essentials, grocery bags,
(21:44):
stuff that we can get for the month. And then
we also open our doors for them to sit and
eat inside.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
This started during the pandemic when Chinatown was a little
bit shaky. People did not like Chinatown because you know,
they were just being ignorant. No one knew they had
to blame someone, so they literally thought we were of
the virus, so no one was coming. And then who
gets hurt the most the senior citizens because one of
the senior citizens are scared to come out into the
streets now to get sick. But on top of that,
(22:11):
there were stories, multiple stories of elderly women getting beat
into a coma because they were getting blamed for being sick.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
Strong communities look out for each other. We hear this
in all our episodes about small businesses helping each other,
but individuals rallying around their neighbors also keep communities vibrant.
During the pandemic, while Potluck Club was growing into existence,
the community was busy rallying around the senior citizens, who
really make up the people still living in the neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
They're started micro organize and help the seniors get food
where there's hot meals delivered straight to their doorstep. Or
what some people did also was they would escort the
seniors to go out and buy groceries with them, help
them hold their bags and walk them to the grocery
store and help them and bring it home. So that's
what we used to do during the dark times. Now
it's not so much that. Now it's a place of happiness.
(23:04):
It's not about scarcity anymore. We open the doors to
just be happy with the community. Seniors come in, they
love their kind of free grocery bags and stuff like that,
but they also let to come in and just have
a good time. Some of them go on dates, some
of them are just meet up with their friends and
it's just two three hours where they have a communal
space to get their hang out. And hopefully we can
continue to do that. We hope to do bigger, more
(23:26):
community work build within Chinatown. That's always going to be
a priority for us. I hope to do bigger things too,
like with the Potluck brand. Bigger collaborations, like you said,
like cool fun stuff that people don't expect.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
You've partnered with some streetwear brands, right, Oh yeah, tell
me about that.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
That's my favorite part of the job. It's never about
this one single product. It's about how do you grow
relationships to build yourself and build your brand. We're not
restaurant people. The only person that ever worked in a
restaurant is the chef Zahn, So we think differently. We
think like a most recent collaboration we worked with, which
was such an honor. We were collaborating with Billionaires Boys
Club Pharrell William's company, which was super great. We made
(24:08):
a T shirt and we tied it back into the community.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Potluck Club made a T shirt with Billionaire Boys Club
for Lunar New Year, and it sold out quickly.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
We took one hundred percent of the proceeds and we
donated it to Apex for Youth. Apex for Youth is
a nonprofit organization based out in Chinatown, but they work
in all five boroughs and they served underprivileged kids, immigrants, youth,
and low income families. So we donated a check to them.
We also shut down our restaurant recently for these families
to come and enjoy and have a good time. We
(24:38):
want to continue doing stuff like that. A lot of
people say, hey, what's next, what are you guys going
to do? You can open another restaurant. I'm not going
to open another restaurant right now.
Cory says that, but he did in fact just open another restaurant. Six months ago, he and his friends opened Phoenix Palace just three blocks away from Potluck Club.
Every other night I'm running a marathon back and forth. Phoenix Palace is just a continuation. It's a little moodier, it's a little sexier there. A little bit of a deeper dive into like Cantonese banquet food, which is how we grew up. So Chef wanted to explore that type of stuff, like stuff we used to eat at weddings and stuff like that. Chinatown is shrinking at such a rapid pace, and there's less and less people building there. Chinatown, when we grew up, it was very vibrant, a lot more businesses. And you're talking about Chinatown was built on a lot of immigrants who believed in themselves all at the same time because they had no choice. We hope to be an institution in Chinatown, something people can look forward to and also hope to inspire more of it.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
And if you thought about any sort of legacy or
succession planning, I mean you have a kid now, but
there's five of you, and yeah, you wanted to stay
in the community. I'm sure. So it's not that simple.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Oh man, Listen, we don't get ahead of ourselves too far.
We know things can change. Like I think there's overbearing goals.
We just want a long lasting business and something we
can be proud of and something our parents hopefully can
be proud of. To Asian parents are hard to impress.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
I want to end with a question that I ask
all of our guests, which is, if you just had
one piece of advice for an aspiring entrepreneurial business owner,
what would it be?
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Yo, try. Don't be too cool to try. Like seriously, this is 20 years into our entrepreneurship. The early days is a little bs, a little like you're trying to do your thing. It's never going to be as big as you want it to be in the beginning, but just try because this is 20 steps forward, but you have to start. You have to start somewhere. You have to fail fast, you have to fail forward. Everything that happens is another lesson. It's another stepping stone. So that's my biggest advice, try early, as early as possible and keep going.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Well, Cory, this was a great story. We're super proud
to serve you here at Chase for Business and I
just want to say thanks for being on the show.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
No such an honor. This is crazy. My life is
a trip right now.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
I'm really interested in legacy planning for businesses because it's
something people don't really think about until something happens, and
by then it's often a little too late. It's something
we've been working a lot on here at Chase, so
much so that we're working on a bonus segment about it.
Keep an eye out for it on this show's feed.
So Jessica I asked at the end about succession planning
(27:19):
and Corey punted a bit, which is fair enough because
the business is still very young. The average age of
a business owner in America is fifty nine. Wow, there's
a silver tsunami coming in terms of retirements. And one
of the things that we've been working hard on is
our programs to help people monetize their business and find
a way to either pass it on a generation if
it's a family business, sell it if it's saleable, wind
(27:42):
it down in a responsible, profitable way if that's what's required,
and what we find is that most entrepreneurs, in fact,
only about half have a plan, and twenty percent of
businesses successful businesses just close well right the entrepreneur retires
and the business closes. About thirty percent go to another
generation their family businesses and the kids are interested, and
(28:04):
the other have do sell in some form. But there's
a pretty wide array, and we see a dramatic difference
in the people who've been planning for the next step
versus those who haven't. So the plan can be to sell,
the plan can be to have your kids do it.
The plan can be to close it if that's what
you want to do. But the difference in success outcomes
between those who plan for it and those who don't
(28:25):
is dramatic.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
And I'm curious, do you think it's more or less
complicated to do that type of succession planning when it's
a group of friends versus more of a family business
that you're passing down to your children.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
I think the dynamics are different with friends than it
is with family in some ways, but in some ways
they are the same. So even in families, you see
like two brothers start a business, or a husband and wife,
or two siblings and eventually it's like, well, whose kids
want to stay involved and who's don't. And with family,
if you have a falling out over the business, it
carries over into your personal life. Yeah, friends are your
personal life, but friend shift family does. But I always
(29:00):
tell people that they need to be really thoughtful up
front of how they structure a business legally. But it's
really important because five friends start a business. What if
one of them gets married, the spouse gets a great
corporate job somewhere, they decide it's a great opportunity to
live somewhere else. We want to do that. Well, what happens.
Is there a way to buy them out? Do they
remain a silent partner? Does that mean they ge less
(29:21):
equity because they're not working anymore? And so having those
discussions earlier rather than later is typically a good idea.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
Yeah, and likely with an advisor who's an expert in
this space and can help navigate some of the complexities there.
Corey also talked a lot about giving back to the
community and all of the great work he does in Chinatown,
and I know that's been a common theme on the
show that many small business owners talk about giving back
to the communities in which they serve, and would love
(29:48):
to get your take on why is that important. What's
the importance of small business owners giving back to the
communities that they're in.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
So, first of all, the most important thing about small
business is and there's a range of what this means,
but small business just is fundamentally local. I get questions
all the time, how are small businesses doing across America?
And that's kind of like asking how the economy is doing,
because that has very little resonance to a local small business.
They want to know how their local community is doing.
(30:15):
So their customer base tends to be more local, their
suppliers tend to be more local, their marketing tends to
be more local. So everything about it is so local
that they cannot exist successfully without being engaged with their community,
because their community is both their customers and their employees
in a different way than for a big company like
you and I work for. I also think there's a
different mindset between someone who works for someone else and
(30:37):
someone who works for themselves. And I think there's a
natural sort of want to succeed but also want to
give back mindset that goes with it. And he seems
pretty attached to that community, which I understand you have
an attachment to that community as.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
I do, I do. I was telling Cory that my husband
is also first generation Chinese American. He was born in
Chinatown on Mulberry Street, and he moved away when he
was about five years old and his parents opened a
Chinese restaurant in Florida. I have really enjoyed getting to
know more about the Chinese culture, and food has been
(31:11):
a key channel and conduit through which to learn about
the culture. My mother in law speaks very little English
and my Cantonese is quite rusty, but she communicates love
through the dishes that she makes, so whenever I see her,
that is her love language.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
I bet your kids love eating at her house.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
Oh, they love going to Grandma and Yaya's house and
eating all of the traditional foods.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
It was interesting also what he said about the changing
fabric of the neighborhood. I remember going to Chinatown in
the nineties and feeling like Chinatown was eating Little Italy,
which it kind of did for a while, right because
the Italian wave of immigration was earlier than the Chinese
wave of immigration to New York, so they were a
generation ahead. So they were wealthier, and now it's happening
to Chinatown and there's other things moving in. You see
(31:57):
this cycle repeat.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
Yeah, and it's become such a tourist destination now and
there's the main drag in Canal Street. But I hope
that people will take time to also explore some of
the side streets and taken the food and the restaurants
and really explore a little bit more of what life.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Is like there. Yeah, Chinatown and New York, that particular,
Chinatown is a special place. I encourage everyone who comes
to New York to take some time and go there.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Jessica, it has been a pleasure having you on the show.
Thank you for coming to New York and thanks for
joining us today.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
Of course, thank you so much. Ben, it was an honor.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Unshakeables.
If you liked this episode, please rate and review it now.
I love all the episodes we do on this show,
but next week's is really special. First, there's a flood
that was so bad it even stressed out a restoration professional.
It washed all of our trailers and a couple of
pickup trucks, full sized pickup trucks.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
Every one of the brand new vans, it washed off
the creek into the creek and they were gone.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
But we also have another special guest co host joining
me and you won't want to miss it. I'm Ben
Walter and this is the Unshakeables from Chase for Business
and Ruby Studio from iHeartMedia. We'll see you back here soon.
Ruby.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
On this show, we talk about the trials of small
business owners, their struggles, their obstacles. But for every moment
of crisis, there's a moment of pure bliss. For Corey
Ng and his Chinatown restaurant Potluck Club, that moment came
recently on the rooftop of Radio City Music Hall in
New York City.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
We did one of the best, most awesome gigs we've
ever been called to do, was me and Chef Zahn.
We catered and cooked a dinner for the NBA. People
loved it. I'm having one of those moments where we're like, Yo,
we have been working so hard and it's really paying off.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
For a restauranteur The work never stops. After this catering event,
he hopped in a car to go back to the restaurant.
He's got his windows down wind in his hair and
he's savoring in the moment of quiet.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
I get a call from the restaurant.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Moments over, Yo, I don't know how to.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Make it stop He's just cursing his head always. I'm like, what? Man.
It was just like water gushing from the ceiling, like
full blast.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
And that water is gushing from the ceiling at Cory's
Restaurant during dinner service, when the water's unstoppable Income The Unshakeables.
Welcome to The Unshakeables from Chase for Business and Ruby
Studio for iHeart Media. I'm Ben Walter, CEO of Chase
for Business. On The Unshakeables, we're sharing the daring moments
(01:43):
of small business owners facing their crisis points and telling
the stories of how they got through it. As you
heard at the top. Today we're talking to Cory Ng
of the Potluck Club. I also have a guest joining us,
a new voice. I'm pleased to welcome to the show
for the very first time, my colleague Jessica Young, who's
head of product for our Payments team. Jessica, Welcome to
(02:03):
The Unshakeables.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Ben, It's an honor to be here. I have so
enjoyed listening to the podcast. I've religiously followed every episode
of the season, and I've been so inspired by the
stories of these brave small business owners. And I just
love the diversity of clients you've had on the show
as well, from the fashion small business owners to the
battery storage to now a restaurant.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Now. I'm lucky I live in New York City and
I've eaten at some of the best restaurants in the world.
But when it comes to how restaurants really work, the
inner workings, and what it takes to run one efficiently, well,
I knew it would be a good idea to have
Jessica join us.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
I just loved hearing Cory's story, and I can't wait
to actually dine at the Potluck Club later tonight.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
I bet the food's going to be good.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Sure, he'll be delicious.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
I'm very lucky to have Jessica on my broader team
because in Chase for Business, we try to bring the
best of what we have to small businesses, and payments
can be a big part of that. So Jessica, it's
great to have you on the show. On today's episode,
pot Luck Club from Chinatown right here in New York City.
(03:11):
Other than crises, we spend a lot of time on
this show talking about the qualities of an entrepreneur. I
think a lot of what a person needs to be
a successful business owner are inherent in someone's personality. They
just need to be cultivated over time. Corey and his
friends are proof of that. Pot Luck Club is just
the latest venture for them.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Potluck Club is a restaurant on one thirty three Christie
Street in Manhattan's Chinatown. I've started with four of my
other friends. We've been friends since we were kids, twelve
thirteen years old, all born and raised in Chinatown. This
isn't our first endeavor. I started when I was young,
fourteen fifteen, doing small things that of course didn't make money.
But you're just doing things creative and you think you're
(03:54):
going somewhere. We're just trying to hustle and do something
for ourselves. But started as we're printing T shirts. We
would sell them at school. We did that, we had
a bike shop, we had a bike company, and after
that we went into ice cream shops. We had no
idea what we're doing, but we felt great about it,
and I'm saying it was the idea of creating something
from nothing.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Cory and his friends all grew up in Chinatown, and
if you haven't been, it's culturally and energetically unique, even
for New York City. It's a neighborhood with a strong
sense of community and work ethic. As adults, Cory and
his friends wanted to stay connected to Chinatown.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
We wanted to build a space in Chinatown, in our
community that raised us, that celebrates our culture but brings
it to the future. Our parents came in the sixties
and the seventies, and we're witnessing Chinatown, especially in Manhattan,
shrink at a very rapid pace every single day. This
is Lower Manhattan. All the money is there, so gentrification,
real estate development is happening every single day.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
When starting their businesses, Cory and his friends mostly followed
their instincts and impulses, chasing the ideas that felt good
to them. In twenty seventeen, they opened up an ice
cream shop called Milk and Cream, which got them into
the food and beverage industry. After seven years, they decided
to shut it down. How did you know it was
time to move on?
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Sales started to change, It started to decline a little bit.
We started thinking about the seasonality of it more and
it wasn't the best during the winter. And then during
that downtime of that business was the initial birth and
idea of what we do now Potluck Club.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Just like all their other ventures, this friend group was
at the center of the idea.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Zahn Chen, who's the chef of both restaurants, I've known
him since thirteen, fourteen years old. During the pandemic, everyone
was stuck at home. He actually lived with our other
partner and best friend, Ricky.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
And with restaurants closed, Zahn just cooked it home. Ricky
saw the potential right away.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
We always knew he could cook because he was a chef.
He worked for other people. But that's when Ricky was like, yo,
he can really cook.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
At the same time, Cory's mom was getting ready to
retire from her business, a produce and sausage distribution company.
Cory's family owned the building she worked out of. It
was the perfect place to put a restaurant, but it
also came with a sense of history that Cory just
couldn't shake.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
That's how I grew up in that business. That was
my summer camp. I grew up in that exact space.
My friends, of course, they understand the pressure, but for me,
it was a lot.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Cory and his friends knew it would be challenging, but
they knew they.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Could do it. We are just five group of friends
that want to do things, and we just got each
other's back, and we just like every chance we get
or whatever opportunity comes along within our life. We just
kind of make the best of it, and we put
all all into it.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
And Potluck Club, the space and the concept reflect that
sense of community. It's built into the core of the
restaurant itself. Describe Potluck Club. Clearly, it was your way
of contributing to your neighborhood and to Chinatown, which means
so much to you. But the restaurant itself, what's the concept.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Oh man, it's a love letter to our community. So
we are Cantonese American kids born in the eighties and
nineties of New York. We're not from Hong Kong, we're
not from Asia. We have deep roots of it. We
watched all the Jackie Chan movies growing ups, Stephen Chow movies
grow up. That's our culture. We are Cantonese kids born
and raised in New York during the millennium. You've got
(07:21):
the Internet, you got TRL you got pop culture. So
it's a mix of both worlds, and that's what we
want it to feel like, especially if you are that person.
You are a Chinese kid born in the millennium, you
come and you go, I get this immediately. We want
to celebrate our culture, be unapologetic about it, and just
show people, hey, this is what we're about, so that's
(07:41):
what it is for us. We want to do it
in a cool, fun way and also bring Chinatown into
the future. There isn't a lot of young millennial entrepreneurs
building in Chinatown nowadays. No one expects a place like
this in Manhattan's Chinatown right now because the rest of
it is still run by the old guard and they
ran it out of necessity.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
What a great story, Jessica. I say that every time,
and it's easy to say that. But Cory is just
a bundle of energy.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Absolutely, his whole vibe. I loved everything about it. You
could just hear the passion in his voice.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Cory has an energy and an aura that he puts
off that is pretty contagious.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Now, this story it's about Potluck Club, yes, but it's
also about a group of friends. They were entrepreneurial and
had successful ventures together, but it seems like they were
mostly operating on vibes to begin with. And vibes might
be fine to start with, but then you need actual,
real information to make something happen. One of the things
that we have been focused on on Chase, but certainly
(08:42):
not just us, is helping small businesses get access to
the right kind of intelligence and data. So can you
talk to us a little bit about how small businesses
are using data to make good decisions?
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Yeah, I think data is critical for making fact based
decisions small business owners like Corey he really qualitatively understands
his target customer segment, but also quantitatively understanding your customers
is really valuable as well. So for example, understanding simple
things like what zip codes are your customers coming from,
(09:14):
are you attracting primarily repeat customers or mostly new customers
to your business, and getting a sense for the demographic
profile of your customers as well, which likely changes over time.
As Cory mentioned, Chinatown's demographics have changed over time, and
so getting some of that quantitative data around who your
customers are can help you make better decisions when it
(09:36):
comes to simple things like where to invest in your
ad budget, if you're trying to attract customers from other
geographies that you might not be attracting today. And we
and other organizations offer that ability to see not just
your data, but how others in the industry, your peers
so to speak, are performing as well. So that can
give you some interesting insights of oh this other restaurant
(10:00):
or me is really attracting this other demographic that I'm
underpenetrated in that could be an opportunity for expansion. There's
also insights around payments, so just understanding busiest time of day,
day of week, and those types of data insights can
help business owners make staffing decisions that can also help
to reduce overall operating expenses. And I know Cory talked
(10:21):
a lot about feeling like you have to put out
a different fire every day when you're running a business,
and running a restaurant in particular, And I think one
thing that's great is there's been so much innovation in
software and inventory management's a great example where it can
help you to prevent the avoidable fires.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Let's talk a little bit about that, because when you
ask people what's your favorite small business, they always answer
their favorite restaurant around the corner, or a bar or
something that they go to a lot. But we haven't
had a lot. We haven't had any restaurants on the
show yet. And the statistics around restaurants are pretty sobering.
So it's one of the most common types of businesses
that get started, but sixty percent fail within the first
year and eighty percent fail within the first five years,
(11:00):
some of the differences between the ones that succeed and
the ones that don't. I mean, obviously, if you make
good food you have better odds, but it's a lot
more than that.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
Yeah, I think to your point, good food is perhaps
the baseline ingredient to make a restaurant fun there, but
you have to build upon that. You have to ultimately
be able to run the restaurant effectively. So as a
consumer or customer myself, at a restaurant, it's not just
about the food itself, but the overall experience. And I
think the good news for restaurants is that there's been
(11:29):
a lot of verticalization of software, and in particular for
the restaurant industry, there are great point of sale offerings
out there that are specialized for some of those unique
challenges and needs that can help restaurant owners. And that
seamlessness of restaurant software can then result in an and
dining experience where you're avoiding some of those potential pitfalls.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Well, if you're going to have a dining experience, you
have to have a restaurant. And in Cory story, he's
not quite there yet. More about how that all came
together and so what did it take to get it started?
I mean you had to build a place out right. Oh, yes,
it was a sausage factory. Yes, it was actually very
very tough.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Building Potluck it was probably one of the hardest feats
we've ever had to overcome. You're building during a pandemic
where no one's moving, and already New York is tough
to do businesses. You need to have insane amount of permits.
You need to clear every single step with the DOB,
which I respect. I respect because things got to be
up to code, things got to be safe. But a
(12:33):
DLB is a system where you can submit something to
the t and they don't have to get back to you.
If you don't get an answer back, you can get
an approval. You ain't doing it. And if you do
things in between without that approval and someone catches wind
of it, they will stop work order you. So you're
losing money every step of the way. And sometimes when
they tell you something's wrong, if you submit a plan,
(12:55):
they just say it's wrong. You figure it out. I'm
just trying to open a business.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Man. Opening a business is hard enough, and Cory's right,
New York City itself presents some unique pressures on that,
but Cory also felt pressure from his community the legacy
of Chinatown that he wanted to uphold.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
I had to deliver because this is something that was
a legacy for my entire family for forty years, and
I have to be able to know that I can
come to play and come to deliver for my family
as well.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Cory had a child of his own at home and
would be raising the next generation on the same spot
his mother and grandfather had raised him, so if they
were going to open a restaurant, they had to do
this right right away. The buildout was challenging. They asked
for recommendations in their Chinatown network and found a contractor
who would convert the kitchen.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
To do all the ducting and all the exhausts for
the kitchens and stuff. We pay them a good amount of money,
and every week it just still looks like rocks and rubble,
and they're like, "oh, I got to get the duct up".
I'm like, okay, this looks like you're doing it. And
he's going, yo, I need a file the paperwork. He's like, ah,
I understand that, and paperwork takes time, and you're dealing
with the city but then there's nothing absolutely happening. So
(14:06):
by the time we caught up to be like, yo,
what the heck is going on? He was in cohoots
with the engineer who had an official engineer Stamp, who
put stuff in the dB and it was a full con.
They literally took like fifty thousand dollars of our money.
We were left in very very bad shape.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Did he just make off with the money? You never
saw him again?
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Yeah, yeah, he disappeared. And this made it even worse
because one he went off with the money, he filed
the paperwork halfway through. You don't know what he's into.
So we have to find someone who is going to
replace him, and we talked to every single person we knew.
Everyone said no immediately. They're like, you can't pay me
(14:46):
enough to come in the middle of a tornado, and
we had nothing to show for it. It was still
complete rubble and wires and nothing like, not a lick
of paint, no color. We're like, yo, this place is
not opening, and mind you, we were a couple hundred thousand.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Eventually they found a contractor willing to take the project on.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
He was at the bottom of our list, but he
was the only guy that said yes, it was a
tough job, and he explained to us how tough it was,
but he was willing to seek it through. We turned
the Titanic around. We did not hit the iceberg. We
were very very close, and it took so much time,
so much effort, so much money to turn it around.
(15:29):
It was really the coldest winter of our life, but
we all believed in it. We all feel like we
had to keep going. So the power of not giving
up is real, y'all. We never give up on each other.
We just continue going and going on with a smile
and try our hardest. And of course we've gotten older, wiser, smarter, better,
(15:49):
faster throughout the years and hopefully we can continue to
do that.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Potluck Club finally opened in June twenty twenty two. Zahn
and his younger brother were in the kitchen. The rest
of the group was running around up front.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Doing all the front of house management, learning that on
the fly we were running full skeleton crew because we
were still They're gonna kill me for saying this but
when we opened, there was probably like two to three
grand of working capital runway in the bank.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
That's not unusual for a restaurant.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Like, I'll be like, you guys are crazy, but yo, listen,
we just kept our head down, worked seven days a week, up,
down everything, did it and called the way out of it,
called out of it, crawled out of it.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Getting from idea to opening was a major hurdle, but
as any small business owner knows, the problems never really stop.
You just have to keep going.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Every day you're putting out fires. Business school can't teach
you the things that will happen to you daily. That's
why I learned the most.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
The things that happen are good and bad, and they
often go hand in hand. As you heard at the
top of the episode, Cory recently had a gig that
took it comes to the top of Radio City Music Hall.
He and Chef Zahn were catering a dinner for the NBA.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
We're like lugging all the food and I was like Yo.
This is crazy, right, So we're doing that. Did it
hit it off? People loved it. I had to go
back to the restaurant to go host someone, so I
got in a car and headed down to FDR. I'm
having one of those moments where were like, yo, we
have been working so hard and it's really paying off.
(17:28):
I know, I'm looking at the city. I'm having my
Carrie Bradshaw moment. No, I'm serious, I'm so serious. Right
five minutes into that ride, I get a call from
the restaurant.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
You know what happened next? Water gushing from the ceiling.
Imagine a waterfall pulling water into the kitchen and still
having tickets come in because it's dinner service. So to
give you a taste of it, just think about the
most stressful thing that's ever happened to you at work,
and then think about your phone and email notifications going
off every few seconds at the same time, and then
there's also a waterfall in your office and it's pooling everywhere,
(18:03):
but you're still working. I'd imagine it kind of felt
like that.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
It was out of our control, was even from us.
But it's as if the NBA thing never even happened,
Like it completely raced out of my brain. I'm going
straight back to the restaurant and I get there as
soon as I open the door, and this is happening,
and he's like, you gotta deal with it.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
How did you fix it? Did you shut off the
water to the place.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Yeah, we called the super so you finished the night. Yeah,
of course we did not close, and yeah, guests did
not know, but we knew. Internally we knew. Oh seriously,
moments like that, the man up top will always humble you.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Oh and speaking of divine retribution, the contractor who had
scammed them, he finally got caught.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
He was on the ten o'clock news mug shot. This
guy has been doing this type of stuff all over
the city. Not all contractors are bad, it was just
this guy, Jessica.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
These guys really had the perseverance gene. I mean, they
stuck through an awful lot. Unfortunately. I wish I could
tell you that that story of the pipes bursting was unusual.
But I mean we've heard from just about every business
owner on here that that happens. Between the two of us.
We have hundreds of thousands and millions of clients who
do this every day. What's the difference maker and someone
(19:19):
who gets through those things and someone who doesn't.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
I think part of it is having that personal resilience,
so the small business owner themselves also having the right
team and support system around them, the fellow business owners
and partners. I know Cory is running this business with
his close friends and then also just again back to
sort of that innovation and tools at the business owner's disposal,
(19:43):
like someone who's made that investment and has the stability
of their operations running smoothly can navigate some of those
rougher waters a bit more seamlessly. But I know you've
encountered many small business owners as well. It's sort of
your take on that.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
My take the people who get through it, Yes, clearly
they are wired in a certain way, but I think
it comes back to the passion and the why behind
the business. So for Corey and his team, failure wasn't
an option because it's their community's success or failure. I
loved the story and the passion that he has for
his immigrant family and the generations and how they've continued
(20:20):
to improve on their own well being. It's classic American
dream kind of stuff. When the why is really strong
and the reason for the business's existence is deeper than
I need to make a living, so I'm going to
run a business. You tend to grit through a little
bit better.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
Yeah, And you could really hear the emotion in his
story and that greater purpose to your point, and how
passionate he was about wanting to make his family proud
and to do the honor of this legacy that he's
been given.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Yeah, it's a really good point. I asked Cory about
legacy during our conversation and what the future holds for
Potluck Club. I know that part of why you started
it was obviously to build a business with your friends.
Part of it was community, right, tell us how you
give back to the community.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Oh yeah, So it's funny. I don't think we had
our hearts set on it in the beginning because we
had to really make it work first, Like you're trying
to build a business, businesses to make money to give
yourself honest living. But we always had the intentions of, yeah,
we want to continue celebrating community, give back to our community,
and be flag bearers for Chinatown. So yeah, now every
(21:23):
month we feed around two hundred and fifty to three
hundred seniors. We partner with our good friends more than
a meal who fight food and security in the city.
So they don't only do it in Chinatown, they do
it in all five Burrows. But every third Thursday in
the month, we open our doors to all the seniors
of our community. They get groceries, produce essentials, grocery bags,
(21:44):
stuff that we can get for the month. And then
we also open our doors for them to sit and
eat inside.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
This started during the pandemic when Chinatown was a little
bit shaky. People did not like Chinatown because you know,
they were just being ignorant. No one knew they had
to blame someone, so they literally thought we were of
the virus, so no one was coming. And then who
gets hurt the most the senior citizens because one of
the senior citizens are scared to come out into the
streets now to get sick. But on top of that,
(22:11):
there were stories, multiple stories of elderly women getting beat
into a coma because they were getting blamed for being sick.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
Strong communities look out for each other. We hear this
in all our episodes about small businesses helping each other,
but individuals rallying around their neighbors also keep communities vibrant.
During the pandemic, while Potluck Club was growing into existence,
the community was busy rallying around the senior citizens, who
really make up the people still living in the neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
They're started micro organize and help the seniors get food
where there's hot meals delivered straight to their doorstep. Or
what some people did also was they would escort the
seniors to go out and buy groceries with them, help
them hold their bags and walk them to the grocery
store and help them and bring it home. So that's
what we used to do during the dark times. Now
it's not so much that. Now it's a place of happiness.
(23:04):
It's not about scarcity anymore. We open the doors to
just be happy with the community. Seniors come in, they
love their kind of free grocery bags and stuff like that,
but they also let to come in and just have
a good time. Some of them go on dates, some
of them are just meet up with their friends and
it's just two three hours where they have a communal
space to get their hang out. And hopefully we can
continue to do that. We hope to do bigger, more
(23:26):
community work build within Chinatown. That's always going to be
a priority for us. I hope to do bigger things too,
like with the Potluck brand. Bigger collaborations, like you said,
like cool fun stuff that people don't expect.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
You've partnered with some streetwear brands, right, Oh yeah, tell
me about that.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
That's my favorite part of the job. It's never about
this one single product. It's about how do you grow
relationships to build yourself and build your brand. We're not
restaurant people. The only person that ever worked in a
restaurant is the chef Zahn, So we think differently. We
think like a most recent collaboration we worked with, which
was such an honor. We were collaborating with Billionaires Boys
Club Pharrell William's company, which was super great. We made
(24:08):
a T shirt and we tied it back into the community.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Potluck Club made a T shirt with Billionaire Boys Club
for Lunar New Year, and it sold out quickly.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
We took one hundred percent of the proceeds and we
donated it to Apex for Youth. Apex for Youth is
a nonprofit organization based out in Chinatown, but they work
in all five boroughs and they served underprivileged kids, immigrants, youth,
and low income families. So we donated a check to them.
We also shut down our restaurant recently for these families
to come and enjoy and have a good time. We
(24:38):
want to continue doing stuff like that. A lot of
people say, hey, what's next, what are you guys going
to do? You can open another restaurant. I'm not going
to open another restaurant right now.
Cory says that, but he did in fact just open another restaurant. Six months ago, he and his friends opened Phoenix Palace just three blocks away from Potluck Club.
Every other night I'm running a marathon back and forth. Phoenix Palace is just a continuation. It's a little moodier, it's a little sexier there. A little bit of a deeper dive into like Cantonese banquet food, which is how we grew up. So Chef wanted to explore that type of stuff, like stuff we used to eat at weddings and stuff like that. Chinatown is shrinking at such a rapid pace, and there's less and less people building there. Chinatown, when we grew up, it was very vibrant, a lot more businesses. And you're talking about Chinatown was built on a lot of immigrants who believed in themselves all at the same time because they had no choice. We hope to be an institution in Chinatown, something people can look forward to and also hope to inspire more of it.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
And if you thought about any sort of legacy or
succession planning, I mean you have a kid now, but
there's five of you, and yeah, you wanted to stay
in the community. I'm sure. So it's not that simple.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Oh man, Listen, we don't get ahead of ourselves too far.
We know things can change. Like I think there's overbearing goals.
We just want a long lasting business and something we
can be proud of and something our parents hopefully can
be proud of. To Asian parents are hard to impress.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
I want to end with a question that I ask
all of our guests, which is, if you just had
one piece of advice for an aspiring entrepreneurial business owner,
what would it be?
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Yo, try. Don't be too cool to try. Like seriously, this is 20 years into our entrepreneurship. The early days is a little bs, a little like you're trying to do your thing. It's never going to be as big as you want it to be in the beginning, but just try because this is 20 steps forward, but you have to start. You have to start somewhere. You have to fail fast, you have to fail forward. Everything that happens is another lesson. It's another stepping stone. So that's my biggest advice, try early, as early as possible and keep going.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Well, Cory, this was a great story. We're super proud
to serve you here at Chase for Business and I
just want to say thanks for being on the show.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
No such an honor. This is crazy. My life is
a trip right now.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
I'm really interested in legacy planning for businesses because it's
something people don't really think about until something happens, and
by then it's often a little too late. It's something
we've been working a lot on here at Chase, so
much so that we're working on a bonus segment about it.
Keep an eye out for it on this show's feed.
So Jessica I asked at the end about succession planning
(27:19):
and Corey punted a bit, which is fair enough because
the business is still very young. The average age of
a business owner in America is fifty nine. Wow, there's
a silver tsunami coming in terms of retirements. And one
of the things that we've been working hard on is
our programs to help people monetize their business and find
a way to either pass it on a generation if
it's a family business, sell it if it's saleable, wind
(27:42):
it down in a responsible, profitable way if that's what's required,
and what we find is that most entrepreneurs, in fact,
only about half have a plan, and twenty percent of
businesses successful businesses just close well right the entrepreneur retires
and the business closes. About thirty percent go to another
generation their family businesses and the kids are interested, and
(28:04):
the other have do sell in some form. But there's
a pretty wide array, and we see a dramatic difference
in the people who've been planning for the next step
versus those who haven't. So the plan can be to sell,
the plan can be to have your kids do it.
The plan can be to close it if that's what
you want to do. But the difference in success outcomes
between those who plan for it and those who don't
(28:25):
is dramatic.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
And I'm curious, do you think it's more or less
complicated to do that type of succession planning when it's
a group of friends versus more of a family business
that you're passing down to your children.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
I think the dynamics are different with friends than it
is with family in some ways, but in some ways
they are the same. So even in families, you see
like two brothers start a business, or a husband and wife,
or two siblings and eventually it's like, well, whose kids
want to stay involved and who's don't. And with family,
if you have a falling out over the business, it
carries over into your personal life. Yeah, friends are your
personal life, but friend shift family does. But I always
(29:00):
tell people that they need to be really thoughtful up
front of how they structure a business legally. But it's
really important because five friends start a business. What if
one of them gets married, the spouse gets a great
corporate job somewhere, they decide it's a great opportunity to
live somewhere else. We want to do that. Well, what happens.
Is there a way to buy them out? Do they
remain a silent partner? Does that mean they ge less
(29:21):
equity because they're not working anymore? And so having those
discussions earlier rather than later is typically a good idea.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
Yeah, and likely with an advisor who's an expert in
this space and can help navigate some of the complexities there.
Corey also talked a lot about giving back to the
community and all of the great work he does in Chinatown,
and I know that's been a common theme on the
show that many small business owners talk about giving back
to the communities in which they serve, and would love
(29:48):
to get your take on why is that important. What's
the importance of small business owners giving back to the
communities that they're in.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
So, first of all, the most important thing about small
business is and there's a range of what this means,
but small business just is fundamentally local. I get questions
all the time, how are small businesses doing across America?
And that's kind of like asking how the economy is doing,
because that has very little resonance to a local small business.
They want to know how their local community is doing.
(30:15):
So their customer base tends to be more local, their
suppliers tend to be more local, their marketing tends to
be more local. So everything about it is so local
that they cannot exist successfully without being engaged with their community,
because their community is both their customers and their employees
in a different way than for a big company like
you and I work for. I also think there's a
different mindset between someone who works for someone else and
(30:37):
someone who works for themselves. And I think there's a
natural sort of want to succeed but also want to
give back mindset that goes with it. And he seems
pretty attached to that community, which I understand you have
an attachment to that community as.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
I do, I do. I was telling Cory that my husband
is also first generation Chinese American. He was born in
Chinatown on Mulberry Street, and he moved away when he
was about five years old and his parents opened a
Chinese restaurant in Florida. I have really enjoyed getting to
know more about the Chinese culture, and food has been
(31:11):
a key channel and conduit through which to learn about
the culture. My mother in law speaks very little English
and my Cantonese is quite rusty, but she communicates love
through the dishes that she makes, so whenever I see her,
that is her love language.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
I bet your kids love eating at her house.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
Oh, they love going to Grandma and Yaya's house and
eating all of the traditional foods.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
It was interesting also what he said about the changing
fabric of the neighborhood. I remember going to Chinatown in
the nineties and feeling like Chinatown was eating Little Italy,
which it kind of did for a while, right because
the Italian wave of immigration was earlier than the Chinese
wave of immigration to New York, so they were a
generation ahead. So they were wealthier, and now it's happening
to Chinatown and there's other things moving in. You see
(31:57):
this cycle repeat.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
Yeah, and it's become such a tourist destination now and
there's the main drag in Canal Street. But I hope
that people will take time to also explore some of
the side streets and taken the food and the restaurants
and really explore a little bit more of what life.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Is like there. Yeah, Chinatown and New York, that particular,
Chinatown is a special place. I encourage everyone who comes
to New York to take some time and go there.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Jessica, it has been a pleasure having you on the show.
Thank you for coming to New York and thanks for
joining us today.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
Of course, thank you so much. Ben, it was an honor.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Unshakeables.
If you liked this episode, please rate and review it now.
I love all the episodes we do on this show,
but next week's is really special. First, there's a flood
that was so bad it even stressed out a restoration professional.
It washed all of our trailers and a couple of
pickup trucks, full sized pickup trucks.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
Every one of the brand new vans, it washed off
the creek into the creek and they were gone.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
But we also have another special guest co host joining
me and you won't want to miss it. I'm Ben
Walter and this is the Unshakeables from Chase for Business
and Ruby Studio from iHeartMedia. We'll see you back here soon.
Hosts And Creators
Ben Walter
Kathleen Griffith
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