Parents’ Role in Success

You’re the son of immigrants, how have their journeys influenced the way you think about career choices? And what was their reaction, when you left a stable job in corporate life, to start Boba Guys?

Oh, wow! I mean, my mom is a true tiger mom, she’s from Taiwan. She wasn’t really having it in the beginning. I’ve explained this story a little bit before, in that both of my parents, we ran restaurants. So, I grew up in Jersey, where my parents had a place called Hunan Palace, and we ran it on Main Street in Middlesex County, in Woodbridge, New Jersey.

And I grew up in a restaurant, so I grew up folding wontons and all that. So, I knew how hard work it was, and I shouldn't even say this, because it might hurt child labor laws, but I was washing dishes in the back at like, 7 years old. I would be spraying, did the dishes and everything. And I really thought, “Okay, well, this isn't that bad.” But my parents actually had a miserable time. And so, when I started myself in the food business, the first thing my mom said, was like, she's like “you know how hard we worked so you can go to good schools? Now, you're going to go back into the food business?”

So, my mom gave me quite a bit of a lecture, but for the most part, they’re really, really happy, they’re really grateful. I will say, it wasn't until I got into the Chinese newspaper, that really, I felt validated. For the first four or five years, they're like, “Oh, that's fun for Andrew,” but I think I got into this thing called like World Journal, and that's when they were really proud, because I could just tell by their faces.