Amy Lai - From Boba Beginnings to 45+ locations with TEASPOON
Anne McGinty
Today we have Amy Lai chatting with us about what it's like opening and franchising a boba shop. Amy is the co-founder and CEO of Teaspoon, a nationwide boba chain that opened its first store in Los Altos, california, in 2016 and started franchising two years later. Since then, the brand has expanded to 45 Teaspoon boba shops nationwide and growing. Her business has been featured in Style Magazine, restaurant Magazine, chef's Warehouse and more. You can find a link to Teaspoon in the episode's description. Thank you to our listeners for being with us today. Amy, thanks for coming on the show.
Amy Lai
It's a pleasure. Thank you for inviting me
Anne McGinty
To start out. How did the idea for Teaspoon even come about?
Amy Lai
Well, growing up you know, being Chinese living in San Francisco, a very diverse community, but I've always grown up with Boba, with more of the OG brands. If you remember, there's the wonderful in Irving Street, there's the Quigleys, there's a lot of older brands that I think a lot of OG Boba lovers are familiar with. But the experience growing up it was feeling like it was still a little bit more exclusive to the Asian community. So when I graduated college, I wanted to be an entrepreneur and I knew that entrepreneurship is not easy that's what everybody says. So I wanted to choose something that I personally loved connected with and I love to cook as well. So Bobo was the top of mind. So when we created the Teas teaspoon experience, I wanted it to give more than just the drink itself to the customers to enjoy, incorporating better ingredients, but in terms of like even the whole experience.
02:36
Right, we have a simpler menu so you don't get overwhelmed with a hundred choices. We have pictures on the menu as well, because that allowed us to educate the market. Like you know, eight, nine years ago Bobo was still not a mainstream beverage that everybody recognized. Right Now it's all over social media, right, but that allowed us to educate the customers by oh, you have never heard of what Taro is before. This is how it's going to look like. There's no surprise, and also here's like a sample. So we always have a sample station in front of our cashier area as well. So when a customer is curious I've never had this before we always have, like you know, two or three samples of drinks of the day for customers walking in who's curious to try. That's a great idea.
Anne McGinty
So can you take us back and tell us some stories about what it was like when you opened your first location?
Amy Lai
Yeah, I think one of the memories that was most vivid for me is growing up in a family. We're very close, right. So I'm a family of four kids and when I say, hey, I'm going to open up a boba shop, my parents were super supportive. Actually, my dad is a general contractor. He's built out the store for me and he didn't charge me any money until I made the money from the business and paid him back in payments. So that was super, super graceful and generous of him.
04:03
My siblings I kid you, not my sister both my brothers on the first couple of months all of them had to come work some shifts because we were working on hiring and training. All of them had to learn the recipes. They were super flexible, they were super supportive. That, I think, was one of the foundations of why I felt like I can't let them down. Everybody's so supportive of me, so any challenges foundations of why I felt like I can't let them down. Everybody's so supportive of me, so any challenges came by. I felt like I lived at the store for the first six months. That's amazing.
Anne McGinty
Yes.
Amy Lai
But that kind of level of support from my family really allowed me to feel like, ok, I need to do everything that I can because I have no excuse. Everybody's so supportive Customer experience was amazing as well. I remember when we were still renovating the store everybody was asking us what are you guys going to be? We're going to be a boba shop. It's a tea shop oh, so cool. And then when we opened the door for a friends and family day, we weren't even expecting welcoming customers, but people walking by just start walking in. So we're like, okay, sure, it's going to be cool, I'll just serve you. And then you know we're unfamiliar with everything. They were asking us bobas. We sampled it to them. Their face or expression.
05:14
I remember one of our customers her name was Karen. She lived in the area. The first time she had boba was because her daughter brought her in and she was like, okay, I'll try this out. She's been talking about it so much. And when she sipped, the house smelt tea it's black tea with cream and the boba on the bottom. Like you saw her face. She was so weird Like, oh, my God, what am I drinking? Right? But then you see her going back for a second sip and a third sip, and when she's leaving you still don't know, like okay, does she like it? Did she? You know, is she ever going to come back? And then next week you start seeing her come back without her daughter. Actually, she became a regular of ours. Everybody started knowing her.
Anne McGinty
That's amazing. That must have been the best feeling to just see your product and your concept taking off without you having even opened the doors officially. Yet.
Amy Lai
Yeah. So we are super lucky in that aspect, that people are curious. And because they're curious, we're like all right, what can I educate you on? Here's a sample. Like with food, I feel like the best way to share, and you know like don't ask too many questions taste it first. While you're tasting it, let me give you the education. What is boba made out of? We're flavoring ours with honey and raw sugar to give it that little bit of sweetness, and how we're cooking it we're trying to achieve the outside of the boba is nice and soft, but the middle core is still chewy, right. And where it originated, in Taiwan, they call that Q, that like bounciness.
Anne McGinty
I've been to a teaspoon and I actually have gone miles out of my way just to go to a teaspoon over a different brand because of your ingredients, thank you. But beyond that, what core values have shaped your business?
Amy Lai
Definitely one of them is care. We actually have all of our baristas that start their new training. We teach them this care, and what that incorporates is, first thing, is caring about your customer, right? If you see them walking into your store, you're going to have to address them. Hi, welcome in. You know it's okay Even if you're busy you're in the middle of making a drink but it's so important to acknowledge all of your customers coming in, right, if you see them curious about the toppings, because we have a bigger selection of toppings compared to many of the other boba tea shops around, because I feel like that's what makes it fun. You know, it's colorful To even like connecting with our franchise partners, because we really do see it as a. Your win is our win, right, we're in the same boat. You see it as a your win is our win.
Anne McGinty
Right, we're in the same boat. How long did it take before you really knew that your concept was not only going to survive in a single location, but it actually had legs to go beyond that?
Amy Lai
So when we first started, I think for the first two, three years we were only corporate owned stores and we opened about five of them before we decided, hey, we're going to start looking into franchising because we had so many customers knocking on our door and they're regular customers of Teaspoon.
08:13
They would say I love Teaspoon but I can't make that drive out an hour every single time. Can you open up in my community? Or another group would say, hey, can I actually open up Teaspoon and franchisor brand in my hometown? So that's when we started considering maybe that is a good route and personally I felt like you know, being young, opening a new store for me, a new concept from you know nothing. It was really fun, it was really challenging, but it was a lot of learning Right, and I felt really proud of the team myself to see where we can push ourselves and being able to kind of like replicate hey, somebody else wants to have the entrepreneurial dream right, they want to open up their own boba shop, teaspoon. I have this knowledge now I can actually teach others.
Anne McGinty
And once you decided to take the leap from corporate owned to franchising, how did you learn that process about how to franchise your idea? Did you have any mentors?
Amy Lai
So we didn't have any specific mentor. What we did was tap into our community. I have partners that are from the franchise Denny's system, so they're multi-unit franchisees. They've also been franchisees of many other systems in the food and beverage, so that was kind of like a resource that we had that we rely on a lot. And then we also talked to franchise specialized attorneys. We've talked to other franchisors. We also talked to CPA auditors that work with franchisors. So we were just kind of like tapping in into the different professionals and their guidance, but we didn't really have like a core mentor that would help us set up the whole structure.
Anne McGinty
How did you make the connection with the Denny's franchise owner?
Amy Lai
So that was really interesting. So their other business is real estate investment and they just bought a small commercial pad that they wanted to bring in a popular, good quality boba shop. So they kind of just reached out to us online and we started connecting and then we're like, hey, you're from the food and beverage, you're franchisees from many different brands. Have you ever thought about being a franchisor? Because that's kind of like when we first started out and it just clicked.
Anne McGinty
Wow, and so you created a board.
Amy Lai
Yes, so they're part of our board Warrior advisors Incredible. So their names is Jack and David. They're actually twin brothers as well, so it's really fun when you talk to them, they finish each other's sentences. They're really fun to work with.
Anne McGinty
What are some challenges that you have faced in expanding your business?
Amy Lai
Even though we've opened up 40 plus locations. Every time you open up in a new community, you have to be open-minded, right? There's new challenges that come up. For example, we opened up a store in Reno and when we were installing the espresso machine, it wasn't working. The water just was not boiling and we had to call the manufacturer. We made connections and we finally talked about like, oh, what's the temperature in Reno right now? It's snowing. And they're like oh well, the altitude is too high. You have to adjust a certain meter so that the pressure will allow the machine to actually boil the water. So we're like okay, that makes sense. So making that connection is like oh yeah, we learned something new.
11:30
So, no matter how many locations we open up or new communities, you kind of have to like tweak your approach a little bit, because one location may be near a community of more college. Some communities would be more into like the residentials. Some communities are more businesses, tech businesses. They're looking for different things, right. So you kind of have to tweak and understand who is your clientele in your community.
Anne McGinty
Wow, that's so interesting.
Amy Lai
Yeah, and even the menus, when we're analyzing, like, the different sales trends of the drinks, different communities, like some drinks will be higher sales than others.
Anne McGinty
In general, with your whole brand, what strategies have you used to grow the brand and get it in front of more people? I mean, aside from franchisees opening up.
Amy Lai
So definitely, the grand opening events are not just a one day event. It's more of like how do you get the whole community to know that you are open now and you're here to support and connect and serve the community? The other ways we go to trade shows to meet with other franchisees that are actively looking at a opportunity. We are also, of course, posting right on the different resources that people are looking to oh, what kind of franchise businesses are out there, what kind of opportunities brands are out there. So we do a lot of those as well.
Anne McGinty
How do you assist franchisees in giving them the best shot at success?
Amy Lai
So we do have franchise success directors meeting with our franchise partners once a month and it's called the Business Review Connect, where they're looking at the financials. They're talking about a quarterly plan of a business plan. What's your approach, what's your focus for this quarter? Right, and every single month they will review with them the financial metrics, which is sales talking about their costs, talking about their labor, the average ticket you know the customer count, stuff like that and then talking about their local community outreach. Right, how do you plan to make that connection this quarter? Is it schools you want to focus on this quarter? Is it maybe like hospitals? Right, because we do find that there's a lot of nurse groups. So, like doctor groups, they do like a lunch run or they do like an afternoon snack run and they send one person on the team to go grab it for like the whole department. So that's been really cool. So it really depends on first looking at what is your approach and focus for this quarter, because you can't do everything at once, right? So you want to kind of like dial focus one goal before you move to another, and then every month we're kind of keeping track of okay, what's the progress?
14:03
We have marketing toolboxes. We have marketing office hours where you can meet with our marketing director and the marketing team to provide any assets or support. We also have through our loyalty program and through our customer platform. We can target, for example, by location. Who are your customers coming in? How often are they coming in? What are their palates right, say, you want to run a promotion on a specific drink like caramel cream, and it's more creamy, it's got a little bit more of a sweetness to it. We can target those palates more. So it really depends on what you want to do and what kind of resources we can provide to guide them to be more successful.
Anne McGinty
And then how do you ensure, when a customer walks into a teaspoon that is in Los Altos, or say one that's in Santa Rosa, and they order a drink, that the quality and the presentation is going to be the same?
Amy Lai
So one. We do have a training program. We kind of call it our digital university for teaspoon, right. All of our recipes on there. So when they start training a new team member, they would go through all the different recipes, they would go through the customer service training and then there's a certification test that they take after they're done training and then afterwards, once a quarter again, our franchise success director will go into the store.
15:23
They do have a very in-depth store audit. Right, we call it the audit, but really it's for us to look for opportunities to be more successful. That's the purpose, because we want them to be successful. We want them to look for opportunities to improve, because sometimes when you walk in, for example, like if your ice machine is dirty, right, we want to be there and kind of call it out and work with you. Hey, this is how you clean it, right, this is how often you should be cleaning it. It's better than waiting for maybe a health department inspector coming in and saying, hey, why is your ice machine dirty? And they mark you off and that's posted publicly. That hurts your image.
Anne McGinty
Your brand. So how much should a franchisee expect to invest in order to open a teaspoon?
Amy Lai
It could be anywhere around like the $350,000 to the $500,000. It really depends on the location that you find, because there are second generation locations where, if it was a Starbucks before, or a Jamba Juice, a Saipo, you are doing less construction or scope of the project is smaller, so you're able to save on some construction. For instance, if you find a vanilla shell location where you have to build it out completely, so it'll cost more on the construction part, but the franchise fee is $45,000. And the rest are construction costs. That's the biggest one and there's another $10,000 that we reserve for the marketing, for the grand opening and the first 90 days of how you're going to market your business to the community.
Anne McGinty
As far as ongoing fees go, what should a franchisee expect to set aside for the franchise?
Amy Lai
We do collect a royalty, and that's 5%, and then we also charge a 2% of the marketing that goes to marketing the national brand.
Anne McGinty
That seems pretty reasonable. And what would you say makes Teaspoon different to other Boba?
Amy Lai
brands as more of the homegrown boba brand, right. So there's franchisees who are a brand that's from Asia, from Taiwan, right, and they're marketing their customer palette. It's targeted more for that Asian palette, totally Right. But for Teaspoon, because we're a homegrown brand, we are still a boba shop, but then we try to infuse it with more of like American palate, american trends as well. When we opened up, we wanted to have a more open kitchen concept as well, so that customers walking in see how our baristas craft the drinks behind the counters.
Anne McGinty
Are you constantly just developing new recipes and how do you get those recipes out to your franchisees? Get those recipes out to your franchisees?
Amy Lai
Yeah, so we do seasonal launches three times a year, and the seasonal menu is where it allows us to be a little bit more creative. It allows us to try something sometimes that maybe not as on brand. That's a little bit more fun. For example, last winter we launched a drink it's like a banana milk drink with doggone candy and it was inspired actually by the netflix series squid games and there was an episode where the heroine was licking that candy and I was like what is that? So I, you know, kind of searched it up and it was tied to the candy. It's like caramelized candy with just sugar and water and you cook it to a certain degree and you add baking soda and it, you know, kind of like pops up. It becomes like a honeycomb kind of texture, so it's very airy and crunchy when you bite into it.
18:47
And then I was doing a little bit more research. I was like, oh, they use this candy into coffee lattes as well. That sounds so fun, but I didn't want to just do another coffee latte. So, doing more research, I was like what would pair with this? Well, and since it was kind of like a Korean trend, we're thinking how can we make it more fun. So we looked at the banana milk. So we kind of married two really popular Korean trends together, because the banana milk is a lot of people's childhood memory. And then the dalgona is more of like a fun candy adds a lot of texture and caramelization. So we have our banana milk on the bottom and then we also put our dalgona candy on top, so when you're drinking it you also get that crunch. And then for some people who want their coffee, they could actually add a shot of coffee in there too. So it'd be like a three-layer drink. You have your espresso on the bottom and you have your banana milk and then the dalgona candy on top.
Anne McGinty
That's so fun. Who is developing?
Amy Lai
these recipes. So I'm heading the R&D department but I do have help. My husband's actually creative with R&D drinks as well and he definitely contributes a lot. And then the team as well Actually my team. All of them are like my guinea pigs. They're my first round of like. You know, hey, try this, try that. I got new samples. It's a new idea. I'm always bringing back drinks for them to try.
Anne McGinty
How do you go about building this corporate structure for your franchise while also remaining franchisee focused?
Amy Lai
Yeah, so we have our corporate office in San Jose where everybody there is focused on the franchise support side. We have a business development team. We have our project manager, we have our trainer that travels to wherever you open all the way to Florida, Georgia, Alabama. Wherever you open, our trainer will go to you to train you. We have our construction manager, who will work with you closely to support you and your architects and your contractors if they have questions. And then we also have, after you open your business, our franchise success directors, who will continue to be that person that you call and talk to them about any challenges you're having. Oh, I don't know how to manage this one team member who's always late. How do I talk to them? How do I approach that conversation to be effective? And then we have another team that's focused on just the corporate stores and their jobs are really to focus a little bit more on, like the experience inside our corporate stores.
Anne McGinty
How did you learn how to do this? So how did you learn how to grow your corporate structure?
Amy Lai
A lot of trial and error. You know, like when you first start, you're kind of forced to be as an owner, wearing multiple hats right, You're accounting, you're HR, you're the support person who everybody calls when they have a problem. But by doing that, it allowed me to have a really in-depth understanding of all the different needs and services that we need to provide to our franchisees as well for support. And as we grew, we started hiring more talent and they specialize in their own department better than me, right? Our marketing director, Brandy, is definitely more experienced in marketing than I am right? So as we're growing, everybody's wearing a couple hats. We started defining okay, one person is going to be champion of maybe two services and that's it, so we don't overwhelm everybody anymore.
Anne McGinty
Let's say that an aspiring entrepreneur came to you. Whether it is somebody that wants to be a franchisee or they just want to be an entrepreneur, what advice would you give them?
Amy Lai
Definitely understand what really excites you, right. What actually are you passionate about? Because you could make money in many different businesses, right? But on the days that it gets really hard. If you're not passionate about that business, it's a lot easier to be demotivated. But if you are passionate about the business that you are in, you really believe what you're doing and you find joy in it. You know the next day you're going to climb out of bed when your alarm clock rings, right? So definitely find what drives you and motivates you and brings you joy.
22:49
And the second is like it's okay to make mistakes. Honestly, I made a lot of mistakes. I started my business at the age of 23. I had no idea what I was really doing. To be honest with you, you were so young. But that trial and error, like you know. Give yourself a little bit of ease and a break. It's okay to make mistakes, but what's most important is like how do you deal with it when that situation happens? Right? How are you going to learn from it? How are you going to prevent this from happening again? How are you going to put in procedures to make sure there's a check and balance and give yourself a break. Don't knock yourself down if you made one mistake?
Anne McGinty
Yeah we're human, exactly, everybody makes mistakes. Yeah, exactly. And then narrowing down even more what advice would you give to entrepreneurs who have businesses that they could franchise and who are interested in?
Amy Lai
the franchising model that they could franchise and who are interested in the franchising model. Looking back, my advice would be talk to other franchise brands first. Understand what franchisees actually want as an expectation. Right, because sometimes as a franchisor, you think you're giving them what they want, but actually the franchisee may want something else, right? Do they value operational support the most or do they value the marketing the most? Right now, we just implemented a whole new project management program that would allow them to see, from the day that you sign up the franchise license all the way to grant opening, there's 380 steps that you have to do. So from day one, you would have the whole project lined up in front of you. Wow, so that it won't be a you finish one stage, I don't know what's coming next. I don't know what's coming next. And that's been a big development compared to when we first opened up our franchise system, like six, seven years ago.
Anne McGinty
So if somebody approached you and they were interested in opening one, what type of experience would they need to have?
Amy Lai
You don't necessarily need to have a lot of business experience or cooking chef experience, but what we're looking for is actually somebody who is dedicated right With running a business small business, large business. What you put in is probably you know potentially what you're going to get out right With running a business small business, large business. What you put in is probably you know potentially what you're going to get out right. We're looking for a franchise partner who's going to be hands-on, they're going to be involved with their business and it's not going to be absentee business. We always say this in all of our discovery days If you're looking for a absentee business, this is not for you.
25:24
Even in our franchise agreements we put down the expectation for you when you first open your store. You have to put in 40 hours a week and eventually, if you want to hire somebody to take over that role of the day-to-day managing the business within the four walls the customer service, the scheduling, the inventory you can hire someone to do that. That's definitely fine. But there needs to be someone who is there, leading the team right, setting the right example, because in the end of the day it's yes, you want to make the sales.
25:53
You got to make sure all your customers coming in they're happy leaving, product quality is consistent, but at the same time, you want somebody who's closely watching and looking at the financials as well, because you could be making $100,000 a month but if you're not looking at, oh, how am I spending my money? I'm overordering and I just threw away a couple of cases of organic dairy. That's all cost as well. Right, who is dedicated, who is willing to learn and communicate. Right, because when you have a challenge, communicate with us. We'll share with you our resources.
Anne McGinty
But to be receptive, and do you help franchisees with identifying locations or do you leave that up to them?
Amy Lai
No, so it's kind of like half and half right. We partner them up with a master broker and they're very well connected. They have local brokers and all the different communities. So we'll pair them up with a local broker from there and they'll give you a whole list of what are the available locations that match the Teaspoon profile. Right, because we've already given all this information the demographics, population, stuff like that to the real estate broker group and they use those guys to come up with a list that's available spaces.
27:08
And then the franchisees themselves are definitely doing the homework as well, right, they're going to visit the different locations. We give them advice to not only look at data that you could pull online, right, but also go there during the daytime, go there during the evening and the afternoons, talk to the different businesses in that area, right In that same plaza. Hey, you know I'm thinking about opening up business here. I see an open location How's the traffic here? What kind of clientele do you have? And you talk to more than just one person in that plaza. Collect information from somebody who already has a business there.
Anne McGinty
And find out what the foot traffic is like.
Amy Lai
Exactly Foot traffic clientele, and how does the landlord support their tenants right? So those are some of the questions that we advise them to ask and then later on they come back with us to advise hey, out of this list, we want to put an LOI into maybe one or two of these locations, and then the brokers will help them with the negotiation with the landlords too.
Anne McGinty
That makes a lot of sense. That's such great advice. I've definitely seen other businesses and you do kind of wonder, like why'd they pick that location? So what would you say is the hardest part of running this business?
Amy Lai
I think the hardest part of running a franchise system honestly is trying to do what's right for the brand, for the growth, but also, at the same time, balancing the franchisees goals as well. Right, Because when I say franchisees is because we have, right now, 45 locations open. That means we have 45 different owners and that means 45 different opinions.
Anne McGinty
Right, a lot of management, oh my gosh.
Amy Lai
Yes, so our job is. For example, last year we did a whole digital storefront transformation and what that meant is we changed and upgraded our technology that helps us run our business, from our point of sale system to how we receive our online orders, our rewards program, our third-party integration software so we don't have to look at five different tablets and we're able to consolidate all our revenue into one dashboard and integrating a scheduling payroll system that will allow you to track what is your hourly wage, daily wage. You're able to then make better business decisions on how to make your schedules and understand your business needs, because sometimes we talk to a partner like do you know what's your busiest day or your busiest hour? They would say one thing and then, when we pull up their actual dashboard that shows the analytics, they're like actually, monday is not the slowest day for you, tuesday is. And they're like what? Really? Yeah, this is based on your sales history for the last like 30 days. So your perception versus data allows you to adjust your approach, and nobody likes changes.
When we did this digital change for upgrading our technology, it was not a smooth ride because it's a lot of learning, right Even for us as a franchising company. We chose the best vendor that we can find, with the best pricing, the best service. But when you're implementing it you're going to find each partner finding a different challenge and then you have to go figure out okay, how can I resolve that? We even work with outside technology consultants to help us with this. But it's better because you need to know what's happening in your business. Half of our franchises they are semi-absentee and they hire general managers, but you're only basing your business needs from a person versus validating the information, because sometimes the general manager truly believes Monday is my slowest day, but actually Tuesday is. It's just validating and sometimes with seasonality, right school's out, it doesn't follow the same trend anymore. You kind of need to know.
Anne McGinty
If you were to just analyze the success of one store over another and let's say one store is doing twice as much as another one is what would you attribute that success to?
Amy Lai
So definitely. There's three things that we believe will make the success of the business or not. Number one location right. Number two, the management and leadership. And number three, the concept.
Anne McGinty
Yeah.
Amy Lai
I mean, it's the same concept across all 45 locations. Definitely your location, right. If it's in a very high foot traffic, a plus location. It just makes organic foot traffic that much easier. Right, it's less marketing efforts.
But it still depends on the management to make sure that, even if you're making those sales, that you're managing your finances and your expenses correctly. How much am I ordering? How much waste is there? Am I training effectively? Is there a good customer service? Right? So management is a big part of it.
And then there's the locations that maybe, hey, it's not a location, it's a B location, right. But I have a operator who is very outgoing, besides managing the four walls, customer service and like the expenses, they're out there constantly talking to different businesses, schools. Hey, you know, teaspoon is here. I'm located at the corner down. You need catering. You know, hit us up. Talking to even the customers, right, because your customer base that walks in the store actually becomes like your catering opportunities. Because if they have a connection with you, right, oh, I love getting Teaspoon every single week and their kids go there and they have a birthday party. They're going to think of Teaspoon first, an admin of a company that comes in and they're doing a company party, they're going to recommend Teaspoon when you want to do a Boba round, right?
So it's starting within the four walls of making those connections with your customers and then actively talking to those customers about hey, if you ever need catering, you know, hit me up. This is my business phone number. That's how it starts. It's like a snowball effect and, for example, when you're going out to maybe even someone's wedding to cater for them, you bring small little flyers on the edge of the table, small business cards. If somebody else is like, oh, I love what this person is doing for the catering for the wedding, they're going to start thinking about potential brides for next year. I want that. How do I get that? Oh, here's the business card Call me. If you call me, I'll give you a 10, 15% off or 20% off. You just constantly think about how can I grow my business and make those connections and serve my community.
Anne McGinty
You're a hustler, yeah, so it's more than just a retail location.
Amy Lai
Absolutely. We did the Stanford Games. We did a whole two years for that. Those are really fun. Also, when Uber IPO, we went to their corporate office in San Francisco and brought like three or four of our teaspoon cars and, like you know, just loaded a lot of milk, tea and boba upstairs. It's really fun.
Anne McGinty
That's so fun. So for a closing question here what traits do you think that you have that have resulted in your success?
Amy Lai
I think one of them and I hear this feedback from others as well is that I am willing to listen right, I'm willing to take feedback right for different approaches and I'm open-minded to try it out. If it's not working, it's okay. We could think about how to improve or improvise, adjust, pivot and also not giving up. We're always looking at ways to improve our current processes, improve our current technology, improve the resources that we're offering to our franchise partners. So we're always looking for opportunities to improve.
Anne McGinty
I'm so impressed with you and you're 32 and you're awesome.
Amy Lai
Thank you. It's not just me, though I can't take all the credit, honestly I have a very, very amazing support system. My family, my team, my partners everybody has been supportive in many different ways, for example, like my partners, the twins I've mentioned, and also a friend who's actually working with me. His name is Kareem. We were friends first and now he's helping me grow my business.
When we make a mistake and it doesn't matter who is the cause of the mistake when a mistake happens, we're dealing with it as a team. We're thinking about solutions and how to overcome it as a team, because everybody is going to make a mistake along their job sometime somewhere. And it doesn't help when you just keep pointing oh, why didn't you do this, why didn't you do that? It doesn't help. Well, it's irrelevant, exactly. So, again, the credit doesn't all go to me. I've made my plenty share of mistakes, but it's that feeling of, hey, if I make that mistake, I know my team has my back, I know we're going to overcome this together. So then, that way, you know, when we're in the frontline, we're trying to grow the business, we're trying to try different methods. We're not always going to feel like, oh no, I'm going to have a bullet to my head if I make a small mistake. Who wants to go out there and try?
Anne McGinty
It all starts from the top. So you're setting that culture. You're setting that mistakes are okay.
Amy Lai
That's how companies grow.
Anne McGinty
Thank you so much for coming on and sharing all of your experience and knowledge with all of us. Thank you so much for having on and sharing all of your experience and knowledge with all of us.
Amy Lai
Thank you so much for having me. This was fun.
Anne McGinty
Today's key takeaways
If you don't have a family to lean on for support, round up your friends and ask if they have the ability to support you by helping out while you get your operations in place.
You can look for an already popular product and find a unique spin on it. Boba was growing in popularity but Amy realized there wasn't really any established Boba brand that was bridging the Asian concept across to the American taste palette and expectation.
Care about your customers and acknowledge them when they enter your establishment.
Introduce customers to a new food or drink concept by offering samples near the register.
Understand what excites you. What are you passionate about? You can make money in so many different businesses. Find what drives you and motivates you and brings you joy in what you are doing.
Break up your end goal into small steps. It takes 380 steps to open a Teaspoon, but by laying it out step by step. Franchisees are able to focus on one thing at a time.
When you're considering a brick and mortar location, don't just look at the data or what a broker has to say, but go there during the daytime, the evening and the afternoon and verify the data and ask about the support from the landlord by talking with other businesses.
If you are a food or drink business, actively talk with your existing customer base to let them know that you are available for catering. This is a great way to get additional orders.
Be open to listening, improving, improvising, adjusting and pivoting, on a personal level or on an entrepreneurial level.
Always look for opportunities to improve.
Don't get too hung up on mistakes and pointing fingers. Instead, get to work as a team to come up with a solution. Give yourself a bit of a break. It's okay to make mistakes. Work as a team to come up with a solution. Give yourself a bit of a break. It's okay to make mistakes. What matters is how you deal with the mistakes when they happen. How are you going to learn from your mistake and prevent it from happening again?
And, lastly, be receptive to feedback and constructive criticism.
