This segment is brought to you by JP Morgan Chase
, celebrating cultural diversity through Asian American and Pacific Islander
Heritage Month. Let's be honest, who doesn't love
a good bowl of noodles? I certainly do.
Founder and CEO of ASHA Noodles. Young chang joins
me now young. Thank you. Hey, nice
to meet you. Nice to meet you as well
. What inspired you to create this company? Um
I think we had a very simple goal starting out
. Um Basically, I think everyone really likes Ramen
noodles. Uh Most of us grew up eating them
. We have a of any kind of story related
to Ramen noodles. So, you know, as
you get older, you start to learn more about
products and you start to care a little bit more
about health and things like that. So our whole
objective was to keep that nostalgic comfort, feeling of
the ramen noodle, but bring it in a better
for you method so that, you know, you
could feel a little bit less guilty about eating it
. Yeah. Well, I know you've done some
pretty high profile collaborations including Hello, Kitty. Why
are these collabs important to you and your business?
Um I think for us, I mean, given
that it's api month is perfect timing. I mean
, our company really is sort of the the immigrant
story, um a very traditional Taiwanese brand coming over
to the United States. So for us to come
over um and kind of assimilate into the culture,
assimilate into the marketplace. Um a very crowded marketplace
, right? With a lot, a lot of
established players, um we had to call on some
very familiar um licenses and, you know, more
popular um entities in this, in this market to
help us out. So um having the opportunity to
collaborate with Hello, Kitty, having the opportunity to
collaborate with, you know, Momofuku from New York
, I mean, these are all collabs that I
think people in the United States already know about these
things. And so for us to team up with
these, with these partners, it really helped us
kind of accelerate our growth in the US market.
I know instant noodles, they're rapidly growing right now
. They're very convenient as well as tasty. But
why do you think that is? And has your
company been able to capitalize on that expansion? Yeah
, absolutely. I think nowadays um everyone's looking for
um quick and easy meal solutions. Um But at
the end of the day, the product needs to
taste good um and it needs to be, you
know, somewhat sustainable in the sense of it's not
something that you can only eat once and then maybe
you get sick of it. It's got to be
something that can be repeated and, you know,
oftentimes, you know, recons, umed week over
week. Um, and certainly for us, you
know, um, coming out of COVID, actually
during COVID COVID really accelerated our growth because a lot
of people were stuck at home. Um, we
were looking for more stay at home options and try
to bring that restaurant quality best in class um dining
experience um at home. So for us to,
to do instant ramen, it was a way to
explore and to kind of experience a very ethnic product
, but in a way that's very convenient and simple
to prepare. So, pretty much everyone can,
you know, prepare it at home. So what
makes your company ASHA noodles stand out from what else
is on the market? Yeah, I mean,
in addition to the great collabs that we've done primarily
speaking and when it comes to the product, traditional
ramen noodle is always deep fried. Um Traditionally,
it's been, you know, a lot of MS
G, a lot of artificial flavors. So the
main two differentiators of our product is that number one
, our air, our, our noodles are air
dried. So there's an 18 hour air drying process
. That's how we sort of cure and preserve the
product. So um just like a cold brew coffee
, you retain a lot more flavor, a lot
more nutrition and the product overall is healthier when you
look at the nutritionals at the same time. Our
sauce is liquid based. So we have very simple
ingredients, soy sauce, sesame oil. So we
don't really introduce a lot of artificial flavors and colors
for that purpose. They look really tasty. I
got to tell you young, I'm hungry and this
is a city and I think it's just a perfect
time. A lot of people maybe with that afternoon
. Fix young chang. Thank you. All right
. Well, JP Morgan Chase is committed to advancing
opportunity and progress for the Asian and Pacific Islander community
globally. Visit JP Morgan chase dot com slash A
API to learn more.