By Michelle Woo Photographs by Eric Sueyoshi Illustrations by Eunice Choi
In the summer of 2006, a photograph of Shelly Hwang ran in the Los Angeles Times. Her tiny frozen yogurt shop, Pinkberry, was drawing throngs of obsessed customers, causing all sorts of commotion in its sleepy West Hollywood neighborhood. The snapshot captures her behind the counter in a blue apron and ponytail, smiling as she serves a cup of her fruit-topped treat.
Fast-forward to today — 43 store openings and millions of servings later — and Hwang, dressed chicly in a pinstripe blazer over a ruffled blouse and perfectly creased slacks, insists she’s that same woman. “I still live in the same place, still drive the same car,” the 34-year-old L.A. urbanite says, rolling her eyes at any suggestion that she’s reached celebrity status. “I’m still just a back-of-the-house-type person who makes simple, high-quality frozen yogurt.”
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It is a mantra of simplicity that has catapulted Pinkberry from a mom-and-pop gem to a frozen yogurt empire, with Hwang as its humble queen. Now, after three years of swirling success in California and New York, the L.A.-based company has even bigger plans. Backed by an infusion of $27.5 million from Starbucks founder Howard Schulz’s venture capital firm, Maveron, Pinkberry plans to open nationwide and beyond by next spring.
How many new locations? Hwang isn’t certain. “It could be 1,000 or it could be 10,000,” she says with a laugh. “Every store has done well, even the stores in New York in the wintertime. It’s phenomenal.”
Inspired by her father, who owned a textile corporation in Korea, Hwang always dreamt of starting a company from scratch. Born in Seoul, she moved to the United States at the age of 19 to study business at the University of Southern California. After college, with her parents’ financial support, she tested her skills as an entrepreneur by opening two different restaurants in L.A. But competition in the food industry was fierce and neither could generate a following. Looking back, she explains what went wrong: “I had, like, 50 different things on the menu — pasta and steak and steak salad and hamburgers and sandwiches. I had no focus. That was a big mistake.”
After those business disasters, she refueled her funds by working as a saleswoman at her father’s Los Angeles branch, but eventually felt restless. She wanted to try again.
She set out to open an English teahouse in West Hollywood, but plans fell through when the city wouldn’t grant her the wine license she needed to serve sherry. So she consulted her business partner and boyfriend, Young Lee, who had the idea for a frozen yogurt shop. She went for it.
Hwang created a low-calorie product that was more tart than sweet and less creamy than ice cream. It would come in only two varieties: original and green tea. Customers could add toppings such as fresh fruit, cereal or chocolate chips. Like the shop’s interior design — the brainchild of Lee, an architect — the concept was innovative, yet simple.
And the taste? “I could not stop eating it,” she says, giddily. “I had to have it every single day.”
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Pinkberry opened on a rainy day in January. A handful of curious folks in the neighborhood trickled in, glanced at the menu and looked as if they felt sorry for her.
“A lot of people said, ‘Only two flavors? How are you going to survive?’” Hwang recalls.
But once people got a taste of the fro-yo, they’d come back, oftentimes with friends. Then one night, about a month after opening, she and Lee were having dinner when her cell phone rang. It was an employee calling to tell her that the roof was leaking at the shop. As they drove up to check it out, they were bewildered at the sight. Cars crowded the neighborhood and the store windows were fogged up. When they stepped inside, they were shocked. The store was packed. Hwang knew that this time, she got it right.
Of course, Pinkberry’s ride in the fast lane wasn’t without bumps in the road. As lines snaked around the block at its first location, neighbors complained about traffic and litter. Then, after the company expanded to 18 locations, Hwang and Lee were slapped with a lawsuit alleging that the frozen treat isn’t really yogurt, at least according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture. (Though a science lab found that there are live cultures in it.) And there were those who questioned where the idea behind Pinkberry really came from. Some bloggers wrote that the business seemed alarmingly similar to Red Mango, a popular fro-yo chain that opened in Korea in 2002.
But even as the controversy swirled, Hwang kept her focus.
“I wasn’t stressed about the lawsuit or the blogs — I was stressed about keeping up demand without compromising the quality,” she says. “I had to serve 2,000 to 3,000 cups a day. I couldn’t think about the other stuff. Now, those stories are gone.”
Today, Hwang wakes up 4 a.m. and heads off to the dairy plant. There, she makes sure the day’s batch of yogurt has the right taste and texture. She continues her day at the Pinkberry headquarters in Los Angeles. For breakfast, she eats a cup of coffee fro-yo — Pinkberry’s newest flavor — topped with chestnuts.
In day-to-day business interactions, she holds onto her philosophy of keeping it simple. “I always make sure our meetings are focused, like one-two-three, boom-boom-boom,” says Hwang, who works with a corporate staff of 40. “Just like Pinkberry. Come in. Green tea or original? Choose your toppings and go.”
After a day at the office, she and Lee make their rounds to various Pinkberry locations throughout Southern California. “Those are our dates,” Hwang says, jokingly. “We go around to stores together and say things like, ‘Why is this table not clean?’ It’s very romantic.”
Last year, Pinkberry was called a “cultural phenomenon” in a TV commercial paid for by American Express. Now, it’s a phenomenon that will cross borders — the company’s current plan includes opening locations in countries such as Mexico, Spain and London. And from there, who knows?
“I want to be the next Starbucks,” Hwang says decisively.
How does she plan to get there? That’s simple — one cup at a time.
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Hee Sook Lee: BCD Tofu House
As lunchtime chatter amplifies through the restaurant, Hee Sook Lee watches carefully as a KoreAm photographer takes a leaf of crisp cabbage and tops it with a slice of grilled meat.
“Scrape on the miso paste,” Lee says in a warm, motherly fashion.
The photographer follows her command, adds on a sesame leaf and a sliver of kimchi and then folds the culinary creation into his hand. “It’s like a lettuce taco,” he observes.
“Yes!” she says with a laugh. “A lettuce taco.”
It is the passion for her product and care for her customers that has helped make Lee an ambassador for Seoul food. While “lettuce tacos” make for tasty appetizers, tofu stew, or sundubu, is her specialty. Hers, she says, has a “taste you cannot forget.”
Lee, 49, is the founder and CEO of BCD Tofu House, a Los Angeles-based restaurant chain with more than a dozen locations in Southern California, Seattle, Japan and Korea. She doesn’t speak much English and communicates what she can through the help of a translator. Though good food, she has found, can break all barriers.
She first learned how to cook from her mother in Korea. Growing up, she loved the warm comforts of jjigae (stew).
After starting a family, she moved to Los Angeles in 1989 so that her two eldest sons could attend school in the States. Three years later, her husband, Tae Lee, followed with their youngest son.
Lee studied graphic design at Santa Monica College, but says she never wanted to be a designer. Instead, she wanted to open a restaurant.
So she borrowed a recipe for sundubu from her relatives in Korea and tweaked it. It was a long process of trial and error, she says. The final dish is a bright-red bubbly soup made of red pepper, soy sauce, garlic and other seasonings. Submerged inside are chunks of soft tofu, along with the customer’s choice of meat, seafood or vegetables. The exact recipe is a secret she won’t share with anyone.
In 1996, she opened her first BCD Tofu House on the corner of 2nd Street and Vermont in Koreatown. The name stands for Bukchangdong, an area in Seoul. “It’s the city of the IRS,” she explains. “All the riches come from Bukchangdong.”
There were long lines from the start, Lee says. For many non-Koreans, dining at BCD was a new cultural experience. Lee would sometimes demonstrate how to eat the banchan — little side dishes such as potato salad, fried fish and cucumbers topped with ice. When the sundubu would arrive on their tables in heavy stone pots, Lee would explain some of the ingredients.
“Americans were not used to boiling food,” she says. “But after they tasted it, they visited again and again. It was sundubu mania. I felt proud.”
Today, Lee wakes up at 6 a.m., and after reading the Korean newspaper, chatting with her husband and praying, goes off to make 50 to 70 gallons of secret seasoning to distribute to all her U.S. restaurants.
She’ll often visit the locations in L.A., making sure the tables are clean and the dishes are made just right. If the kitchen gets backed up, she’ll jump in and help, no matter what she’s wearing. Several years back, she decided to keep most of the locations open 24 hours when she saw that folks out on the town were looking for a hearty meal long after most restaurants had closed.
“I’d always say come in, come in,” she recalls. “I could not close.”
Two years ago, Lee opened a factory in Gardena, Calif., that manufactures bottled kimchi and salted squid under the brand name BCD Foods. Her goal is for BCD to grow into a complete food company that also produces drinks, snacks and desserts. She plans to open a BCD restaurant in China.
“I want to spread Korean food all over the world, to people who’ve never had it before,” she says. Printed on every menu is the company’s promise to customers: “To serve with clean hands, to serve with a warm heart, to serve the best.”
Lee says being female has never posed any challenges in her career. “It’s more beneficial,” she explains. “In the service business, people think women know the most. Women can do everything.”
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Min Kim: Nara Bank
Sometimes opportunity knocks on your door.
If it doesn’t, you’ve got to go do the knocking. That’s what Min Kim learned in her journey to the top in the boys’ club of banking.
She is the president and CEO of Nara Bank, the fastest-growing Korean American bank, with 20 branches and eight loan production offices across the United States. Her days consist of meetings, conferences, site visits, interactions with clients and schmoozing with potential investors — not to mention overseeing more than $2.2 billion in net assets.
“At networking events, some [male] CEOs will ask me what it’s like to be a female CEO,” says Kim, 48, sitting in her 10th floor corner office overlooking the bustling streets of Los Angeles’ Koreatown. “I tell them I have the same job and challenges that they have.”
Landing the position took 25 years of persistence. After moving from Korea to the U.S. at the age of 15, Kim went on to study business administration at the USC. While there, she was drawn to banking for its service-oriented atmosphere and predictable hours. Her plan was to graduate from college and jump-start her career in a management-training program, but she didn’t get into one. Brushing off her sense of defeat, Kim walked into Wilshire State Bank and applied to become a teller.
At first, it was frustrating. She felt she was overqualified to be standing behind a counter cashing checks and handling deposits. But after a few weeks of self-pity, she had a revelation. In order for her circumstances to change, she needed to first change her attitude. “I told myself this is a step to advance my career. I can start from the bottom and make my way up. From that point, I was really joyful. I began to set goals for my career and I ended up advancing more quickly than my peers.”
Kim stayed at Wilshire State Bank for three years, taking on the position of assistant operation officer. In 1985, she moved over to Hanmi Bank as an assistant treasurer. While she appreciated that she was able to use more of the skills she learned in school, she eventually felt bored. What she really wanted was a position no woman in her company had ever asked for. She wanted to be a loan officer.
So she knocked on the CEO’s door and told him she would like a promotion.
No, he said. That job is not for you.
Kim expected this response. “The banking industry is very conservative,” she explains. “It’s very male-dominated. Back in the 1980s, especially in the Korean banking community, men would not be comfortable discussing financial matters with a woman, especially a young woman. It would hurt their egos.”
But she told the CEO that this was her passion. She said she could do the job just as well, if not better than the males in those positions. She offered him a risk-free solution: “I told him to let me try, and if I don’t perform, then I’ll go back to my original job.”
Still, he said no.
Kim knocked on his door many times. Many times, he said no.
Then one day, for whatever reason, he changed his mind and said he’d give her a trial. Don’t screw up, he warned her. Kim was thrilled.
Of course, it wasn’t easy proving herself. In many Korean households, finances would be handled by the men. The moment she would introduce herself to clients, they would demand to be placed with someone else.
After many snubs, she realized that she wouldn’t gain credibility by trying to be just like her male counterparts. She noticed that her colleagues tended to be authoritative and austere. That was just the way they did business.
“I thought, I can be different,” Kim says. “I was very service-oriented, very friendly and always kept my word. If I said, ‘I can get you an answer in two or three days,’ I delivered. Over time, my reputation began to build. The male customers felt very comfortable and recognized the quality of me. They would bring their friends over to me, and I began to build my client base.”
Kim moved on to higher positions at Hanmi Bank and in 1995, she was recruited by Nara Bank to be its chief credit administrator. She went on to become the acting president and chief operating officer. On Nov. 27, 2006, she was named president and CEO.
“I was scared,” Kim admits. “I wondered if I could deliver the performance and meet the challenges. But I would not know unless I really tried it.”
Her goals for the bank include stepping up efforts to bring in clients outside of the Korean American community, expanding branch networks and helping her staff evolve with the changing banking environment.
She also strives to know her customers on a personal level. “As a community CEO, you have to be really accessible. You have to stand in front of the bank to make connections with the people,” says Kim, who lives with her husband and two children in Northridge and serves on the board of directors of the Koreatown Youth and Community Center.
And when she visits branches, she greets every employee with respect and a smile. “I try to be a team-builder rather than a strong-standing leader,” she says of her business style. “I want them to know I’ve been in their shoes.”
