From Tech Founder (The Knot) to Omakase Restauranteur (Kinjo) - David Liu

Alan Li (00:00)
Today's guest, David Liu is the founder of Kinjo, a 14 seat Omakase counter and cocktail lounge in Dumbo, New York. Previously, David also spent time as an oyster farmer and was previously the co-founder of the popular wedding website, not. David, really excited to have you on the podcast for opening soon today.

David Liu (00:18)
Thanks so much for having me Alan. This is fun

Alan Li (00:21)
Well, really excited to dive into Kinjo and what you're doing there. But before that, we have to hear about how you started the knot with your wife. Could you give us a little bit of background on how that came about and that 20 year plus journey?

David Liu (00:36)
Oh my God. I'll give you the shortened version because that will take at least two more podcasts to go into. But yeah, we started that business back in 1995, 96. The internet was an idea, more or less. The online access was primarily gone through AOL and CompuServe. We had this idea of creating a content business and we thought weddings would be a good one considering how much advertising and

how much commerce flows through that. ⁓ It was a lot of hard work and a lot of good luck. ⁓ And I think the product we were able to create were actually addressed a lot of needs and problems that lot of young couples had when they're planning a wedding. ⁓ And so we were fortunate, we went public in 99. ⁓

And I ran it as a public company for almost 20 years and it was sold to private equity back in 2018. And so I really should be retired, but I have Dan Chu to blame.

Alan Li (01:37)
Yeah.

I see. ⁓ And I guess throughout that journey of starting the knot to then being interested in farming oysters and even starting hospitality group, how does that translate into what you're doing now?

David Liu (01:57)
Well, so actually when I left and not, ⁓ I sort of told myself I didn't want to have anything to do with anything related to digital or technology ever again. After 20 years of that and riding the different waves of, I mean, when broadband came on, it completely disrupted our business. And then mobile came on and that disrupted our business. then, so it was just constant, constant chasing the technology. And I joke that when we left, ⁓

Alan Li (02:07)
I see.

David Liu (02:27)
you know, a oyster farm is as analog as it gets. You it will never be interrupted by AI or technology or maybe we'll get a robot that can dig to the mud. And with Omakase restaurant, it's also pretty analog too. You're not going to get displaced by technology there as well. But I think also one of the things that helped inform a lot of what we're doing here is that, you you spend 20 years working.

Alan Li (02:46)
Got it.

David Liu (02:54)
On this wedding planning site, the reality is most of our business was coming from supporting local vendors. We had over 600,000 florists, photographers, ⁓ bridal salons. ⁓

venues, hotels, ⁓ and you realize that number one, helping this group transition into the new digital age was really important, but you really learned about the value of ⁓ hospitality and customer service and really servicing a client that I would argue is probably the most demanding, the highest stakes. This is not a reservation for five for dinner. This is like someone's wedding. so everything had to be perfect. And I have such respect for

Alan Li (03:34)
Sure.

David Liu (03:39)
the people who are in the industry because every weekend it's like you're opening a Broadway show and you're feeding your audience at the same time. It's a high pressure, high stakes activity and the industry I think taught me a lot about what it takes to actually produce a great experience.

Alan Li (03:59)
Hmm. Are there any particular battle scars or anecdotes you could point to about, you know, one of these these weddings that you had you had to go through?

David Liu (04:04)
you

Fortunately, I was not on the front lines of that. My battle scars were dealing with hedge fund managers and activist shareholders and the finance side. think Carly, my wife, one who's the consumer-facing brand ambassador and she traveled and zigzagged the country going to different bridal shows and...

Alan Li (04:20)
I see.

David Liu (04:33)
and engagements and really became the leading expert in weddings for the country. It was on the Today Show, Oprah, Good Morning America. And so I think the actual planning of a wedding, we wound up avoiding getting into the details of.

Alan Li (04:42)
Mm.

Got it.

Got it. Okay. So, you you spent 20 years in digital, you went through the dot com bus, you went through the great recession and you're just like, okay, I want to do something that's as far away from digital internet as possible. And you start an oyster farmer, you bought an oyster farm, is that correct? Tell me about ⁓ how that happened.

David Liu (05:12)
but.

Yeah, I was on the board of ⁓ a company and one of our fellow board members happened to live in this area in the Pacific Northwest. It's called the Willapa Bay. It's been written up as the cleanest bay in North America and it's just beautiful and pristine. It's a massive body of water and one of the sort of unique attributes of it is that close to 80 % of the water moves out on every tidal turn.

So we're replenishes with like fresh ocean water. so, you know, oysters are filter feeders. And so, you know, it's been written up as the cleanest bay and we suddenly realized, well, you know, if you're going to eat a filter feeder, wouldn't you want it to come from the cleanest bay in North America? And isn't there an opportunity to do that? And my partner in the business now who lives out there said, you know, listen, we have an opportunity to, you know, maybe I'll buy some oyster seeds and put them in bags, float them out in the

the

bay because he had a house right on the bay. He goes, can guarantee by next year we'll be able to sell them because he did marketing for Amazon and saw that there was a lot of searches on oysters and the local oyster farmers were kind of selling mostly commercially or their dredge so it wasn't the half shell oyster product. And so we started doing this and we started kind of trying to promote the area because like most people, you don't hear of Willapa Bay even though it produces something.

insane percentage of our seafood in America, in that one area. ⁓ And we suddenly got contacted by one of these old farmers who had this farm and he said, listen, I'm 60 years old, I'm ready to retire, my kids don't want to be oyster farmers, we see what you're doing in promoting the area, it's wonderful, would you like to maybe buy my farm?

Alan Li (06:37)
interesting.

David Liu (07:00)
And what was happening in parallel was that this is right after 2018. had, know, the knot was sold and, you know, Karla and I, we had generated a decent amount of capital gains. ⁓ you know, don't want get political about this, but it was in the middle of the first Trump administration. And I was like, you know what? I don't want my my capital gains tax dollars to go support this administration. It's just, I feel like it's morally wrong. Now, it turns out within that big tax bill that

Alan Li (07:27)
Mm-hmm.

David Liu (07:29)
that first tax bill that Trump passed, the dams and Cory Booker had put in a provision for what they call opportunity funds. And if an opportunity fund had to be created with capital gains, and then if you invested in opportunity zones that were designated by the governors, you could defer your tax payment by 10 years. And I was like, done. So we set up an opportunity fund.

Alan Li (07:31)
Yeah.

wow.

David Liu (07:54)
And at the time, my wife and I were looking for businesses or things to invest in in New York and Brooklyn, where we are, where we're from. And there's a clock ticking, too. If you don't deploy your cash, you're going to get penalized because you haven't paid the cap gains. And so ⁓ it turns out that this whole area of the Willapa Bay is an opportunity zone. It's incredibly poor. And there's a bunch of oyster farmers. And so we wound up buying this guy's farm.

Alan Li (08:17)
Wow.

David Liu (08:25)
And the pandemic hit, all the commercial contracts started canceling. And we're like, oh my God, what do we do? And the guy's like, nothing. The oysters just keep living in the water. You don't have to do anything. Which was kind of a mind blowing experience. And then we had another farm come up to us and say, hey, we see what you're doing over at Stony Point. Would you be interested in our farm? We have this wonderful store and a deck that you can actually have oysters and wine.

Alan Li (08:39)
that's-

David Liu (08:51)
So we wound up buying these two farms. have over 300 acres of oyster beds. And I believe that makes us one of the top 20 oyster farms in the country, sort of overnight.

Alan Li (08:59)
Wow.

So I had thought that Opportunity Zones were mostly focused on housing or building affordable housing, but you can also buy a business in an Opportunity Zone and that qualifies as well. That's incredible.

David Liu (09:11)
Exactly. I think it

was designed and I, know, obviously, you know, Trump and his friends were very much focused on the real estate play of it. ⁓ We were more interested as entrepreneurs to support businesses and to try to buy or grow businesses. And so it worked out well for us.

Alan Li (09:23)
Yeah.

I love that.

Okay. And tell me about, ⁓ you know, what even a bed of oyster means, 300 beds. Like what is that production like?

David Liu (09:36)
300 acres.

actually 300 acres. Yeah. So this is one of the few places in America where we actually own the water or you own the beds because the tide goes out and actually exposes the mud. In most places, you own up to the high tide line. Like you can't own the water. But here it's like when the bay is filled up, there are designated markers where our oysters are there and our beds are there.

Alan Li (09:40)
Oh, 300 acres.

Okay.

David Liu (10:05)
Just to put this into context, when we closed the first acquisition, I remember at the closing, I was saying, how many oysters are we talking about? And I had heard it was like 800,000 oysters. It was a 20-acre farm.

At the closing, the gentleman who was selling was like, oh no, no, no, it's not 800,000 oysters. We harvest on a four-year cycle, so it's 800,000 every year. It's actually 3.2 million oysters. So there are 3.2 million oysters on 20 acres that we had. The second farm they came in, and it happened to ask for the exact amount that we had left in our fund, was 280 acres.

Alan Li (10:38)
Wow.

David Liu (10:48)
So we have now over 300 acres, and so you can imagine there's a lot of oysters out there.

Alan Li (10:48)
my God.

It's over, yeah, 10, mean, 50, 100 million oysters every... And oysters are harvested every four years instead of every...

David Liu (11:00)
There are millions of boisterous.

He

was. ⁓ on, I mean, there's so, I mean, I've learned so much about oyster farming now, which is insane. But you know, depending on where your beds are situated, if you're closer to the mouth of the bay, the water moves quicker.

Alan Li (11:12)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

David Liu (11:20)
And depending on where it sits in the water table, there are nutrients that are on the higher levels of the water. And so if your beds are kind of closer to that zone, they grow faster. So you can bring a seed to actual maturation to be ready for harvest within a year. It could be that quick. The beds that we have there, because it's also not contiguous. It's like there's little spots everywhere.

Alan Li (11:38)
Okay. Wow.

David Liu (11:47)
Bay that we own. so the areas where the water doesn't move as fast, the oysters grow a lot slower. But then there's also a different flavor profile. The marroir is different from different parts. It's wild.

Alan Li (11:54)
I see.

Marroir being the opposite of terroir in France. That's a term. Wow. I haven't heard that before, but cool. So if we are eating an oyster maybe from Washington state, is a good chance that it's yours.

David Liu (12:04)
Exactly.

⁓ Yeah, we haven't done that much distribution right now. The STK steak shop and steak houses in are you serving our oysters. We've really primarily focused on ⁓ servicing a lot of the local places right now and

Alan Li (12:30)
I see.

David Liu (12:30)
You know, our dream was to really kind of build out the brand and to maybe even go direct to consumer at some point when that became more feasible. You know, the pandemic sort of like really put a stop to that and paused us for a while. So we're now getting back up to speed and trying to grow the wholesale side and building out.

Alan Li (12:37)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, well, mean, people are even doing the direct consumer for Alaskan salmon and just shipping, you know, a bunch of salmon over. see those ads all the time. I haven't seen the ones for oysters yet, but you know, maybe that makes sense too.

David Liu (12:55)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, the challenge with oysters is like no one really wants to shuck them. It's hard. And so that's that's that'll always be a barrier. But I also think that it self-selects a customer that's like kind of a connoisseur and really wants that. I mean, the other really and I think the younger generation really appreciates the fact that oysters are probably the most environmentally friendly protein one can produce.

Alan Li (13:05)
⁓

Yes.

David Liu (13:25)
⁓ The oysters themselves are an incredible carbon sink because the oyster shells are sodium bicarbonate and it literally pulls carbon out of the water to make it shell. And then all the eelgrass that grows around the oysters and the oyster beds is a more efficient carbon sink than even the Amazon rainforest. So it has tremendous ⁓ benefit to the environment. So we advocate for people to eat more oysters.

Alan Li (13:51)
I love that.

Yeah, well, that's a good pitch. ⁓ So that's fun. So you bought the oyster farm in 2018 ⁓ and you're still running it to this day. Is that correct?

David Liu (14:06)
Yeah, and the joke's on me, right? Because I thought 10 years later, there won't be a Trump administration that my money be going to because that's what my tax bills do. And guess what? I'm screwed.

Alan Li (14:16)
Well you got, you have

two more years or a year, you know, a little bit more? Okay. Yeah, I see. Okay. Well that's a fun project and you're doing this with your wife Carly as well?

David Liu (14:21)
Yeah, it'll be probably his last year of his term, so well.

Yeah, we're helping out. Honestly, the farm is really run by my partner, ⁓ Anthony Abbot, from the West Coast, and his family. And they're ⁓ fabulous, knowledgeable people who not only have a passion for the product and the process, but also for the ocean and the environment. And so they've been great to work with.

Alan Li (14:38)
Okay.

That's great. And how did

that translate to ⁓ you getting into hospitality and the restaurant industry?

David Liu (15:03)
Yeah, it didn't. So when I left ⁓ The Knot, ⁓ I really leaned into trying to help ⁓ advise and give back ⁓ to other Asian entrepreneurs. So one of the things that I saw ⁓ in my almost 20-year term as a public company CEO was I'd go to investor conferences or you'd go to these meetings. And oftentimes, I was the only Asian face in the room.

And there was just this sense of what's going on here. If you were to poll people, they would say, my god, Asians are doing so well. They're all entrepreneurs that are in tech. And you realize ⁓ there is this term of a bamboo ceiling that actually exists. And we're good enough to be a VP of engineering. We're really great for being directors of project management or whatever. But somehow, getting into the C-suite, getting onto public company boards,

getting elected as government officials, we are woefully underrepresented. And in fact, if you were to talk to a lot of these search firms who would be doing, let's say, a placement for a public company board position, back in the day when diversity was actually a priority for a lot of people, they would tell you that Asians didn't qualify as being a demographic group that...

know, we satisfied diversity initiative, which, you if you look at ⁓ our representation, we under-index ⁓ worse than any other demographic group out there in terms of our representation on these boards. And so, you know, I got involved with places like Ascend, Pinnacle, I started helping, ⁓ you know, try to get some Asian. ⁓

Alan Li (16:26)
Hmm.

Yeah.

David Liu (16:48)
officials elected into office. I was like, it's time to figure out how to get back because when I was coming up in the business, there was like Jerry Yang and me, that was it. Maybe Steve Chen over YouTube, but there was nobody. You couldn't find anyone to actually network with. And I think this younger generation has really embraced, I think, the mission. I started meeting a lot of great people and some VCs with.

send entrepreneurs to me, know, and like, hey, you know, give this guy advice, know, open your Rolodex. And strangely, because I ran a wedding related business, like my Rolodex spans everything, like from retail to luxury to travel to apparel to tech and marketing and publishing. I mean, it was like, got great connections across the board. And so I was happy to try to lean in to help. And I got a call from Bob Wu.

Alan Li (17:38)
I love that.

David Liu (17:43)
I blame him. ⁓ And he said, hey, I know these two entrepreneurs who want to meet you. And I was like, OK, it's going to be digital marketing or tech related or maybe life stage marketing. And he was like, no, no, no, it's because you lived in Dumbo for 30 years and they're interested in opening a restaurant. And I was like, OK, I totally ascribe to the notion that to make a small fortune in restaurants, you start with a large fortune. Restaurants are horrible businesses, horrible businesses.

Alan Li (17:59)
Ow.

Same. Yes. Yes.

David Liu (18:11)
And I said right up the bat, was like, selfishly I'll meet with them because I have lived here for 30 years and there's no really good food. And every new restaurant that comes in, it comes in with a cynical notion like, all these rich people live in Dumbo and they try to gouge you with these ridiculous prices for mediocre food. So I was like, I'll meet them and see what they're trying to do. ⁓ And I met with Dan and he said,

And I said my spiel about like not investing in restaurants. And he said, OK, you've raised a lot of money, though. So could you take a look at my business plan? Because we need to raise money and just give me some pointers and comments. And I looked at this plan and I was like, wait a minute. This is like a cheat code or a business hack. I've never seen anything like this. And what I realized was that this concept of an Omokase restaurant ⁓

takes everything that is hard and difficult about a restaurant and problematic as an investment in a restaurant and flips it on its head. ⁓ And I suddenly was like, wait a minute, this is actually kind of interesting. ⁓ so the four major challenges, and for your listeners who are in the restaurant business, this is probably preaching to the choir here. First, you need to raise a bunch of money. The build out costs are

minimally half a million dollars just for the equipment in your kitchen. Like, that doesn't even include the furnishings and the chairs and the plates and the dishes and all the nice stuff. You know, just for your stove and your fridge and the hood and whatever. Well, at Omakase restaurant, my chef needs a really good refrigerator, a rice cooker, and a torch. That's that. So your build-out cost is actually pretty minimal.

Alan Li (19:43)
for innovations, yeah.

David Liu (20:06)
The second killer in restaurants is your rent. It's always about the location, obviously, but then if you're gonna have a location and you have a large enough space to generate enough revenue, you're talking minimally 2,500 square feet, 3,000 square feet for a small, medium-sized restaurant, larger if you're really going for a big concept. And those rents will kill you. know, our own Macazza restaurant,

I need, I'm comfortable at 1,100, 1,200 square feet. I can probably do it at 900 square feet. There's no such thing as a 900 square foot restaurant. And the spaces that are available for that are much more affordable than these other formats. And so suddenly, your overhead and rent is much, much lower. Third killer, your staffing costs. Any medium sized restaurant,

Alan Li (20:45)
You

David Liu (21:04)
you need at least 20 people, if not 30. Between all the back of house, front of house, if you're lunches or doing double shift, it's even more people, your payroll will kill you. And it's in a highly unstable workforce, so you're constantly needing to staff and hire and fire, unfortunately. Our own McConsly restaurant needs four people, two chefs,

Alan Li (21:29)
Yeah.

David Liu (21:34)
one backer house, one host. ⁓ And then finally, the real kicker is you open up a menu of a restaurant and you realize all that food that you're looking at has to be ready to be prepared. So it's defrosted, it's ready to go. ⁓ I don't care how good you are as a restaurant, you can't predict how much you're gonna be spending, how much you're gonna be selling on any given week or any given month. And so you're gonna lose 10 % margin points just on food waste.

Alan Li (21:49)
Mm-hmm.

David Liu (22:04)
every month. It's just the nature of the business. Omakase is chef selection. I know precisely how many pieces of fish I'll serve every single night. So I can keep my food waste down to a minimum. And so suddenly you look at this, and I looked at these plans, and we did some research and talked to a bunch of these smaller operations that were popping up everywhere in New York, and you realize you can do north of 20 % margins. I mean,

That's unheard of in the restaurant business. If I do 5 % margins in the restaurant business, I'm a hero. So he said to Dan, was like, OK, you've now piqued my interest. ⁓ However, I'm not a restaurateur. My parents, a long time ago, ⁓ partnered and had a restaurant in Flushing called the Happy Dumpling. It brutal, brutal work. ⁓

Alan Li (22:54)
Great name.

David Liu (22:58)
I love restaurants, I love entertaining, my wife and I are sort of known for throwing great ⁓ massive dinner parties, we love doing that, but as a business, it's not something that I've ever really wanted to pursue. ⁓ But I said to Dan, was like, we have an interesting business model here with this one place, but what's not interesting to me is I wouldn't want to raise a bunch of money and then, you know,

dividend out your profits to your shareholders at the end of a year. And then when your lease is up in five or seven or 10 years, the landlord jacks it up and then you're out of business. Right? That seems to be the life cycle of a lot of these successful restaurants. That's if you get past your first year, ⁓ first or second year. And I said, what is interesting is, and I don't know where you are, but in New York, I believe there have been over 200 omakase restaurants opened in the last 18 months. That's a figure that I heard.

Alan Li (23:35)
Hmm.

David Liu (23:56)
It is an insane phenomenon, right? And part of it is because the economics are so, you know, superior to a normal restaurant. ⁓ But I'm old enough to remember people walking around the streets of New York saying, hey, have you tried this thing called sushi? It's raw fish with seaweed and rice, but it's delicious. And you realize sushi entered in the United States through LA and New York. It was considered exotic and strange from, you know, from Japan.

Alan Li (23:56)
That's what I've noticed, yes.

David Liu (24:26)
And you can't go to an American city today and not find a sushi restaurant, if not multiple sushi restaurants. And I believe that phenomenon is going to happen with Omakase. That experience is going to burst out of New York and go everywhere. All the major markets have it. ⁓ But I think the plan that we put together was, let's launch in Brooklyn, let's prove the concept. ⁓

And then let's quickly expand into secondary cities around the country. So our goal is to build Kinjos everywhere and as quickly as possible. ⁓ Because to find a trusted brand with a great product that's ⁓ well priced ⁓ and that after a certain point you have economies of scale in both in terms of procurement of products and equipment and just all your ⁓

Alan Li (24:58)
Hmm, that's the plan, I see.

David Liu (25:24)
expenses, it becomes a really scalable business. ⁓ And so that's how I got involved. And my wife kind of curses the day I decided to do this. She said we should be retired. We killed ourselves for 20 years building another company, now we're doing this. ⁓ But there's something very joyful about feeding people and having people come in and kind of experience our Omokase.

Alan Li (25:34)
That makes sense.

The basic human need nourishment. ⁓ People do derive pleasure from it. ⁓ That's the question I was going to ask because to your point, there's 200 Omokase opened. I was thinking, you know, why compete in that environment? Because it's so cutthroat. ⁓ But I guess the second tier city expansion plan makes a lot of sense to me. I guess my question is why not start in a second tier city? Why start in Dumbo?

David Liu (25:54)
Yeah, exactly.

Alan Li (26:22)
so that you can actually prove out the concept there.

David Liu (26:24)
Yeah.

Yeah, so selfishly because there was no good food here and I live here, so I wanted to have it here. It was also, you know, there are a couple of things that make us a little different. One, there isn't really an omakase option in our neighborhood or even close to us. So we kind of almost own this whole area. But also, Johnny, our head chef, is he worked at Masa for like seven years.

He was sent to Las Vegas to open the masa in Las Vegas. So not only knows how to launch, he has like incredible creative skills. his recipes are amazing. He's just truly a treasure.

Alan Li (27:06)
There's a Masa in Vegas now too? Oh wow. And for listeners who don't know what Masa is, Masa is sort of the premier New York City omakase that is now, I believe, $800, $900 a sitting. Is that correct? It's $1200 now.

David Liu (27:08)
Yeah.

I it's 1200. I heard 1200,

yeah. Yeah. No, exactly. Now we've had people come into our place and go, I remember that piece from Masala. How are you guys doing this for 95 bucks? But the thing that makes it really unique is Johnny's from Indonesian descent and he has brought in ingredients and flavors from

Alan Li (27:24)
my gosh, that's crazy.

Ha

David Liu (27:49)
all across Asia. So when you come and have our omakase, you'll have a piece that has this incredible ⁓ ebi, the shrimp, that has like this ⁓ Indonesian curry, lightly hint of it. ⁓ You'll have a piece that will have ⁓ Korean gochujang and kimchi flavors. There's, you know, we've had pieces where there is like this ⁓ Sichuan mala pepper.

et cetera. so part of what's so exciting about omakase is that it's a discovery every time you go. You're eating things that you would never have ordered and you probably never tasted before. And so the fact that we're also now expanding the scope of what you can experience. If you go to one of those really expensive omakase places or even some of the cheap places, there's a kind of a rigorous Japanese version of it that you have. And that's not us. We're kind of like

Alan Li (28:39)
Yes.

David Liu (28:45)
almost like the mavericks of it, where we're trying to really expand the palate. I mean, it's still, you know, number of pieces of nigiri, there two appetizers, and there's an end piece and a savory, but we really want to try to expand the palates and expand the experience so that it becomes more fun ⁓ discovery process.

Alan Li (29:05)
Interesting. How do you think of this in relation to, is this similar to how Kazunori is trying to make hand rules more accessible to people? But I think they're mostly still in coastal cities and not doing as much second tier cities.

David Liu (29:21)
Yeah,

so I think kazanori is attached to sugarfish, right? so, right? I believe and I may be wrong, but I know sugarfish has a adjunct property and they're usually next kind of close to each other physically. so like sugarfish is open to all the major markets. And then I think kazanori was a very clever way to use the detritus of your sushi.

Alan Li (29:27)
are they the same owners? ⁓ I was unaware.

Mmm.

David Liu (29:52)
because they just chop it up and then put it in a hand roll. mean, know, those guys are brilliant. They figured out how to like really operationalize it and make it more efficient. ⁓ But ⁓ yes and no. mean, I think part of, and pardon me if I hop on the soapbox for a second, but part of like the ulterior motive here and the agenda, you know, when Dan and I started talking about, you know,

Alan Li (29:52)
interesting.

David Liu (30:17)
why we wanna do this and the things that we wanted to ⁓ accomplish by building this out. For me, ⁓ when this was being ideated, we were also at a point in time where we were seeing sort of unprecedented ⁓ hate crimes perpetrated against Asians. ⁓ there's a mobilization of like Asian executives and there's another Dave Lowe on the West Coast that organized this incredible.

Alan Li (30:35)
Yes, I remember.

David Liu (30:44)
letter that we published in the Wall Street Journal, you know, and I think people kind of coming together to try to figure out, how do you, how do we deal with this? I mean, they're setting our grandmothers on fire. This is like in pure insanity. and ⁓ you know what, one of the things that I've learned is that, you know, you can't browbe people into changing their behavior or the way they think. And oftentimes what, ⁓ you know, racism is, is an expression of fear and the fear of the unknown or the unfamiliar. And

One of the things that became sort of like my sort of ulterior motive and drive behind this was that, look, you can hate my face. You can suspect my people, but you know what? You all love our food. And if there's a way to find like, what is it? What do they call it?

Alan Li (31:30)
You

David Liu (31:38)
like a different form of a diplomacy or a different way of changing people's minds, it's probably more effectively done through their stomachs. And so, you know, one of the things that make secondary cities kind of interesting for us is, you know, there is probably less representation of us and our food there, but there's a greater opportunity to engage and create experiences that are really fun and interesting and flavors that are like new.

Alan Li (31:45)
Yeah.

David Liu (32:06)
and to kind of change people's minds and to make us less alien and less scary. And that is also one of the reasons why it was important that when we found Johnny and that his...

kind of instinct was to include these pan-aged flavors. I was like, yes, that's exactly like, you know, there's a story behind every piece. There's like something that will bring the customer closer to the food, the culture, and the experience. And so, you know, when we look at launching our next locations in Raleigh, in Dallas, in Santa Barbara, in West Palm Beach, know, Nashville, you know, it's like, these are places where, you know what, we could probably make a difference just

changing the kind of cultural dialogue that's out there. ⁓ And so it's not just about the food, it's not just about building a restaurant business, but it's like trying to also make a positive impact and have social change that can come from what we do.

Alan Li (33:02)
I love that mission. I love that. ⁓ I totally agree with what you're saying. ⁓ When people don't have exposure or familiarity with a different type of culture or person, that can cause, you know, fear, can cause angst, it can cause things, but, ⁓ you know, if you eat the food, if you have more exposure to these types of people, ⁓ then you become more familiar and you become more comfortable and you realize, you know, we're mostly all the same. And it reminds me of, ⁓ I forgot who said this quote, but

They said Rush Hour did more for Asian and Black relations than any policy has ever done. Right? ⁓ And I also remember the hate crimes that were happening ⁓ towards Asian people throughout the pandemic. ⁓ This was really tough because I could imagine my mom walking down the street and a hate crime targeted towards that. And it was really difficult. ⁓

David Liu (33:39)
Absolutely, absolutely, for sure, for sure.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Alan Li (34:00)
And we actually organized a fundraiser at our business school and helped put that on to raise funds towards AAPI support groups and charities. And that was a time where I felt really close and connected to my Asian heritage and wanted to rally with ⁓ fellow Asian friends and colleagues and classmates to do something. So.

David Liu (34:10)
Right.

Yeah. No, think,

and I think it really took a crisis to bring everyone kind of like to get together and, you know, cause Asians are notoriously sort of like, you know, the interscene combat that's there is built in. But like, I think everyone was like, wait a minute, like we have to really, you know, bond together here.

Alan Li (34:28)
Yes?

Yeah. Yeah. No, I like that. So back to Kinjo, ⁓ you have pretty grand plans, it seems. You want to open quite a few restaurants over the next few years. ⁓ Tell me a little bit about ⁓ you not wanting to invest in a restaurant to now how much you are going to invest. And if you're raising money from other people and how the expansion plans are actually going to work out.

David Liu (34:59)
Ha ha.

Yeah, so ⁓ one of the first things that we wanted to make sure people understood, particularly our investors, was that this was not your mom and pop sort of restaurant that we're trying to sustain, but that this is more like a tech startup. And so we structured our investment vehicle in the form of a safe. ⁓ then the other kind of strategic decision was

I think for this space, because it was raw and it's much larger than what we normally need, but it's a flagship and so it was a place where we were going to be doing a lot more entertaining and ⁓ promoting of the brand. So we invested ⁓ more here than we the other locations. We also made the decision to try to bring in as many investors as possible with smaller sums.

It's always a lot easier to get one or two big checks and just be done. ⁓ Kinjo means neighborhood.

And one of the things that we wanted really people to feel was a sense of ownership of this place, that it is their space, it's their third space. like, you know, they come here and, you know, be with this extended family or feel like they belong and they have a piece of ownership of it too. we have a lot of people in the neighborhood and the community that have invested. And, you know, when they come in, you know, the staff know them to be, you know.

fellow owners of the space. And so it creates a real sort of community vibe. And that was important. As much as it makes it difficult just from managing the size of the cohort, ⁓ I think it's important that there was a sense of embracing of that community. And ⁓ that's really been amazing. I feel like what we've been able to demonstrate is that ⁓ if you...

build with intentionality a space that was designed for the community, then it kind of informs a lot of the different decisions you make. If we wanted to make this a destination place, like a special occasion place, that would force us to adjust our price point higher, we would do different types of marketing, we'd be trying to promote in different places. We're much more about like, I wanna make sure if my neighbors come,

Alan Li (37:28)
Mm-hmm.

David Liu (37:36)
they can get a seat. I don't want people to have to wait a month or be at midnight waiting for the reservations to open up. And I know this is this is blasphemous for any restaurateurs out there, because they're probably thinking I'm crazy. I want people to be able to come in and feel comfortable and feel like they have access to it. ⁓

Alan Li (37:55)
It's crazy, that's

a revolutionary thought in New York now, because it's impossible to go anywhere these days.

David Liu (37:58)
I right?

No, it's true. And I love a lot of those restaurants that are hard to get into. They're amazing, that's not what we want to do. ⁓ And I think also because of the economics of it, ⁓ based on the numbers, I think I can only serve and feed 40 people a night in the Omokase room.

So think about that for a second. As a restaurant, not 40 tables that need to turn twice, not like, it's like 40 people. ⁓ And so it really is an intimate experience and we're really only able to service a pretty small geographic area. And so ⁓ again, it makes you think about how do you create a space that's comfortable for your community? ⁓ And we,

I had invested in one other restaurant in the past. it was ⁓ when Carl and I were starting our business, we had a friend who was launching his restaurant in SoHo like a block away. And it was called Sandrillon. ⁓ Romy Dortan and Amy, his wife, opened it. It was the most incredible.

Filipino food and he was really bucking the trend of trying to create an elevated Asian food experience, which is really hard, right? I mean like, you know, everyone just thinks Asian food is cheap and if it's you know, if it's expensive you're getting ripped off and nice if for whatever reason Japanese who has always been able to maintain that level of like, you know a high-end experience, but all us other Asian cultures were like, okay This is you're just slinging food and it's so keep in and and good. That's good cheap ⁓

Alan Li (39:42)
Yeah, although the

Koreans are doing really well in New York, I've been really impressed with the high end restaurants.

David Liu (39:45)
True. Yeah, exactly.

Yes, that's true. The creative team breaks through. But they're doing really well across the board. I don't know what they're doing, but I don't know how they're doing it, but they're crushing it.

Alan Li (39:51)
But yeah.

I don't know what they feed them over there to create K-pop and become such culture carriers throughout the world. It's been impressive.

David Liu (40:00)
Right, right, right. Yeah.

Yeah. And so watching him build that and then the lease was up, they couldn't afford it, it was on Mercer, it middle of Soho, he moved ⁓ his operations out to Ditmes and they launched Purple Yam and when they needed funding for it, I lent them money.

It was money I was never going to see come back. I knew that. And I felt like I was a patron of the arts. I wanted him to continue cooking. I wanted him and Amy to be able to continue to, you know, create this amazing experience. They've since retired and they had to close and it was heartbreaking. But it was an incredible run and the food was incredible. that was my understanding of how restaurants operated, right? Like, you know, there's no concept of like, oh, invest and, you know, and...

exit, like what is a restaurant exit? I don't think I've ever heard of one. But I feel like things have changed now and one of the opportunities that we see is that in the past a lot of the private equity firms and the big finance people, they only got interested in hospitality if it was like, well let's buy Olive Garden or Red Lobster, they're in trouble.

loaded up with debt, shut down a third of their storefronts, get rid of the free breadsticks, know, squeeze a profit and then flip it. And I think a lot of...

them are now realizing that actually if you want to create value, it's going from one to three to four or five doors to like 20 to 30 doors to maybe even more. if you have a base model that's replicable and profitable and you can start building out, there's a real...

there's a lot of money to be made. There's a huge opportunity. And so that's the dream we're chasing now. We think in five years, if we could have 20 or 30 of these around the country, it's servicing communities in the way that we service our community here, we could create something really unique and different and could be transformative for the industry.

Alan Li (42:15)
Hmm. What do you think the market size for this is or how many restaurants can Kinjo get to, you know, at the at the end state?

David Liu (42:25)
Um, you know, literally every like every city in America, every city in America. And, know, like back at, um, uh, the nod, we had offices in Austin, we had offices in Omaha, we had in LA, we had it in Redding, California. And then, you know, and when I went out to see my staff and Omaha, we got to, you know, nice dinners and stuff. It's like, I could see an omakase restaurant, like a Kinjo omakase in Omaha.

You know, I can see one in Des Moines. I can see one in Minneapolis. mean, there could be hundreds of these.

Alan Li (43:01)
Interesting.

Yeah, this is a very interesting insight because, you know, why isn't there a good Omokase in non-coastal cities? know, people should have access everywhere to this.

David Liu (43:13)
Yeah. And you know, even in Brooklyn today, like, you know, it's amazing when you see people and they come in like, yeah, I've never tried omakase before. And when they walk out, they're like, my gosh, it was incredible. You know, you know, that excitement. Like, think about that. Like, when was the last time you walked out of restaurant with that kind of excitement? You know, and I feel like that's a bit of what we're promoting and marketing and what we're creating for people. It's like this.

Alan Li (43:27)
Yeah.

David Liu (43:42)
moment of discovery, you this ⁓ new experience, you're being hand fed by someone, you're watching them prepare this piece with incredible like, you know, skill. And so I, it feels like a no brainer, like it feels like, of course this will happen. We just want to be the brand that brings it there. And if we're not, someone else will for sure. Like it's, it's just going to happen. you know, and there are a lot of...

groups out there that are doing it, but they're all doing it on the high end side, which is kind of, I mean, I get it. And again, I don't want to yuck their yum. It's a great approach. ⁓ But omakase was the original street food. Like in the Edo period, like it was created as almost like a ⁓ stand by the sidewalk or by the street where the fishermen would come with their fresh cats of the day and they would like make

pieces of nigiri for people to have. And then you come up to the stand and you just ate what was caught and what was fresh and you until you're full and then you left. I feel like we in the West turned it into this luxury item. It first appeared on the lower right hand part of the menu that said omakase, like $300. And then these dedicated omakase counters appeared and it was like $200, $300, $700 a seat.

You know, those are incredible experiences and I love going to them, but that's not what we want to create. We want this to be far more accessible. We want people to be like, wow, I'm jonesing for some good sushi. Let's go to, let's go to Kindred tonight, and ⁓ have it be accessible to everybody.

Alan Li (45:19)
Hmm.

I like that. ⁓ David, what is your day to day look like now with, with Kenjo?

David Liu (45:30)
⁓ Fortunately, they don't need me to do anything here because I'd be a disaster. I did work in restaurants when I was a kid. I was dishwashed at a Japanese restaurant called Chocho-san up in Thornwood in Westchester. ⁓ I had to bartend down in Soho and I was told by one of my patrons I was the worst bartender he'd ever experienced. ⁓ I was a short order cook.

Alan Li (45:58)
Why was that? What

did you do wrong?

David Liu (46:00)
Oh my

god, I didn't know what I was doing. The guy ordered a Tom Collins. I was like going through the recipe book and I was just kept pouring. He was like, I just kept pouring more and more stuff in there. I mean, he was very sweet because he still tipped me because I think he thought I was cute. But I was like, oh, no, it's so embarrassing. And then and then I was like a short order cook at the Tunnel Cafe on 33rd Street, like flipping burgers. mean, this was not my I was terrible at it. That terrible.

Alan Li (46:06)
Haha

⁓ man.

David Liu (46:26)
When I was a waiter, I like, bring glasses of water one at a time, as opposed to like, I was not efficient. My brain didn't work that way. So fortunately, they don't need me here. My job is to find the other locations, find the other partners, and find the money and the investors. Johnny has got the food down. have Yudi and Bertha. Bertha is our general manager. Yudi is our captain. We have the most amazing staff here. ⁓

Alan Li (46:27)
I

I see.

That's great. You're

the evangelist.

David Liu (46:56)
And Dan, my CFO.

Yeah, I'm the evangelist, exactly.

Alan Li (46:59)
I love

that. ⁓ there's a great restaurant that just opened up in Dumbo. We just had her on the podcast. Actually. It's called Ziggy's, ⁓ Helen Zang.

David Liu (47:08)
my god, I love

Helen. I love Helen. I'm Helen's biggest fan. Yes. She's fantastic.

Alan Li (47:11)
Oh, she's great. The pizza's amazing.

The cocktails were exceptional. I was very impressed for it, especially for a kid-friendly place. Yeah.

David Liu (47:21)
No, totally.

And so she's someone who's like doing it right. And hopefully we'll get like richly rewarded for it because she built it for the community. You know, it's like the space she took over, we've watched like three or four restaurants churn through and each one of them came in with this notion that, my God, the Dumbo is this fancy schmancy place and everyone's rich. So let's charge $20 cocktails. Let's, you know, let's serve a pasta plate and charge $30 and like, and

Alan Li (47:30)
Yeah.

David Liu (47:51)
She was like, no, I want to build something for the community. Our community is like lot of young families. Make it kid friendly, make it affordable, have your hours be relevant to the young couples here. so, yeah, I'm a huge fan. If there's one other place I'll go to in Dumbo, it's her place.

Alan Li (48:13)
I love it. love it. ⁓ David, sort of looking back on your extensive career and journey, and now, you know, starting Kintio and getting into the restaurant and hospitality space, ⁓ is there anything you would have changed knowing what you know now?

David Liu (48:33)
Uhhh...

You know, there's, there are probably lots of little decisions that could have ⁓ reduced the pain factor of some of this stuff, because you're just learning as you go. But those are less consequential. ⁓ I probably wouldn't change anything. I mean, it's been an incredibly strange ⁓ journey with twists and turns. And my advice to a lot of young people, and my kids included, is...

You you can't really plan for the future, but you can plan to be prepared for the unexpected twists and turns. And that's usually when good things happen. It's when you're prepared to actually take advantage of the serendipitous moments. And I would say serendipity has played a far greater role in the journey of my life than probably most, and has made me ⁓ really conscious of what it requires

to be open to that and to maintain a state of curiosity, ⁓ to be willing to learn about launching a restaurant, running an oyster farm. You just have to be embracing of what the world suddenly sends your direction as opposed to, wait a minute, this is my path. I'm just gonna stick with my path. I need to get from here to there. Because then you lose all the incredible things that are probably beckoning you but you are not paying attention to.

Alan Li (49:54)
Mm.

That's great. And David, I also wanted to hear a little bit about how it's been working with your wife and being both a wife and business partner for so long as well. ⁓ My wife also helps me a lot with things that I do. So I'd love to hear a little bit more about that.

David Liu (50:14)
Yeah, it's just-

Yeah, well, we joke, we say don't try this at home. It's not for the faint of heart. It's been, the highs are higher than anything else. The lows are lower than any experience you could possibly have. mean, I think Carly and I compliment each other really well. Like we are opposites, which make our fights like unbelievably intense.

Alan Li (50:22)
Hahaha. ⁓

David Liu (50:48)
But it means that we're able to cover more ground and execute on just about anything we do in a way that ⁓ allows us to, I think, really take advantage of our experience and our skill sets. She's really good with the details and the design and the messaging and the marketing. And so she's been helping out with all that stuff, which I would know how to even begin focusing

that stuff. But I seriously recommend people not to work with their spouses. Because part of the problem is there's a practical issue where if you are working together, you're actually doubling down on the risk of that operation. If you're a couple and you both have different jobs, one goes off and does this entrepreneurial thing, you have the stability of this other.

salaries and stuff. But when you have two people working the same thing and, you know, launching and starting businesses is really hard and it's fraud, you know, that puts a lot more pressure, undue pressure. And that kind of pressure and that kind of stress will force you to make bad decisions or it doesn't give you the ability to make the right decisions because you're in a panic mode, you're in fight and flight mode. And then the other side is, you know,

Alan Li (51:51)
Yeah.

David Liu (52:13)
Normal couples come home and they say, honey, know that guy Alan, what a jerk. Like, do you know he did blah, blah, blah. And then you guys dispatched me like, wow, he's such a jerk. you know, it's like, but now when you're working together, you come back, you're like, oh my God, look, that Alan guy, he's really a jerk. He's like, but is he, like, did you hear what he said? And you're like, whoa, what are you talking about? You taking his son and it's like, and it just creates undue stress and conflict. You know, so.

Alan Li (52:19)
you

Yeah.

I see. But David, you

made it work.

David Liu (52:44)
We didn't make it work. mean, part of it was like, look, we built a wedding company. The founders of the wedding company can't separate. like, we're hand-cuffed. Yeah, we had to make it work. Exactly. Exactly, we had make it work.

Alan Li (52:50)
⁓ you found the one loophole. You found the one loophole to make it work if you were starting a business together. ⁓

That's incredible. ⁓ Well, David, this has been a lot of fun. ⁓ If people want to follow along the journey or get involved, ⁓ what's the best way for them to do so?

David Liu (53:10)
Yeah, mean, reaching out to me, I'm always open to chat and to learn from them as well to impart whatever knowledge I have that could potentially help people. ⁓ Like I said, I'm sort of in that give back phase of my life where it's, there's one thing I feel like us Asians have been really bad at, we haven't been helpful to each other. At least my generation. think your younger generation, there's a lot more community being built and a lot more.

generosity of spirit. But my generation, think the opportunities were so scarce that like you got the feeling that once you got in the room, you're like, okay, I'm here. There's only room for one of us. So like everyone else, got to figure it out. ⁓ Whereas I feel like we're really at a time now where it's super important to like lean into our community and to, you know, help each other advance, you know, in various forms and really to take what I would call positions of power.

where we actually have influence and the ability to make change and the ability to make policy and to ideally create a place where people aren't afraid of us.

Alan Li (54:19)
Yeah, I love that. We'll include some links in the show notes to you as well. yeah, I really appreciate you taking the time to do this. This is a lot of fun.

David Liu (54:21)
Cool.

Yeah,

and if anyone's in Brooklyn, come on down. We have like amazing Pan-Asian spirits, incredible Korean. I mean, the Koreans just came up. They just won the best whiskey last year. I mean, they're just literally crushing it on all fronts. There's a Korean whiskey, yeah, in the world whiskey competition.

Alan Li (54:41)
The, wait, Korea did? my gosh.

Well, I also saw that Korea just won the best croissant. It was like a, it was a baking competition in Paris or something, but they won the best croissant. that's incredible. My wife is Korean. So ⁓ we visit quite a bit in Korea and I'm just fascinated by the attention to detail and the hospitality.

David Liu (54:52)
No way, really?

my god

That's amazing.

Okay, good.

Yeah.

Alan Li (55:11)
and the innovation that happens there, it's incredible.

David Liu (55:14)
totally.

Yeah, and the entrepreneurship too. It's like, it's intense. It's fantastic.

Alan Li (55:20)
Yeah.

All right, David. Well, I'm to let you go, thanks again. yeah, our audience, think they're going to they're going to really love this one.

David Liu (55:28)
Thanks for