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David Chang is a salesman and a businessman first. I get the point being made, but keep in mind that he is a brand, and part of that is the stories he tells. H

David Chang is a salesman and a businessman first. I get the point being made, but keep in mind that he is a brand, and part of that is the stories he tells. He has slapped his name on so many subpar food goods that were a total disappointment that I actually have started avoiding things marketed under his brand name. He might do things the hard way in his restaurants, but they certainly aren't ensuring tasty or high quality goods under his brand. I would rather he do things in a way that makes sense and provides the best tasting food. More broadly, the point is that you should take advice only from people whose successes you want to emulate. The actual advice I get out of this article is: Tell stories that paint the picture you want your customers to have about your product.

nemo44x 2y ago
He's really trying to build an empire based on his name and recognition from a few good restaurants he founded. I think he wants to scale it as much as he can right now and sell it. He has commented before that a restaurant based around the chef's personality isn't really a business you can sell one day. But products based around the celebrity chef are. But yeah, most things he's putting his name on are so super over priced they are clearly selling to people with no price sensitivity. I'm sure his margins are fantastic and he'll get a big payday if he sells at just the right time.
- refulgentis 2y ago
  I don't really understand any of this this thread, there's a lot of conflicting ideas. David Chang owns a frozen food empire that's super over priced and super low quality that's successful enough that he'll make a lot of money if he sells at the right time?
  - dghlsakjg 2y ago
    He has a personal brand built around his name and his in-person restaurant group, which are reportedly VERY good. Good enough that he has two Michelin stars. He has used that reputation to start selling groceries under the same name. They are not very good in many cases, but he is able to charge high prices because of good marketing and his famous brand (Momofuku). As an example he sells, what I judge to be not very good ramen noodles, for $4/pack. That is a lot of money for mediocre ramen noodles, even if it does have a famous name on the package. A successful business is one that makes profits, not one that makes high quality goods. A profitable business can be retained for the profits, or it can be sold to some other entity. A chef, meanwhile, only makes money while they work.
    - radicality 2y ago
      Had two Michelin stars. Momofuku Ko closed recently. I went once around 2016, partly exactly because of his name and brand. It was ok but nothing memorable, I think he wasn’t even there. I guess the closing probably aligns with his goals of maximizing a brand / money, and not actually cooking good food.
      - nemo44x 2y ago
        Wow, I didn't realize Ko closed either. I went there around the same time and really liked it. But even then you could start to feel the fade a bit in what Chang did. He certainly had his moment and he was very influential. I still remember the first time I ate at Noodle Bar - was amazing. It looks like they've closed nearly every restaurant they had except a couple Noodle Bars in NYC and Vegas and some other restaurant. Rough times for that industry. Ssäm Bar was a pretty good place, sort of shocked they couldn't keep the lights on there.
      - tptacek 2y ago
        Ssam Bar was really good when I went there (also closed, though). It was a not-fucking-around good fine-dining/gastropub hybrid. The Momofuku cookbook is also excellent, and well written.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - bigstrat2003 2y ago
      > A successful business is one that makes profits, not one that makes high quality goods. This attitude is the root of the problem with business culture in America today. A business needs to be profitable and make good quality stuff to be truly successful.
  - nemo44x 2y ago
    Yeah, pretty much. He's leveraging his celebrity to sell over priced food relative to its quality (it's not bad per-se, but not worth the money) and if he can sell it before credibility is ruined and growth stops, he'll make a lot of money. Did that make it easier for you to understand?
  - bluGill 2y ago
    Pretty much. A great chef can only make so many meals in a day. That limits how much money you can make. So if you want to be more than a middle class income (even that is hard to reach) you have to do something else - become a brand that people will pay for, or start a business.
    - tptacek 2y ago
      The great chefs are virtually never making any meals in a day; the actual test of a high-end chef is recruiting and retaining a CDC, sous, and line cooks that can deliver on the promises the exec makes. Grant Achatz has held on to 3 Michelin stars for I don't know how long, but I also don't know when the last time was he spent a night on the line. I assume it was a long, long time ago. All this to say, going big doesn't necessarily mean blowing out all your quality.
  - any_throwaway 2y ago
    I'm not even sure where the over-priced and low quality comments are coming from. The noodles are about 2.25 if you buy direct and the chili crunches are all great and highly addictive. I guess if you instacart individual noodle packs you would have a different take
    - dghlsakjg 2y ago
      $18 + shipping for a 5 pack on his own website. $97 with free shipping for 30 packs. Maybe I'm seeing different prices since I'm in Canada? Even at $3.23 for the bulk price, it is an expensive bowl of ramen. I buy my chili crunch from an asian market, and both their fresh stuff and their packaged imported stuff is cheaper and tastes better. David Chang's advantage is that he is selling in normal grocery stores so there isn't really competition. Put his stuff on a shelf at an asian market where there is 5 or 6 different brands and a consumer base that has been buying this for years, and they won't sell.
    - nemo44x 2y ago
      His chili crunch is fine but costs significantly more than many other chili crunch brands which are fine too. You're paying for the Momofuku branding on it that makes certain types of consumers feel good about themselves. God, don't get me started on how insane his asking price for the "restaurant grade" soy sauce is. This is all subjective opinion on the quality and cost of good, of course. But the costs per ounce are very easy to shop.
      - radicaldreamer 2y ago
        His chili crunch has a lot of sugar, so it tastes great. Most other chili crunches are more subdued on that front.
      - chambored 2y ago
        The Momofuku soy sauce is $1.31/oz while the Kikkoman’s soy sauce is $0.37/oz. Truly ridiculous pricing.
        2y ago
- hinkley 2y ago
  This is all reminding me of the mean dude in Ratatouille. Only the mean dude is now also Gasteau.
  - throw4847285 2y ago
    I was thinking the exact same thing! Lucky I searched the page for Ratatouille before commenting. Ratatouille is one of my all time favorite movies, but if you read it as a metaphor for director Brad Bird's own career, it's hard not to feel like it lets Walt Disney off the hook. Often in real life, the creative genius who founded the enterprise and the sycophant who has taken over it in his absence are both assholes. Though Ratatouille does touch on this by making Gusteau an idealized figment of Remy's imagination, who is shocked when he hears that the real man had a child via an affair.
hinkley 2y ago
> Tell stories that paint the picture you want your customers to have about your product. There’s one interpretation of the idea of business as not selling products but stories. Apple knows this and clearly exhibits it with every product demo. It’s all a story. One that I enjoy. But low priced groceries also sell a story, about how a beleaguered mother can save a few dollars here in order to avoid bouncing a check or to buy herself one nice thing. Or a kid who wants something sweet and already blew their allowance on video games. A pattern they will repeat again every few months since it worked before. Chang is definitely selling two stories and it sounds like they are a bit discordant when taken together.
- cm11 2y ago
  Michelin stars seem to have the dynamics of a loss leader. Particularly as it's become known that many of the restaurants are badly unprofitable—and moreso if you think the chefs should earn something commensurate to their presumable talent or passion (you don't have to think this). It seems to be more the case that every award or signal of quality is capable of (and actually being used) this way. Some people, like Chang, may know it and treat it transactionally as such. $X for a star, which leads to Y amount of exposure. Others, may know it or not, but treat it like a goal in life either way. It's very possible of course that many of the former start as the latter people until they later [realize/sell out/give up]. I guess it makes sense. The world is more competitive. Information is freely available. You need to find some other moat. With information and access to everything, a moat that might have been quality or talent, is more easily captured by buying the signal (which to be clear can include buying and maintaining the quality). Then once you have the signal, well, it's up to you whether you still need or want the quality. When push comes to shove, it's probably the case that the signal is worth more than the quality.
  - knowitnone 2y ago
    I don't believe you. If a restaurant is unprofitable, it would be closed. Nobody in their right mind would choose to continue losing money.
    - 2y ago
chubot 2y ago
I've been wondering about this for YEARS now: WTF happened to Milk Bar in NYC? Based on the taste and quality, it seems like the most egregious case of "selling out" I've ever seen. It seems like an overnight change to me David Chang and Christina Tosi worked together, and I remember seeing a bunch of their marketing on Netflix https://rseventures.com/milk-bars-christina-tosi-went-momofuku-employee-bakery-chain-ceo/ https://rseventures.com/milk-bars-christina-tosi-went-momofu... In 2015 the location in East Village was still GREAT. Interesting deserts, seemingly made by hand, with high quality ingredients Then I go back a few years later, and it's this CHAIN and the food is inedible. I take one bite, can't eat it, and throw it away It just tastes like sugary processed food now, like Twinkies or Chips Ahoy or something I also saw Milk Bar products in Whole Foods, bought it, took one bite, and threw it away, and never bought it again It's just weird to me that a chef would let the quality sink so low, so fast. Usually the "founders" care about quality, and are mission-focused I always thought that process took decades, and changes in ownership. (Actually I am re-reading Pollan's account of the "big organic" Cascadian Farms brand now -- another very interesting case of counterculture going mainstream / industrial, but the change was more gradual I think)
- geodel 2y ago
  As others have alluded too. At this point SC is high on its own supply. Create a food empire, hang out with rich or famous chefs. Create millions of aspiring chumps who'd take his words as gospel. Edit SC -> DC (David Chang)
  - apsurd 2y ago
    Who or what is SC?
    - infecto 2y ago
      Typo, DC not SC. David Chang
  - detourdog 2y ago
    You want to be chef you have to be in the kitchen.
weaksauce 2y ago
he’s also reportedly a jerk to his staff and yells at them. and sues mom and pop shops for using his trademark of a really generic term... something like spicy chili oil or very similar.
- jsbg 2y ago
  In the US, trademarks have to be enforced to remain valid. https://www.justia.com/intellectual-property/trademarks/enforcement/ https://www.justia.com/intellectual-property/trademarks/enfo... "a failure to enforce a trademark by monitoring the mark for misuses will result in a weakening of the mark and loss of distinctiveness, which can lead to a loss of the trademark"
  - addicted 2y ago
    It’s annoying. Every time a company does basic enforcement they are required to by law to maintain their trademark, they get bonded and we go through the same cycle of outrage with the sensible people explaining that trademarks aren’t like patents and if someone is going around using your trademark, you will lose it. Then the outrage dies down only to have the cycle repeated a few weeks later.
    - dghlsakjg 2y ago
      He trademarked “chili crunch” which is just what that food is called. It’s like trying to trademark “breakfast cereal” or “hot sauce”. If it had gone to court he would have lost eventually since other people had been using that name earlier for the same product, and it was too broad
  - dghlsakjg 2y ago
    The problem is that the trademark was too generic (chili crunch, to be exact) and he was going after brands that sold a product that had always been known as that or crunchy chili oil, or chili crunch oil. He didn’t invent the food, and started going after small brands and people that had been selling it since before he had tried registering the trademark. He did eventually back down.
tempodox 2y ago
> Tell stories that paint the picture you want your customers to have about your product. Isn't that just called advertising? This is so blatantly obvious, it doesn't sound like much of an advice.
- rapind 2y ago
  Advertising is always attempting to disguise itself as anything other than advertising.
- dghlsakjg 2y ago
  Pretty much. I wasn't saying that this is a particularly insightful message. I was saying that the message I took from this story wasn't about doing things the hard way. Its a meta lesson about messaging and showmanship.
paxys 2y ago
Don't forget he filed a trademark for chili crunch sauce (which has been used in several Asian cuisines for literally centuries) and sued to stop smaller restaurants and businesses from selling it, and only backed down when there was public outcry.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- fsckboy 2y ago
  trademark refers to the name a product is sold as, not what the product is, and also has a local jurisdiction. What they do in Asia has nothing to do with trademarks in the US, and since not very much of Asia has spoken English for literally hundreds of years, I doubt they were calling it chili crunch sauce. I'm not defending Chang nor trademarks, just pointing out how they work legally and the flaws in the argument you're making. Remember, people called windows "windows", but they didn't sell products called Windows till Microsoft started and trademarked it.
  - shaklee3 2y ago
    I don't get your point. There are many other companies using the name chili crunch. He was not the first. But he tried to trademark it to stop all the others.
    - fsckboy 2y ago
      that he was not the first using that name in the US is a very good argument against a trademark in the US now that you've said that, but this is the first time that was said, is the point I was making
shaklee3 2y ago
He also tried to sue all the other small businesses using the chili crunch name. I stopped buying his after that.

nemo44x 2y ago

He's really trying to build an empire based on his name and recognition from a few good restaurants he founded. I think he wants to scale it as much as he can right now and sell it. He has commented before that a restaurant based around the chef's personality isn't really a business you can sell one day. But products based around the celebrity chef are. But yeah, most things he's putting his name on are so super over priced they are clearly selling to people with no price sensitivity. I'm sure his margins are fantastic and he'll get a big payday if he sells at just the right time.

refulgentis 2y ago
I don't really understand any of this this thread, there's a lot of conflicting ideas. David Chang owns a frozen food empire that's super over priced and super low quality that's successful enough that he'll make a lot of money if he sells at the right time?
- dghlsakjg 2y ago
  He has a personal brand built around his name and his in-person restaurant group, which are reportedly VERY good. Good enough that he has two Michelin stars. He has used that reputation to start selling groceries under the same name. They are not very good in many cases, but he is able to charge high prices because of good marketing and his famous brand (Momofuku). As an example he sells, what I judge to be not very good ramen noodles, for $4/pack. That is a lot of money for mediocre ramen noodles, even if it does have a famous name on the package. A successful business is one that makes profits, not one that makes high quality goods. A profitable business can be retained for the profits, or it can be sold to some other entity. A chef, meanwhile, only makes money while they work.
  - radicality 2y ago
    Had two Michelin stars. Momofuku Ko closed recently. I went once around 2016, partly exactly because of his name and brand. It was ok but nothing memorable, I think he wasn’t even there. I guess the closing probably aligns with his goals of maximizing a brand / money, and not actually cooking good food.
    - nemo44x 2y ago
      Wow, I didn't realize Ko closed either. I went there around the same time and really liked it. But even then you could start to feel the fade a bit in what Chang did. He certainly had his moment and he was very influential. I still remember the first time I ate at Noodle Bar - was amazing. It looks like they've closed nearly every restaurant they had except a couple Noodle Bars in NYC and Vegas and some other restaurant. Rough times for that industry. Ssäm Bar was a pretty good place, sort of shocked they couldn't keep the lights on there.
    - tptacek 2y ago
      Ssam Bar was really good when I went there (also closed, though). It was a not-fucking-around good fine-dining/gastropub hybrid. The Momofuku cookbook is also excellent, and well written.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - bigstrat2003 2y ago
    > A successful business is one that makes profits, not one that makes high quality goods. This attitude is the root of the problem with business culture in America today. A business needs to be profitable and make good quality stuff to be truly successful.
- nemo44x 2y ago
  Yeah, pretty much. He's leveraging his celebrity to sell over priced food relative to its quality (it's not bad per-se, but not worth the money) and if he can sell it before credibility is ruined and growth stops, he'll make a lot of money. Did that make it easier for you to understand?
- bluGill 2y ago
  Pretty much. A great chef can only make so many meals in a day. That limits how much money you can make. So if you want to be more than a middle class income (even that is hard to reach) you have to do something else - become a brand that people will pay for, or start a business.
  - tptacek 2y ago
    The great chefs are virtually never making any meals in a day; the actual test of a high-end chef is recruiting and retaining a CDC, sous, and line cooks that can deliver on the promises the exec makes. Grant Achatz has held on to 3 Michelin stars for I don't know how long, but I also don't know when the last time was he spent a night on the line. I assume it was a long, long time ago. All this to say, going big doesn't necessarily mean blowing out all your quality.
- any_throwaway 2y ago
  I'm not even sure where the over-priced and low quality comments are coming from. The noodles are about 2.25 if you buy direct and the chili crunches are all great and highly addictive. I guess if you instacart individual noodle packs you would have a different take
  - dghlsakjg 2y ago
    $18 + shipping for a 5 pack on his own website. $97 with free shipping for 30 packs. Maybe I'm seeing different prices since I'm in Canada? Even at $3.23 for the bulk price, it is an expensive bowl of ramen. I buy my chili crunch from an asian market, and both their fresh stuff and their packaged imported stuff is cheaper and tastes better. David Chang's advantage is that he is selling in normal grocery stores so there isn't really competition. Put his stuff on a shelf at an asian market where there is 5 or 6 different brands and a consumer base that has been buying this for years, and they won't sell.
  - nemo44x 2y ago
    His chili crunch is fine but costs significantly more than many other chili crunch brands which are fine too. You're paying for the Momofuku branding on it that makes certain types of consumers feel good about themselves. God, don't get me started on how insane his asking price for the "restaurant grade" soy sauce is. This is all subjective opinion on the quality and cost of good, of course. But the costs per ounce are very easy to shop.
    - radicaldreamer 2y ago
      His chili crunch has a lot of sugar, so it tastes great. Most other chili crunches are more subdued on that front.
    - chambored 2y ago
      The Momofuku soy sauce is $1.31/oz while the Kikkoman’s soy sauce is $0.37/oz. Truly ridiculous pricing.
      - 2y ago
hinkley 2y ago
This is all reminding me of the mean dude in Ratatouille. Only the mean dude is now also Gasteau.
- throw4847285 2y ago
  I was thinking the exact same thing! Lucky I searched the page for Ratatouille before commenting. Ratatouille is one of my all time favorite movies, but if you read it as a metaphor for director Brad Bird's own career, it's hard not to feel like it lets Walt Disney off the hook. Often in real life, the creative genius who founded the enterprise and the sycophant who has taken over it in his absence are both assholes. Though Ratatouille does touch on this by making Gusteau an idealized figment of Remy's imagination, who is shocked when he hears that the real man had a child via an affair.

hinkley 2y ago

> Tell stories that paint the picture you want your customers to have about your product. There’s one interpretation of the idea of business as not selling products but stories. Apple knows this and clearly exhibits it with every product demo. It’s all a story. One that I enjoy. But low priced groceries also sell a story, about how a beleaguered mother can save a few dollars here in order to avoid bouncing a check or to buy herself one nice thing. Or a kid who wants something sweet and already blew their allowance on video games. A pattern they will repeat again every few months since it worked before. Chang is definitely selling two stories and it sounds like they are a bit discordant when taken together.

cm11 2y ago
Michelin stars seem to have the dynamics of a loss leader. Particularly as it's become known that many of the restaurants are badly unprofitable—and moreso if you think the chefs should earn something commensurate to their presumable talent or passion (you don't have to think this). It seems to be more the case that every award or signal of quality is capable of (and actually being used) this way. Some people, like Chang, may know it and treat it transactionally as such. $X for a star, which leads to Y amount of exposure. Others, may know it or not, but treat it like a goal in life either way. It's very possible of course that many of the former start as the latter people until they later [realize/sell out/give up]. I guess it makes sense. The world is more competitive. Information is freely available. You need to find some other moat. With information and access to everything, a moat that might have been quality or talent, is more easily captured by buying the signal (which to be clear can include buying and maintaining the quality). Then once you have the signal, well, it's up to you whether you still need or want the quality. When push comes to shove, it's probably the case that the signal is worth more than the quality.
- knowitnone 2y ago
  I don't believe you. If a restaurant is unprofitable, it would be closed. Nobody in their right mind would choose to continue losing money.
  - 2y ago

chubot 2y ago

I've been wondering about this for YEARS now: WTF happened to Milk Bar in NYC? Based on the taste and quality, it seems like the most egregious case of "selling out" I've ever seen. It seems like an overnight change to me David Chang and Christina Tosi worked together, and I remember seeing a bunch of their marketing on Netflix https://rseventures.com/milk-bars-christina-tosi-went-momofuku-employee-bakery-chain-ceo/ https://rseventures.com/milk-bars-christina-tosi-went-momofu... In 2015 the location in East Village was still GREAT. Interesting deserts, seemingly made by hand, with high quality ingredients Then I go back a few years later, and it's this CHAIN and the food is inedible. I take one bite, can't eat it, and throw it away It just tastes like sugary processed food now, like Twinkies or Chips Ahoy or something I also saw Milk Bar products in Whole Foods, bought it, took one bite, and threw it away, and never bought it again It's just weird to me that a chef would let the quality sink so low, so fast. Usually the "founders" care about quality, and are mission-focused I always thought that process took decades, and changes in ownership. (Actually I am re-reading Pollan's account of the "big organic" Cascadian Farms brand now -- another very interesting case of counterculture going mainstream / industrial, but the change was more gradual I think)

geodel 2y ago
As others have alluded too. At this point SC is high on its own supply. Create a food empire, hang out with rich or famous chefs. Create millions of aspiring chumps who'd take his words as gospel. Edit SC -> DC (David Chang)
- apsurd 2y ago
  Who or what is SC?
  - infecto 2y ago
    Typo, DC not SC. David Chang
- detourdog 2y ago
  You want to be chef you have to be in the kitchen.

weaksauce 2y ago

he’s also reportedly a jerk to his staff and yells at them. and sues mom and pop shops for using his trademark of a really generic term... something like spicy chili oil or very similar.

jsbg 2y ago
In the US, trademarks have to be enforced to remain valid. https://www.justia.com/intellectual-property/trademarks/enforcement/ https://www.justia.com/intellectual-property/trademarks/enfo... "a failure to enforce a trademark by monitoring the mark for misuses will result in a weakening of the mark and loss of distinctiveness, which can lead to a loss of the trademark"
- addicted 2y ago
  It’s annoying. Every time a company does basic enforcement they are required to by law to maintain their trademark, they get bonded and we go through the same cycle of outrage with the sensible people explaining that trademarks aren’t like patents and if someone is going around using your trademark, you will lose it. Then the outrage dies down only to have the cycle repeated a few weeks later.
  - dghlsakjg 2y ago
    He trademarked “chili crunch” which is just what that food is called. It’s like trying to trademark “breakfast cereal” or “hot sauce”. If it had gone to court he would have lost eventually since other people had been using that name earlier for the same product, and it was too broad
- dghlsakjg 2y ago
  The problem is that the trademark was too generic (chili crunch, to be exact) and he was going after brands that sold a product that had always been known as that or crunchy chili oil, or chili crunch oil. He didn’t invent the food, and started going after small brands and people that had been selling it since before he had tried registering the trademark. He did eventually back down.

tempodox 2y ago

> Tell stories that paint the picture you want your customers to have about your product. Isn't that just called advertising? This is so blatantly obvious, it doesn't sound like much of an advice.

rapind 2y ago
Advertising is always attempting to disguise itself as anything other than advertising.
dghlsakjg 2y ago
Pretty much. I wasn't saying that this is a particularly insightful message. I was saying that the message I took from this story wasn't about doing things the hard way. Its a meta lesson about messaging and showmanship.

paxys 2y ago

Don't forget he filed a trademark for chili crunch sauce (which has been used in several Asian cuisines for literally centuries) and sued to stop smaller restaurants and businesses from selling it, and only backed down when there was public outcry.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
fsckboy 2y ago
trademark refers to the name a product is sold as, not what the product is, and also has a local jurisdiction. What they do in Asia has nothing to do with trademarks in the US, and since not very much of Asia has spoken English for literally hundreds of years, I doubt they were calling it chili crunch sauce. I'm not defending Chang nor trademarks, just pointing out how they work legally and the flaws in the argument you're making. Remember, people called windows "windows", but they didn't sell products called Windows till Microsoft started and trademarked it.
- shaklee3 2y ago
  I don't get your point. There are many other companies using the name chili crunch. He was not the first. But he tried to trademark it to stop all the others.
  - fsckboy 2y ago
    that he was not the first using that name in the US is a very good argument against a trademark in the US now that you've said that, but this is the first time that was said, is the point I was making

shaklee3 2y ago

He also tried to sue all the other small businesses using the chili crunch name. I stopped buying his after that.