Community Highlights: Meet Ashely Xie & Hedy Yu of Rooted Fare

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ashely Xie & Hedy Yu.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Ashely Xie: Hi there, we’re Ashely Xie & Hedy Yu, daughters of Chinese immigrants, childhood friends, and co-founders of Rooted Fare.

I grew up in a family of immigrant restaurateurs and have always loved being in the kitchen and making food for my friends and family. After college, I knew my passion for food was more than a hobby. I cooked on small farms, worked at food-related nonprofits, interned at Momofuku, learned food policy at the NYC Health Department, and received my master’s in Food Studies at NYU, where a food business class and professor taught me about the intersection of food and social entrepreneurship. My class assignment on supporting the immigrant chef community became a passion project in the pandemic and now it’s my full-time venture. And even though I wasn’t sure if following my intuition and abandoning a traditional career path was the right choice at the time, it’s very cool to see how my life experiences and what felt like random internships in various fields in the food industry have led me to where I am now. One of my favorite parts has been meeting and reconnecting with a lot of amazing people along the way, like Hedy!

Hedy Yu: I was lucky to have reconnected with Ashely during the pandemic at just the right time when both of us were looking for something purposeful to work on! Late last year, I saw a LinkedIn post about Ashely starting Rooted Fare and reached out to congratulate her! In our catch-up call, I was reminded of my love for how food is a universal language that can bring us together — I realized my whole life’s trajectory had been set by that very love, which came about from some of my fondest childhood memories hearing my parents weave the tapestry of our family story around the dining table in the summers my dad visited.

This realization that story enables connection and empowerment led me to capture Chinese migrant workers’ stories on film, write culture pieces for newspapers, study and work in digital and traditional marketing, and, finally, work on storytelling and marketing for Rooted Fare with Ashely today! I love that we have this opportunity to create products and tell stories that help consumers access flavor and cultural connection and immigrant chefs share their fare and finally be financially and socially recognized for their contributions.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
We’ve been very fortunate to have met a lot of business mentors and coaches who have good intentions but strong opinions on how we should operate. For example, people have told us that the Asian American market we strive to serve is too niche and small. As Asian Americans who grew up feeling boxed in and erased by Western grocery stores and society and seeing our immigrant parents and relatives not receive the same celebration and recognition as their white chef counterparts, we knew that we and our community deserved to be the focus. What has further fueled us along was interviewing more than 100 other Asian Americans and hearing them echo our sentiments. Almost all of them crave but are unable to cook foods they grew up with.

We’ve wrestled with self-doubt and ran in circles, but the answers are in ourselves and our numbers, like the fact that Asian Americans are the fastest-growing consumer segment in the US with $1.2 trillion spending power. We’ve learned to stick to our hunches, stay talking to Asian American consumers, and grow thicker skin. We’ve also met people who fully support what we’re doing!

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Rooted Fare?
Rooted Fare creates delicious cultural sauces to help home cooks nail flavor every time. We partner and profit-share with immigrant chefs who’ve cooked their recipes for decades to deliver unparalleled flavor to our customers.

Right now, we’ve partnered with immigrant chef Wenling Peng, who is originally from Sichuan, China and now owns Cup Noodles Shop in Rancho Cucamonga to make three special sauces. We have a Roasted Peanut Dan Dan Sauce, which is a delicious, savory sauce made with freshly roasted peanuts, garlic and ginger that you can dip vegetables or add to noodles.

The second is Dry Chili Sichuan Sauce. It’s spicy, garlicky, tangy and sweet all at the same time, which is perfect to toss on leftovers, drizzle on salads, or marinate your favorite proteins. And the last one is Black Sesame Crunchy Butter, which is made with a blend of roasted black sesame seeds, peanuts, and breadcrumbs to add an addictive crunch on toast, sliced apples, and even vanilla ice cream.

We’re really proud to take part in the community in Los Angeles. On one end, we get to develop and taste delicious products with local immigrant chefs and tell their stories; and on the other end, we’re able to meet amazing customers at pop-ups around the city and connect and collaborate with local retailers like Sesame LA, Open Market, Golden Sage Market, and Magnolia Mini Mart, who took a chance on us and want to provide their community with new socially-minded food products.

What matters most to you? Why?
We feel really lucky to be able to do right by the communities we serve every day. For our consumers, it means giving them cultural flavors they always deserved but couldn’t always access in an easy and honest way. One of our customers sent us an email one day writing that when she tasted our Black Sesame Crunchy Butter, it brought her back to Hong Kong when she was a young child. For our immigrant chef partners, it means carrying out our social mission of providing them with an additional revenue stream and sharing their stories. I was brought up by strong female family members in the restaurant industry as role models. I also saw their challenges of navigating language barriers and maintaining a stable stream of income to support their families. It’s an honor to work with them because we see our parents, loved ones, and ourselves in them. I think that all people deserve equal opportunity to succeed and we’re putting our all to make that a reality for immigrant chefs.

Pricing:

• $15 for each sauce and 10% off your first order when you subscribe to our newsletter.

Contact Info:

• Email: hello@rootedfare.com
• Website: rootedfare.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rooted.fare/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Rooted-Fare-101285714904616/?modal=composer

Image Credits:
All personal and additional photos: Hedy Yu Except: – Photo of immigrant chef Wenling (older woman with dark green apron in kitchen): Ashely Xie – Photo of Ashely and Hedy behind table with their sauces on display: Christina Galindo (@capturesbytinaaa)