Today we’d like to introduce you to Simon Yip
Hi Simon, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I attended college twice in my life but never graduated. It wasn’t due to poor grades, but rather because I found that I could learn the necessary skills on my own. At the age of 16, I taught myself coding and graphic design software and even created a website with 100k members while still in high school. By the time I was 21, I had left college and secured a full-time job. In 2009, I founded my own company specializing in graphic design, web design, and programming for clients.
In 2018, after nearly a decade in business, I faced a slowdown and decided to return to college. However, I ultimately dropped out again in 2021 as I found that much of the material covered was already familiar to me or easily accessible online. Despite this, my time at college provided me with valuable interactions with Gen Z, especially during the challenging times of COVID-19. At the beginning, I worried if I could handle the coursework and group project in college because I might be too old. However, it turned out I was able to manage the homework and group projects when I worked with younger adults. Those experiences helped me to regain my confidence in managing a business again because a good leadership play an important role in order to be success.
During covid, we have seen a lot of bad leadership in our society. Poor leaderships across politic and business sectors. The whole world was lost, and till today, all of us are still paying the costs of covid. Inflation, health care system failing, low wages but expensive housing, and etc. The costs of living was raising and I eventually have to make up my mind and go “do something” and get myself productive again, just because the cost of living is so high and I couldn’t make a living.
Ultimately, I decided to run a business again. I took over Miss Cheese in Fall 2022 because I believe I could use my coding and marketing skills could breathe new life into this business.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The road was never easy. Miss Cheese was opened in 2019 during covid. After covid, people started going out again and we got higher sales month after month until 2024. One of the biggest obstacles was the fulfillment capacity. Since our Japanese Souffle Pancakes are our most popular items but it takes at least 15 mins to make one. If we get more orders, customers might have to wait longer and some of them will get upset about the wait time. Moreover, during Covid, most businesses had to hire more than enough employees to fulfill the orders because social distancing, and employees got sick more frequently. In the post-covid era, everyone needed to adapt to the changes. While we could not afford to hire more than enough people to fulfill the orders, when customers had to wait longer than they expected, they might give us poor reviews on yelp, or google.
However, the long wait time actually caused by the productivity bottleneck because not only the space has limit, our time has and our budget has limit. If there is a productivity bottleneck, adding more workers won’t resolve the problem.
It was about the workflows, and also better customer care. Therefore, we developed new workflows, invested on new requirements, and developed our own algorithm for our order management system to maximize our labor efficiency. With a strong programming background, I designed a system to calculate the order completion time based on different factors to keep our customer stay informed. We also offer free complimentary drinks, snacks or gifts to the customers who are willing to wait longer so our crew members can focus on the orders instead of working under a lot of avoidable stresses and errors. So far, we rarely hear complaints about the wait time now.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Miss Cheese Tea Cafe is a cafe located in Pasadena, California, on the historic 66. The concept of the name Miss Cheese was actually from our cheese foam tea. The intriguing name “Miss Cheese” originates from this specialty, a delightful concoction also known as sea salt cream or sea salt cheese foam, with roots tracing back to Taiwan. But it’s not just about the tea; our cafe is renowned for pairing cheese foam with fluffy Japanese soufflé pancakes, which have become our top-selling non-beverage item. These pancakes draw visitors from afar, eager to savor their cotton-like texture and exquisite taste.
Unlike American pancakes, the Japanese soufflé pancakes are more time consuming and always needed to prepare them freshly for the best taste. The texture of the Japanese soufflé Pancakes are like cottony clouds. It was first introduced to Americans in the mid-2010s and it went popular on the social media – the jiggly souffle videos.
What sets Miss Cheese apart from a typical boba tea shop is our exclusive offering of soufflé pancakes—a challenging feat not easily replicated by other establishments due to the intricate preparation process and high skill level required. Our secret lies in managing this complexity without incurring excessive costs or long wait times for our customers.
At Miss Cheese Tea Cafe, we’re dedicated to creating joyful connections through food. We’ve cultivated an inviting atmosphere where customers can enjoy the anticipation of their order alongside friends or family, with entertainment options like games, arcades, and books while they are waiting for their souffle. We enjoy seeing customers’ smile when we pass the fluffy and jiggly souffle to their hand. People like to shake the plate and see the fluffy pancakes shake, capturing the moment and sharing on the social media. This commitment to creating memorable experiences distinguishes us in the culinary world and underpins our mission at Miss Cheese Tea Cafe.
Are there any apps, books, podcasts, blogs or other resources you think our readers should check out?
1. In Time (Movie from 2011)
2. 1984 by George Orwell
To me, the idea of utopia doesn’t hold true because of our unrealistic expectations about how the world should treat us. The movie “In Time” made a significant impact on me when I was younger, shedding light on capitalism, while “1984” didn’t fully resonate with me until my 30s. “In Time” delves into how billionaires monopolize resources and the government’s role in redistributing them. In other words, wealth is not a concept of the amount of currency you own. It’s about who control the distribution. We can have a large sum of money, we can still be poor if we can’t access essential resources. Doing business is about creating something in demand and combat the competitions. In Time gave me a basic concept of the concept of money which helped me to run a business in my later time.
Business is about meeting demand and facing competition, a concept I grasped from “In Time” and applied in my later entrepreneurial endeavors. On the other hand, “1984” delves into complex themes of freedom and dictatorship. It warns that while advocating for wealth redistribution, we may unwittingly steer towards a dystopian society.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://misscheese.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/misscheeseteacafe/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/misscheesetea
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/miss-cheese-tea-cafe-pasadena-2
Image Credits
Simon Yip
