Meet Jacob Ji of The Bento Place in Koreatown

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jacob Ji.

Jacob, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
All three of us, Sungwon Choi, Junghoon Ji, and Heesang Yoo, were born and raised in Seoul, South Korea, one of the most densely populated city in the world. Consequently, there are many convenient stores that offer various bento boxes: a single-portion takeout or home-packed meal that are common in Asian cuisine. Even though there are many different choices, none of them were made out of fresh and high-quality ingredients. We wanted to make something that is actually worthwhile for people to visit and pay for their hard-earned money. Therefore, we not only learned recipes from one of the most admired chefs in South Korea but also made our own recipes in order to serve food packed with full of flavors. Of course, while inventing our unique recipes, we failed countless times but eventually came up with recipes that stand out from other restaurants, for example, our very own yuzu sauce. We never hesitate to give up our time in effort to consistently enhance the flavor of our food and to introduce new food ideas.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
It has been a rough road for us to get to the point where we are at right now. Since we are mere recent graduates, we had absolutely no choice but to start the business with very limited budget for marketing and advertisement. Consequently, we’ve only had around ten customers per day when we first opened up our business. What was the most painful was to think that there are countless potential customers out there who would love our food and spirits, when we had no way to inform them of our existence at the time. Nevertheless, we believed that the only way to keep us going was to continue using the healthiest and freshest ingredients for making healthy bento boxes that are packed with full of flavors. We would like to give special thanks to our early customers who tried our food and promoted us through words of mouth.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
The Bento Place is located in the heart of Koreatown, Los Angeles. At The Bento Place, we offer various types of bento boxes of home-cooked meals. We also have sushi rolls, salads, sandwiches, and noodles. We are the very first Asian style grab-and-go restaurant in Los Angeles that offers extremely quick yet delicious food. We are specialized in taking catering orders from small to large companies for their regular employee meals or for special occasions. Our first priority is to maintain the quality of our food and being creative at the same time for customers who order from us every day. I can proudly say that we are unique and far different from other take-out restaurants because we just do not put our food in the bento box, but we think about every other aspect that might impact the overall quality of the food: just to list a few, presentation, balance of diets, and balance of flavors.

Pricing:

• Bulgogi Bento ($9.99)
• Spicy BBQ Chicken Bento ($8.99)
• Tonkatsu Bento ($8.99)

Contact Info:

• Address: 1110 s. Western Ave. Suite 101, The Bento Place, Los Angeles, California 90006
• Website: thebentoplace.com
• Phone: 323-643-4919
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebentoplace/
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/the-bento-place-los-angeles

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