Show me the...
When Clara and I started Queens four years ago, we had aspirations of raising the standards of Korean food here in the San Francisco Bay Area. We would cook out of a commissary kitchen in the East Bay and drive across the bridge, crisscrossing our way through the city to hand deliver food to our customers. Although it was a successful business model, it was inevitably unsustainable. If we were to have any shot of achieving the mission we had set out for, we needed more capital. So one (memorable) night at midnight when my mother in law was sleeping upstairs in our tiny loft studio, Clara and I sat down at our dining table and started writing up a business plan and pitch deck.
We now had a deck, but would anyone read it, digest it, and respond? Our neighbor at the time had a few venture capitalist and finance friends, and so we asked for an intro. Call after call, we were told the same thing: “seems like a good idea but what makes Queens different than other Korean concepts? I don’t see it.” It was frustrating and painful feeling like we were talking to a wall even after explaining our concept for over an hour.
But it was also the a-ha! moment for us newbie fundraisers. This whole time we were trying to TELL investors why they should back our vision instead of SHOWING them. Instead of continuing to cold-email strangers, we emailed all of our previous customers who had purchased a meal set and tasted the product and more importantly those who we had interacted with when we delivered food to them. We candidly shared with them our goals, challenges, limitations, and opportunities. They understood all of them and wanted to know more. They knew how difficult a storefront brick and mortar would be in San Francisco but also understood why it was important for what we were trying to achieve. We eventually raised over half a million dollars to do a full buildout of Queens. As we close the brick and mortar later this month and pivot to the next stage of Queens, we truly believe that, together with our investors, Queens on 9th did way more than elevate Korean food in the San Francisco Bay Area. We can’t thank our initial investors enough for taking a chance on us — even when it was just a gut feeling (hehe).
Many of you have wondered why Queens has to close. It doesn’t have to close, but it does have to change. It’s the same feeling when we delivered our final bag of food and returned back to the commissary four years ago. The storefront that we love so much has been an incubator and springboard for a bigger and clearer vision about what Korean food consumption could be and mean in the US and where Queens fits in all of that moving forward. But we don’t have to tell you all of that. For those of you that walked through the space, had an interaction with one of our team members, picked up a product or dined in, you all know that this world still needs a bit of that Queens magic. <3 And if that’s you, please consider investing in the next stage of Queens!
