How do you turn a lockdown side project into a cult food brand?
In this episode of Founders in Motion, Ethan Yong, founder of Umami Papi, shares the real story behind building one of Australia’s most talked-about chilli oils. We dive into the origin of the name “Flavor Daddy,” early product experiments, breaking into retail, and what it actually takes to stand out in a crowded food and CPG market.
This conversation covers branding, distribution, manufacturing realities, and the mistakes Ethan learned from along the way.
Chapters
0:00 Intro 1:22 What is Umami Papi 3:56 Quitting your day job 6:45 Standing out in chilli oil 8:36 Scaling production 10:16 Cooking for Gordon Ramsay 10:56 First retailer 16:40 Expanding outside Australia 18:45 Building the team 20:11 The most valuable lesson 23:10 His Best Advice for Founders Starting from 0 26:27 Hot or Not? Transcript Search or select a timestamp to jump ▾ 0:00 Speaker: Imagine this. You're bored in your corporate finance job during lockdown. Most people, they'd fret. Ethan Yeung built Umami Poppy. From a tiny apartment and a Microsoft Paint logo, he created a chili oil brand that's now worth 7 figures, in thousands of stores across 5 countries, and blessed as fucking delicious by Gordon Ramsay himself. 0:22 Ethan Yong: I used to go around Melbourne driving in my car with a boot full of jars, approaching different grocers and stockists, asking if they were interested in my product. Because of the poor performance, I was pulled into a meeting room with my performance manager and one of the partners, and they just kind of laid it out on the table. Days where we'd make no sales, so it wasn't exactly the perfect scenario that I had planned in my head. I told him a little bit about the story and gave him some jars, and he introduced me to his category buyers, and we exchanged some emails and details. Because we did sell well, we were able to be given the opportunity later that year in September for 150 stores in Coles supermarkets. Hi, my name's Ethan. I'm the founder and CEO of Umami Papi, Australia's cult chili oil brand. Here we are today at Founders in Motion. 1:09 Speaker: Quick thing before we get started. If you enjoy the content, learn something new, the best way to support us is by subscribing. Okay, let's get into it. 1:22 Thea Ngo: For anyone who's not seen Umami Papi on a shelf or on socials, what is Umami Papi? 1:29 Ethan Yong: Let's get into the semantics here. So Umami and Papi, it's 2 words. It's flavor daddy, pretty much. 1:36 Speaker: Okay. 1:36 Ethan Yong: Because umami is the Japanese word for flavors and taste, deliciousness, and then papi is a Spanish word for father figure. So when you put 2 and 2 together, it's, it's flavor daddy. And the brand, the brand started off as just chili oil, and now we've got a couple more products and one product on the way, which very, very exciting. Now my ethos is that if it tastes good and there's a lot of flavor in it, we'll make it spicy or not spicy. But currently everything is— there is an element of chili in our products. 2:07 Thea Ngo: So let's take back to the first product. So you're in your grad role at a big corporate, things are looking stable, looking nice, um, then somehow you end up spending your nights making chili oil in your apartment. So what drew you in? 2:24 Ethan Yong: When I got into uni, I started making chili oil just for fun because there wasn't really any brands that I was familiar with on the shelf besides Naga Ma. And so fast forward to 2020, one of my close friends, he posted an Instagram story of a chili oil that he had bought, and I replied to that story and I was like, that's a pretty good business idea. And he's like, yeah, you should do it. So I went out to an Asian grocery, I spent like $60 on all these different spices and chilies. And still have that receipt today, actually. I should go dig it up and find it, frame it up on the wall in the warehouse. 2:55 Speaker: 100%. 2:56 Ethan Yong: And I was just relentless with the way I wanted to make this perfect recipe with crispiness and spiciness and flavor and aroma. And I was just doing it night after night until I got it to a level where I was like, okay, I think it's pretty good. And that's when I started to bottle her up and sell her first jars. 3:20 Thea Ngo: How did you think about balancing that? How was that period like? 3:24 Ethan Yong: I didn't think about balancing it. Early days, it was very much, okay, after work, all right, I got to make the jars, I gotta cook the product, I gotta send them out, etc. So I was just kind of rolling with the punches until I couldn't handle it. I thought I was able to do both. Because I just thought, well, until Umami Papi makes serious money, then I'll quit. Yeah, but the, the way I quit wasn't exactly the way I planned it out in my head. 3:53 Thea Ngo: So I wanted to ask you about like that choice. So to, to quit and go full-time for Umami Papi, what were kind of the indicators that made you take the leap? 4:04 Ethan Yong: I'm waiting for that perfect moment, right? And the perfect moment in my head was It's 10 PM, busy season, and you're working crazy hours every day, 10-hour days, and you're just fed up with the workload. And I'm at my desk and sales are booming with Umami Papi. There's all these growth opportunities, all these stockists that want to stock our product. And then I'm thinking, you know what, I don't need this corporate career anymore. I'm gonna leave and go all in with Umami Papi because of how much it's grown now. And the perfect pivot. So every time you go on a job in business advisory, which is the department I was in, you get a performance review on how you went. And I managed to receive 3 needs improvements in a row, which were huge red flags. And they very much knew what I was doing because every time I'd be on a new job, I'd be like, hey, I've got this chili oil brand, like, check it out. And I'd be capitalizing on the fact that I was meeting so many different new faces in the office, so they kind of knew my head wasn't there. 5:06 Thea Ngo: Yeah. 5:07 Ethan Yong: And because of the poor performance, I was pulled into a meeting room with my performance manager and one of the partners, and they just kind of laid it out on the table. So I had to make a decision whether or not I wanted to stay. I said, you know what, maybe I'll give it a shot. Man, the partner smiled and was like, I knew you're going to pick the more fun option. And I was like, yeah, well, I, I got to do it right. You know, Umami Papi wasn't making a lot of money at the time. There'd be days where we'd make no sales. So it wasn't exactly the perfect scenario that I planned in my head, but the turning point was where I was just overwhelmed. 5:47 Thea Ngo: Everyone that's doing kind of a full-time job and then like a side hustle situation is looking for that perfect time, perfect moment. They're like, envisioning this like beautiful future of like this side hustle potentially making more than their full-time job and then they'll quit. But a lot of it, a lot of the reality is very hard to do both of these things very well. And it takes your focus away from one thing to another. I think honestly, something that I'm personally learning this year too is you can't give 100% to everything you do. And a lot of life is about like prioritizing what path you want to take. Um, and I completely relate to that story because I used to be a consultant as well. I was in the advisory kind of space, and I remember those times as like them taking my entire soul. Like, I was working so, so much. So I can't imagine, like, you were also doing chili oil on the sides as well. 6:40 Ethan Yong: You summed it up very, very well, actually. Yeah, it's an excellent description. 6:44 Thea Ngo: Thank you. Um, so there are so many chili oils in the market. Like you mentioned, Lao Gan Ma is like a really big one. What made you believe that people needed a different one and needed umami coffee? 6:58 Ethan Yong: In 2020, there wasn't a lot of Western branded chili oils. Lao Gan Ma is obviously the GOAT. She's been around for decades and she's got a serious chili oil empire. I think I've read something that they do like $500 million USD in revenue per year. And that was maybe years ago when I read that. So they're a huge business. A lot of people know who they are. They call it, you know, the angry grandmother or something like that. I don't know if she's just angry. I don't know if she's angry. I think it's just like her face, right? 7:30 Thea Ngo: Yeah. 7:31 Ethan Yong: So at the time when I started this, I would see there were a couple other brands in the market, not too many in Australia at all, but there was one in the US. And I just thought, oh, it looks really cool and, and modern, and it makes you want to pick it up and buy it because it's I think especially in a Western market, people kind of flock towards fun-looking brands that are modern and maybe trendy, and less so when you look at a product that might look a little bit more branded as a foreign product. It may be— it seems less approachable. What I wanted to do was, all right, let's make it fun somehow. 8:08 Thea Ngo: Yeah. 8:08 Ethan Yong: So when I started, I I drew the chili logo in Microsoft Paint and tried to mimic that cheeky, smirky emoji and draw his face on it. And I didn't think about, all right, how am I going to compete in the market? How am I going to face off against all these other brands? It was very much, I just am passionate about making chili oil and I want to make the best one and get it out there. 8:33 Thea Ngo: Yeah. For someone thinking of scaling their production to something a little bit more high risk, higher CapEx, What are kind of some insights you had from your experience? 8:44 Ethan Yong: So there was one weekend where I had to make the— I had to make an amount of jars to meet the current amount of orders. And it took me Friday, Saturday, Sunday to prepare, cook, fill, label, and package all those jars. And I thought to myself, I can't keep doing this every weekend because the orders are going to go up. So I'm going to need to find a more efficient way of producing more at scale. And at the time, I had met this guy on Instagram and he was doing frozen dumpling deliveries. I was speaking to him about my issue and he says, oh, I actually operate out of a commercial kitchen that is a cooking school. He spoke to the owner and the owner was happy to let me cook on the weekends since on the weekends they couldn't actually operate in the cooking schools because of COVID restrictions. So it was perfect because Monday to Friday I'd be at the office or working from home, and I was at my corporate job, so I was able to go in on the weekends and cook bashes and cooking it at much larger scales because we had 2 wok burners and these big massive woks, so you could fill it with lots more oil. Not only could it fit more, but you could— it would cook much quicker because you'd turn on the heat and compared to little baby flames at home. You've got this massive jet. Yeah, I remember turning it on for the first time going like, holy shit, this is so cool. I remember thinking it was so cool. Now it's super normal. 10:09 Thea Ngo: You were on Gordon Ramsay's Food Star, so what was that whole experience like? 10:15 Ethan Yong: It was one of the most surreal experiences for me. Everyone knows Gordon Ramsay, and so when I had the opportunity to be one of the contestants on the show, it was experiencing that myself, being in the kitchen and cooking for him and having him critique my food or compliment my products. He said it was absolutely delicious. So that was a very— yeah, that was a very gratifying, fulfilling moment for me. And even though I was quite nervous cooking for him, I will never forget that moment and the experience on the show. 10:50 Thea Ngo: Getting into your first retailer, I feel like that's like a huge moment for a lot of consumer brands. How did that come about, and what are kind of some tips and tricks you have for navigating that process? 11:03 Ethan Yong: So I moved to the suburb of Hawthorne in September 2021 because I needed a bigger garage and a bigger house to store a lot of the chili oil-related materials, because I was still packing orders out of my garage at that point. One day for lunch, I wanted salmon. And I didn't have salmon, I didn't have a frying pan. So I thought, okay, I need to go out and buy a frying pan and salmon. So drive out to the nearest Coles, and I ended up at Coles Camberwell. It's about 10 AM in the morning. I get out of my car into the Coles, walk in, and I immediately see this huge, huge Coles that made me think, wow, it's a really modern, clean, and nice Coles. And there were about 30 staff members walking around and the energy was quite buzzing. And I was thinking, wow, there's like a lot of people on the floor. So I went and got my salmon and frying pan and some other groceries and whatnot. I go to the checkout counter and the girl there monitoring the self-serve checkout, she's— for whatever reason, me and her make some small talk. And her name's Sarah. 12:14 Thea Ngo: Sarah. 12:15 Ethan Yong: And she's like, oh, it's pretty good that you can come in on your break working from home, right? And I was like, yeah, my job's pretty flexible. She's like, oh, what do you do? And I'm like, I've got this chili oil brand, it's called Umami Papi. And she's like, oh, you've got a, you've got a food brand? And I was like, yeah, I do. 12:30 Thea Ngo: Ooh, Sarah. 12:32 Ethan Yong: Yeah, Sarah. And she's like, you should go and talk to that guy over there. And I'm like, who's, who's that? And he says, oh, that's the head of Coles Local. And I said, what's Coles Local? She's like, this is a Coles Local. We just opened 2 hours ago. It's our launch day. So I learned that Coles Local, for those that don't know, it's a boutique Coles in affluent suburbs that stock more premium products, and it's more of a premium grocery experience while also stocking the standard core Coles items. And so I went and said, okay, great. So I went to the car, grabbed some jars that always carry jars on me. You never know when an opportunity arises. 13:11 Thea Ngo: Never know. 13:12 Ethan Yong: Went and approached myself, and his name was Michael, very kind gentleman, and introduced myself. I told him a little bit about the story and gave him some jars, and he introduced me to his category buyers, and we exchanged some emails and details. He asked me a few pressing questions about how our movements were, what stores we already ranged in, and after that I walked away thinking thinking, okay, maybe there's an opportunity here. And a couple months after that was when I met my business development manager slash sales director who works for the brand still today. And he was able to use his networks and leverage into sending more samples into Coles as well, in addition to the ones that I had given on that day. 13:56 Thea Ngo: And also, basically they just took whatever was in the trunk of your car and then like put it on the shelf? 14:02 Ethan Yong: Oh, I wish. I wish it was that easy. Uh, no, I gave a few jars to the important people there that I'd met, the buyers, and they would have taken it back to the office for review. We organized together to send some samples to head office, and then the following year, Coles Local wanted to do a promotion called Chili Fest where they featured all Australian and some international brands that had chili and that was spicy products. And we were featured as part of that promotion. We sold an exceptionally well amount of chili oil. Because we did sell well, we were able to be given the opportunity later that year in September for 150 stores in Coles supermarkets. And that was a pivotal moment of the business going into main Coles. We had made it, right? Yeah. So that was very, very exciting. 14:53 Thea Ngo: Then there's also kind of like you're working with a lot of brands that are very well known. So like Legos, like you mentioned just now, how did you come about approaching these kind of brand partnerships, especially some of the first few ones that you did? 15:05 Ethan Yong: Legos is like a legacy Australian brand, right? Been around for like 100 years. Umami Poppy is this new emerging brand that's playful and kind of tongue-in-cheek with its branding. So we joined forces because they wanted to leverage our connection to a younger audience, and we saw they've got a lot of range, they've got a lot of distribution, and it'll be a great way to get our brand in more people's faces because of the network they've got with all the other retailers. And so we came up with a pasta sauce that is not only just a pasta sauce, but it's versatile enough that you can use it as a tomato base for some So did you approach the LEGO team or did they approach you guys? So initially they approached us. 15:53 Thea Ngo: Cool. 15:54 Ethan Yong: And then that's when we started to have a lot of lengthy discussions on how we can get started. 15:59 Thea Ngo: I guess then, like, how do you position yourself to get approached by these brands to do these kind of interesting brand partnerships? 16:06 Ethan Yong: I think if you're making some waves online and you've got some real retail shelf presence, The more presence you've got out there, the more awareness you've got about your brand, the more these opportunities may come to you, as well as you creating your own too by reaching out. You need to have a little bit of market presence or awareness so that it can be a two-way street for both brands collaborating. 16:30 Thea Ngo: So you've expanded to other kind of countries. Like, what were some kind of unexpected challenges that you face expanding outside of Australia? 16:42 Ethan Yong: It's not as simple as sending a bunch of pallets over to the supermarket and letting it sell itself, because when you're in a new market, people don't know about your brand. You need to really figure out and invest time and money into how are people going to hear about my brand, because if it's a premium product, premium price point, especially in markets like Malaysia where our chili oil might be 3 times as much as a locally made one. We need people to purchase the product and not look at the price tag. We set up a lot of sampling booths and we did a lot of promos, live activations, things that we haven't really done too much of here in Australia because we rely a bit more on the internet and word of mouth. But there's a lot of investment that goes to that and making sure that also there might be some dishes that I've got in my head that would pair really well with umami harpy here. But if I use those same dishes there, it might actually be a little bit strange to local tastes and preferences. So it's really speaking to the locals there, understanding what people like, what they respond well to. 17:54 Thea Ngo: And so your responsibilities have shifted a lot since starting out. Um, you've gone from literally making chili oil Friday, Saturday, Sunday by yourself to now kind of CEO, more kind of the strategic angle of the brand. So how are you navigating that shift? 18:13 Ethan Yong: It is year 5 of the business now. This is the first year where I feel like an actual CEO. I think the first few years I was very much in the weeds of it all. in production, packing orders. And, you know, we still grew our team and we had other people, not just myself, because with any business, any company, you can't— it can't be a one-man show. Something switched this year where I realized the power of delegation and coaching. And even from day one, I've always built systems and processes in place for myself to follow, but only in the past couple years have I delegated some of the systems and frameworks I've built within the business for other junior staff to follow. And now I've got a strong emphasis on weekly check-ins with some of my junior team that report directly to me, and they've got their own junior staff too. And the power of coaching and delegation and teaching them things that I have learned throughout this business journey and even outside of my business from other business owners. By doing this, you are empowering other people in your team to become better leaders, uh, improving their own personal and professional skills. It's the people that grow the business, especially now in year 5. So it's my role to make sure that, yes, I set the strategy, but I also make sure that the key people involved are getting the right coaching and getting the right development. 19:47 Thea Ngo: From the Diary of the CEO says that predominantly his entire job is recruiting. Um, which I think is very true in the sense that if you have an incredible team, you can really go to the moon and do incredible things. Um, and it's the people that makes the business. What's been the most valuable lesson that you've learned throughout your journey? 20:09 Ethan Yong: I'd say it's learning to just to just do. In the early days, I had absolutely no experience in the food industry. What sort of compliance is required on the label of a jar? 20:23 Thea Ngo: Yeah. 20:23 Ethan Yong: What are the food safety repercussions? How do you get into supermarkets? How do you scale a product from a smaller amount to a larger amount? What's a reasonable wholesale price to match? what sort of retailers are expecting X amount of margin. All of this was unknown to me. This is pre-ChatGPT days, so I had to Google things, I had to look through pages and stuff and— 20:49 Speaker: Crazy. 20:49 Ethan Yong: Learn from trial and error. Yeah, so now you've— now we've got AI, now it's a lot easier. But back then it was just a lot of trial and error. You gotta keep going and trialing things and figuring out and being really relentless with how you're going to obtain information, particularly in an area that you've never explored. Now I've got resources. Now I've got experts that I can call upon or hire a consultant for to get some professional advice and pay a retainer. But back then, you're trying to save every dollar as much as possible. 21:22 Speaker: Yeah. 21:23 Ethan Yong: And, you know, you can't be— I can't blow a few thousand dollars on a food scientist to tell me a little bit more about shelf life stability. You kind of got to do the research on your own, whereas now most definitely would to get that peace of mind security. But the— in the early days, it's very much you, you know, stay hungry for, for knowledge, and you're going to make a lot of mistakes. And the power of writing things down— 21:47 Thea Ngo: Mm-hmm. 21:47 Ethan Yong: When you write things down, you're collecting data, and by using this data, you can reflect back upon this data in order to make improvements in the future and create processes or systems around data to make your business more efficient or to prevent yourself getting into a sticky— getting into a sticky situation that you may have gotten yourself into in the first place. 22:10 Thea Ngo: So throughout this 5 years, have you ever had like an oh shit moment that this business might go under? 22:18 Ethan Yong: Yes. Yeah, particularly in the early days, you go days without any sales or You— I used to, before I knew what a distributor was, I used to go around Melbourne driving my car with a boot full of jars, approaching different grocers and stockists, asking if they were interested in my product. And you could do a whole day of that and get all rejections, giving any interest of wanting to stock your product or even taking the sample jar. And that can knock your confidence Yeah. And really teach you lessons about having thick skin and resilience and having to really push the boundaries and get out of your comfort zone to try and make something work if you believe in it. 23:04 Thea Ngo: If someone is starting a consumer brand from scratch today, what is an underrated advice you have? 23:10 Ethan Yong: Be naive. Your naivety is your superpower. And I say this because in the early days you have no idea about risks. You have no idea about risks. Now I'm way too calculated. So if I have to launch a product, I'm thinking, all right, what's the food safety? What's the water activity that could be in this product? What if people get ill because of this? There's mold growing or anything like that? How do I make sure our kitchen benchtops are fully sanitized before production? All of this stuff to be fully compliant, whereas Back then I had no idea about compliance or any rules or things like that, that I had to register my kitchen from— with the council if I wanted to sell product. But I was just doing it without any council approval, like, whatever, I'm just gonna— who cares? It's just a hobby, right? 24:00 Thea Ngo: Yeah. 24:01 Ethan Yong: But at this level, you, you can't operate like that. I miss the early days of figuring things out and those moments of being in Sydney after I sent 48 jars to my auntie's house and picking it up and then taking the bus around Sydney because I didn't want to pay for Ubers with a backpack of jars in the hot Sydney summer, trying to hustle and meet people with different grocers to expand interstate, right? 24:27 Thea Ngo: Mhm. 24:28 Ethan Yong: I could have saved a lot of time by just getting a distributor to, to do it, but it was very early days and you're gonna, you're gonna miss those moments. 24:36 Thea Ngo: Yeah. 24:37 Ethan Yong: Those early moments, even though you're trying to chase and get that first big customer, or I want to hit, you know, 6 figures or whatever that early milestone is in business, you know, the— even though we have even bigger milestones now, for whatever reason it was those small wins in the early days I'll remember the most, and that gave me feelings of accomplishment almost bigger than the big ones today. I don't know what it is, and there's probably some psychology behind it, but yeah, enjoy those early days because those are the most fun moments of building out a business from scratch. 25:15 Thea Ngo: Yeah, I mean, it's like those first early days, you're like, wow, I can't believe people are stocking my product. Like, I can't believe customers are talking about what I do. 25:24 Ethan Yong: Exactly. 25:25 Thea Ngo: It's just a— it's this like idea of like, wow, I can't believe I did that. 25:29 Ethan Yong: Um, I agree. Yeah. Now it's like, well, you should know what umami coffee is. It's the best chili oil ever. No, I'm just kidding. It's, uh, it's, it's, it's super cool to me still when people hear about it. But early days, it's like, what? Like, how did you— like, you know, I want to know everything. I still want to know everything today, but it's, it's even more surreal in the early days. I, I suppose, I suppose it's about novelty, right? You know, these are the first wins, and as you mature in your age or in your business or in your career, as you start to progress, things don't— things aren't as novel anymore because you've lived through them. So I think it was just those first, those early days. That's what— that's why they hit so powerful. And, um, yeah, they're always— those moments will always hold very close to my heart. 26:15 Thea Ngo: Oh, I love that. So the way that we like to wrap this up is we'd like to play a little kind of rapid-fire type game. 26:24 Ethan Yong: Sure. 26:24 Thea Ngo: But you know, in the spirit of chili oil. 26:26 Ethan Yong: Okay, cool. 26:28 Thea Ngo: Side hustles? 26:29 Ethan Yong: Hot. 26:30 Thea Ngo: Corporate jobs? 26:31 Ethan Yong: Not for me, but some— hot for some. 26:36 Thea Ngo: Launching on TikTok first? 26:38 Ethan Yong: I'd say not, because I launched on Instagram first, and I think it's more community-driven that way. 26:44 Thea Ngo: Gordon Ramsay yelling at you? 26:45 Ethan Yong: Not an ideal situation, but hot in a wonderful experience having been flamed by Gordon Ramsay. So I'm gonna say hot, actually. 26:57 Thea Ngo: Um, packaging over product? 26:59 Ethan Yong: Not. It's important, but you gotta have a good product inside the jar or inside the packaging. 27:06 Thea Ngo: Yeah. Quiet quitting? 27:08 Ethan Yong: No, not. I certainly didn't do that. Yeah, I, uh, I, I didn't want to let my team down, so it was a decision I was like, yeah, I kind of can't do this And also my exit was quite hot because on my last day, I went around the whole office and I dropped jars everywhere and like interrupted people working. I said, it's my last day, I'm gonna go all in my chili oil business. Try it, post on Instagram, tell your friends. I've literally interrupted multiple floors and just capitalized on the fact that there were heaps of people in this office building. Guerrilla marketing 101. 27:40 Thea Ngo: You gotta maximize, you know, maximize your footprint. 27:42 Ethan Yong: 100%. Even today, it doesn't matter. Yeah, you always got to be selling, always got to be on. 27:47 Thea Ngo: 100%. Influencer collabs. 27:50 Ethan Yong: Hot, very hot. But not just any influencers. You want to partner with the ones that are in line with your brand's lifestyle, and even better if they're already a fan of your product. 28:00 Thea Ngo: So what's next for Uwami Poppy? 28:02 Ethan Yong: Hot Honey. 28:04 Thea Ngo: Hot Honey. 28:04 Ethan Yong: That's right. Okay, by the time you guys watch this, it's probably out there already, at least at Coles. If it's not at Coles yet, it's definitely online. So yeah, that is— it's going to be a spicy honey made from Australian honey, and it's salted caramel meets sweet chili. Oh my God, that's the bomb. 28:20 Thea Ngo: So excited for it. 28:21 Speaker: Yeah, that's a wrap. If you like this episode, please hit the subscribe button. It helps us bring on more awesome guests, level up production, and drop new series you'll want to watch. See you in 2 weeks. No transcript lines match that phrase. Try fewer words.
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