Small Business Spotlight: Saturday Dumpling Club

Article by Becky Fillinger

Peter Bian and Linda Cao are co-owners of the wildly successful direct to consumer dumpling business, the Saturday Dumpling Club. Their weekly offerings, posted on Wednesdays, sell out in minutes. We talked to Peter about the business model, challenges and tasty collaborations.

Peter Bian

Q:  You’re currently producing over 5000 dumplings per week, which sell out in minutes. How will you scale production to please even more customers?

A:  There are many different ways to grow. We intend to grow in a smart way – to preserve our quality and brand. Every restaurant is trying to hire at this time. Good, skilled labor is difficult to find. We’ve put out feelers to friends and family – if we add headcount, we want people who know how to make dumplings and people who want to make dumplings. So, you can imagine how difficult it is to put together a team. We’re slowly getting there. With the right people, we can ramp up the number of dumplings produced and delivered.   

We have some new front of the house people – people who have had our dumplings and are passionate about our business. They’re slowly getting more involved with the Saturday drops. Linda oversees front of the house, in addition to handling our marketing, social, sales, etc. I’m back of the house manager - making dumplings, devising new flavors and fillings. Our new employees also help in my sphere with wrapping dumplings, vegetable and weekend prep.

A welcome sight - the delivery van!

Q:  What’s the next step for the Saturday Dumpling Club - would you consider selling your dumplings to local food co-ops or having a presence at farmer’s markets? 

A:  At this point, no. We’ve been approached about this a couple of times. For us, our business model works right now. My wife and I have a very good work/life balance – we can handle production and distribution but also have a life at home. We’re going to keep the direct-to-consumer model as long as we can. It also allows us to see our customer, talk to our customer every week and get direct, invaluable feedback from our customer – we can immediately learn from our customers! You cannot get that level of feedback if your items are on a shelf in a store. It’s not in our near future. The next step is continuing our collaborations with innovative food producers.

Q:  What advice do you have for other aspiring food entrepreneurs?  

A:  Don’t overthink it. When we started, it was my tendency to be cautious and a perfectionist. My wife pushed me to just loosen up and told me, "Let’s just roll it out on Instagram and listen to what people say and see if it has legs." If you believe in your product, get it out there - get it into peoples’ mouths, listen to their feedback and you’ll learn if you need to pursue your dream in a greater capacity.  

Q:  Do you have mentors guiding you and the business to the next level? 

A:  We have a lot of restaurateur friends, friends in many different businesses and friends who have started businesses. They’ve made mistakes and have graciously told us their stories. I suppose you could call them mentors. We don’t have anyone in our lives who is a full-fledged business coach, but we have a very broad network. We definitely reach out to our network for advice and wisdom – and these people are in food directly or have tangential connections to the food industry. We have been lucky to have such good advice from so many friends.

Q:  Where is your production facility?

A:  We moved our production to Dots Gray last November. This is a very large commissary kitchen in NE Minneapolis. I think there are 15 businesses operating out of there. The owners – Shari and Jean – have a food truck business called Butcher Salt, and they are building a community of food entrepreneurs.

Q:  What are the flavors in your dumpling rotation?

A:  Well, we have a lineup of original flavors – Vegan, Beef with Carrot and Onion, and Pork and Napa. We make these three flavors the most. For special collaborations, there is a rotating lineup of dumplings. This month, we’re working with Red Wagon Pizza. Last month, it was Brasa Rotisserie – these are fun and perform very well for the business. We also have our own special flavors and releases from time to time.  This month it is Cumin Lamb – a really popular street food where I’m from in China.  

Q:  Are you able to take vacations? 

A:  Yes, now and again. We’re not a restaurant. We can close our doors at any time. We set our own schedule. If we want to push, we could make 10,000 dumplings a week. But we can also scale down. If we want to take a few days off – if the weather’s nice or we have business meetings, we can cut back on production. We’re very busy but have control of our time.

Q:  What is the best way to follow your news?

A:  Instagram for sure. We post new dumplings there, collaborations, schedules, photos, etc.

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