Why This Michelin Chef Quit Momofuku & Alinea to Build His Million-Dollar Startup

0:28The number one thing is it has to taste good. My personal favorite, Alinea in Chicago. Most happiest moments for me are always food-based. The curveball here is I never wanted to be a chef. I've been around the best chefs in the world and a lot of their lives, it doesn't align with how my mind wants with life because of my experience with cancer. So that's actually why I left. He's also a bodybuilding champion and holds 11 Guinness World Records for his knife skills. And Wallace Wong does not stop there. Let me live. I promise you I will not waste it. And that's sort of my philosophy for my life since then.

1:03His latest venture, Spatula Foods, is a gourmet meal kit offering delicious food cooked 90 % of the way before being flash frozen so you can quickly enjoy high quality food at home. We beat out like all these incredible companies that smart individuals made, but yet we won. So we ended up winning about$60 ,000. That's sort of how Spatula came to be. Wallace reaches nearly 2 million followers across his platforms, and today he's breaking down how to turn pain into passion and successfully raise over$1 million for your business. Thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

1:34I'll invoice you after for that amazing introduction. You're going to invoice me? I'm going to pay you for that? No, no. I'm waiting for the invoice. My bad. My bad. This is how you're making it all work. I mean, as evidenced by that bio and this table, like, bro, you are busy. I am. I am. But in all good ways. In all very, very good ways. What is driving you? Ironically, we're going to go right into this. I feel like for me, it's you only live once. So I don't like regretting things. And that's a big part of sort of why I'm able to do all this stuff that maybe that you just mentioned. Where do you think that relationship with not wanting to regret things comes from?

2:19So for me, what is it? This year is going to be 18 years remission. So I, at a very young age, had a battle with cancer. Right here, in my eye, it was not Hodgkin's lymphoma. And it was like, that's the thing where I was like, oh, I don't know if I'm going to live tomorrow. And then I remember I made a promise. I was on my bed when I figured this out. I was like, whether you believe in God, whoever, religion. I was like, hey, I haven't done anything in my life. Let me live. I promise you I will not waste it, right? And that's sort of my philosophy for my life since then. So I'm very much, I'll take opportunities.

2:58I'll give things a try. And I rather, I use the analogy, it's like if you're into sports, I rather shoot 65 for 100 than two for two. It's kind of my energy. So it's like, I'll always swing and they're going to hit it eventually. that is beautiful i mean it's something that you hear especially from cancer survivors and it gives them a different kind of perspective on life and and why they're living it do you think in all of your ventures and leadership that's something that can be taught i think yes 100 % i think what like if you're talking about like an entrepreneur or someone who's a who's in top management or something, the difference is like tomorrow you could actually make one wrong move and the company could go bankrupt if you want, right?

3:45Or maybe your staff suddenly all decides to leave tomorrow because they've been trying to build up this thing and you haven't been listening to them. And it's sort of sometimes if everybody kind of thinks that what we currently have isn't always what we, isn't finite, then you start thinking differently and figuring out, oh, how do you treat your employees different? How do we, you know, maybe improve on this and that? Because comfort, I think, a lot of times is what kills a lot of ambition and like goals and being able to set things. How often are you pushing yourself out of your comfort zone?

4:20One of my most feared words or things that I fear in life is regret. Is 1 ,000 % regret. Ironically, a story I'll love to share is like I spent a lot of my like early 20s. um my grandparents raised me my grandparents raised me and during like just before the pandemic and 20s um my grandparents got my grandmother was in a nursing home and so for me I went in there and I spent most of my days in there at that time luckily I was like kind of like still entrepreneur kind of working on my own time and everything so I would come in on like the not regular people time not the before work and not after work and i would come in on the odd times and i would see things that i'm just like wow like it made you think a lot and very simply is like the amount of people you walk in let's say you walk into the to the corridor right and it's like several individuals who are just on a wheelchair or or on a on a bed just watching a screen and they can't do anything like that until someone comes and brings them away or something like that so for me I was like I wonder if you ask these individuals right you talk to them or sometimes I have talked to some people and the smallest things would be like wow you run so fast or like you walk so easily and then like don't worry about me you know you walk ahead small little things like that and you're like wow don't regret the small things and that like really really for me drives a lot of stuff of like my daily whether it's business personal fitness etc et cetera.

5:56No regrets, no regrets. An appreciation for the life that you've been given. Yes, 100%. You need both. You need both. Once you don't regret, and then you sometimes take time and you're able to look back and just relax and just kind of think about it. You're like, everything is actually not as bad as it can be as always. People always go like, Wallace, how are you doing? I'm like, there's so many things in my head, like fires, whatever. And I'm like, you know what? I'm doing good. It can always be worse, but I'm doing good. Was it your grandparents who first instilled the love of food and cooking in you?

6:31Half. What I mean by half is more of, so I'm first generation Chinese Canadian. My family were all sponsored to Canada from like a really like fast food Chinese spot in a little area in Mississauga. and it was like so grew up make folding iconically the red and white takeout boxes that you put like spring rolls in or the nuclear red you know sweet and sour sauce that kind of stuff that's what my family was sponsored over for and my culture of being Hong Kong like Cantonese food was like everything so we would always eat together like lunch dinner we'd always make things and I always think like the most happiest moments for me when I think about them my memories are always food based um we always ate together we always lived with like a pretty big family together i ironically never had my first bedroom until university because i would always share either with my aunt or a cousin or somebody um so for us food was really like a big part of our lives we might not have been able to go traveling we might not have been able to you know do trips or do things because we had so many people.

7:39But dinner would always be something that we'd always do together. So that instilled in me this appreciation and love for food. But also food to me is comfort. Food to me is home. Food to me is safety and… Connection. Exactly. Exactly. Sorry, you were on a roll. I was like, that was a great word to finish that off. It was the perfect, perfect little end of Okay, but also, I mean, we were talking about this before we started rolling. I used to be a restaurant critic and food writer. Working in restaurants like that is really grueling. Yes. It's not particularly often that somebody who grows up in a restaurant like that then goes on to stage in some of the world's best restaurants.

8:27How did that trajectory happen for you? So the curveball here is I never wanted to be a chef. Like that was not something I ever wanted to do. Oh my God, by the way, such a likely story. You know how many chefs say like, I never wanted to be a chef? I've got half that's like, all I wanted to do is be a chef. But on the other side, vice versa, same way. And for me, the reason why I never wanted to be a chef was because I saw my family do it. And my family was from day one, made sure I knew that, hey, this stuff is hard. This stuff is hard. They don't pay well, X, Y, Z. like even just like thinking about like family outings and stuff there's always be a couple a couple uncles or cousins that wouldn't be attending because they'd be working so for me I never wanted to be a chef I just was really good at it because of growing up and helping with family to cook dinners and lunch and knew about ingredients because we went grocery shopping so long story short I did a competition in high school as an elective like so I did home ec for an elective.

9:25It was either that or nails. So I could be a nail tech today, just letting you know. But I did cooking. And you would probably be at the absolute top of the nail tech game. I would make fire claws for whoever wanted them, right? But I ended up doing that cooking competition. Did really, really well. And then I ended up becoming… I was fourth in Canada for that. And then anyways, I went to business school. I went to business school because I didn't know what I wanted to do. At that time, we were 16, 17, right? No one knows what they want to do. But I'm like, everything has to involve business, whatever it is.

9:58So I'm gonna go to business school. You know, it also like helps, you know, Pease family in terms of going for a higher education. That's something that very, very, they much instilled in me. I always said I used to be, I was thrown in the machine of the cookie cutter of like, I'm supposed to be a doctor, a lawyer, a surgeon, accountant, and school, all that kind of stuff. So I went to business school. But then after my first year, I really missed cooking because during high school, I would practice for that cooking competition, like for any sport, right? And you've grown up doing it. Yeah, exactly.

10:31And I was like, I started like watching Food Network way more. I was reading like cookbooks versus like my business books. So I did a little search and down the road from my university was a college. And they had a culinary program. So after, I think it was econ, after I went to econ class i took my bag went down to the went down to the unit to the college and i was like peeking through the doors and then a teacher comes again hey get the class you're late and i'm like oh man i'm serious i'm like i'm not a student here and she's like what are you talking about so i i explained and she's like i've got five minutes let me give you a tour she gave me a tour gave me a pamphlet next term i signed up so then i started my second year of business school and my first year of college of culinary school and my first week going into that college remember that competition I did.

11:17So I walked right in. I was like, who is the head chef, right? Who's the head chef here? And his name is Chef Philippe. I remember I went to him. I'm like, hey, chef, my name's Wallace. I know there's this competition that I did in high school. There's a college version of it. I'd love to do it. And then him, very, very French. And he's like, hold on, relax. Like, calm down. Like, there's an audition, all these kind of things. I'm like, sounds good. Let's do it, right? And then long story short, I ended up making the team, representing this college. ended up being going to nationals again. And this time I lost by 0.5.

11:49I lost by 0.5 of a point. And I'm actually a judge on that competition now. But where I'm getting with this, and I promise I'll answer you, I'll get to that, is like I got there and I did this cooking stuff. I write a competition. I was doing business and all that kind of stuff at the time. I remember in marketing class, I started a work doc and it was like the greatest restaurant of all time. And I started like plotting and writing things about like what I would open. And that competition was also because I wanted to get better and figure out and like have advantages over my competitors. I started searching about these restaurants, restaurants you're very, very familiar with, you know, the Alineas, the Nomas, the, you know, the French Laundries at that time, the El Buys, all these kinds of things.

12:33And I'm like, I need to learn at these places. So then my last year of university and my last year of college, I ended up, as I started this, just swing for it, right? Shoot your shot. So I sent cold emails to Alinea because I only wanted to. At that moment, I was like, I have, I was still in school. I was like, I've got spring break and then I've got summer break. Spring break, I'll figure which one of these places I want to go and work. So Alinea shot that, they gave me an email back in like November. I sent it out in like September, November. that I would love to have you. It was a master chef, by the way, chef.

13:13And then so we figured it out. We're like, okay, I'm going to go in spring break. Then December, Christmas Eve. I will never forget this. It was Christmas Eve. I was with my family. And I had originally in October when Rene came and he was doing a book tour. I couldn't afford going to these book things, right? They're expensive. And like, obviously with someone like Rene at that time, who was best restaurant in the world, best chef in the world, the tickets like 80 bucks or something like that. I'm like, as a student, I can't afford this. So the cookbook store that was hosting that event, I reached out and I was like, hey, I'm a student at university and everything.

13:50I'd love to, can I volunteer to help out and all these things? And then she's like, yeah, her name was Allison, Allison Fryer. And she's like, yeah, come help volunteer and everything. So I volunteered. And then at the end of it, I was like, hey, do you think I can get him to sign my book? I saved up to buy the book so I can get him to sign it. and then me the business guy right uh business school i printed out my cv i printed out my resume i had a whole little cover letter and then i waited my turn with everybody and i'm like chef nice to meet you my name's wallace and he's like oh yeah you're the you're helping out i was like yeah i was like i got him to sign the book and i'm like by the way i'm actually i also cook too and i'm like i know you're probably not going to bring this back on your flight tomorrow to copenhagen but i wanted to at least give you this and feel free if you want to look i'd love to work with you i'd love to work at your restaurant and like learn and everything he's like chef you're right this is definitely not coming with me but here's my email send it and then so that was like around like october so anyways going back to december christmas eve 10 it was it was 11 11 50 something like that just before christmas and then an email pops up and then it's it's just noma it's like, we'd love to have you come to Noma and work for us.

15:01Oh my God. To stage in the summer. And then where I'm getting with this was that caused me to, that's how I got into these restaurants. How I actually got into them was I was a student who didn't, went to college and university at the same time and had OSAP and all that. I couldn't pay to go to these places. so because there were two also different uh programs when we came down to exam time i was able to kind of talk with the guidance counselors and they were like hey let's figure something out schedule wise and stuff and it turned out perfectly where my schedules were completely opposite of each each college so for instance or each institution so when my guys and everybody in business school were studying.

15:49I was off technically for college. But in the most humbling way, I didn't need to study for cooking. Like that for me, like cooking was just fun. It was, I was able to just go for it. So I ended up selling sandwiches out of my dorm. So it was your first entrepreneurial venture? Not my, it was my first college university entrepreneurial adventure. But I started selling sandwiches out of my dorm. And because I lived right across from campus, idea where it was$5 and$10 and it was cheaper than whatever was on campus. And then back, so then we'd use like Facebook and make a little page and people would come.

16:23So I'd have people come and line up from, I lived on the fourth floor at that time. So the hallways was packed. People would buy sandwiches and then at the college, I would host fundraising dinners. So then those two things were what paid for me to go to Noma and then go to Alinea. Okay, I'm seeing the foreshadow now for how Spatula Foods came to be. I'm also seeing that you have, and I mean this as a compliment, like you have a sort of shamelessness about you. Like I think so many people really struggle with a sense of imposter syndrome and a fear of really putting themselves out there. Of course.

17:03It just feels like you were just, like you have just been going for it at every turn. Like I said, I think we started this conversation where I was like, look, Serena, I just go for it. Like, I know how it feels like to not have a tomorrow. And I don't want to regret it. So ironically, people always say maybe like, I do so many things. I have only these ventures. I'm like, schedule's all crazy, all these kinds of stuff. And I'm like, but you guys have to understand. And I don't expect anybody to understand it was, cancer for me was one of the hardest things I've ever done. Not the treatment. I went, I did six months of chemotherapy and radiation.

17:41spinal cord stuff, all that stuff was hard. But what was the most hardest part about it was being able to be around people, family, friends, guidance counselors, doctors, nurses, people at a supermarket, whatever it is, because hair is going away. Or at the time before I got my surgery, my face actually looked like the Goonies because the tumor was growing, but we didn't know it was a tumor. It was supposed to be just the regular cyst. So I went, I did four months in high school. Now you've got to hear me. It's high school, right? Where I went from looking regularly to my face deforming. Already like such an intensely self-conscious time.

18:17It was crazy. But all that stuff was still not as hard as realizing that when people were upset, sad, angry, emotional, and kind of lost was because I existed. And that was a big driving force for me to be like, I need to get better. It's because I was like, they're all upset because of me. So I have to get better. I have to make sure, you know, that when they talk to me, I'm good. I'm good. I'm happy. You know, everything's great and all that kind of stuff. That really helped drive and motivate me to beat cancer. You were aware of the emotional impact you were having on people. Oh, yeah. The more and more you get to hang around people, or for me, constantly in front of people for appointments and seeing people, very very few people are actually really great actors right?

19:11Authenticity is hard and a lot of times you we all wear our emotions on our biggest organ our skin and we can see it and I am very very because of that I'm very aware of it so I was like I gotta make sure I do do better and like things so that's where the drive comes from it's that. Okay well to stay on the philosophical direction for a moment. Do you ever allow yourself to not be good? Yeah, of course. I'm not good at a lot of things. No, I mean like not be okay. Oh, yes, yes. So for me, for that is there's moments. There's 100 % moments and I let myself be in them. But I don't let myself dwell in them and let them take over.

19:54So it's like, hey, it's like you got, if we're using fitness, fitness analogy, you got a 30 second hit session right here so for 30 seconds vent it out i'll be upset all right now we go back right and i think being able to do that sometimes allows me to very much so balance everything but if i have to be very very honest i try to be more on the glass half full always and that's my biggest thing and i think it's it's a great thing for me that luckily enough i'm always like looking at the other side of things. And if there is something that is negative in my life, I try to remove it like as fast as I can because going back to it, I'm like, I don't know if I have another tomorrow.

20:43The last thing I want to do, if I did like, you know, I'm gone tomorrow or gone in the next hour, the last thing I want to do is what did I do in the last 30 minutes or before I left? I wouldn't want to be angry or upset or anything like that. Okay. Well, I mean, on that note, you go to work in some of the best restaurants in the world. And like, you know, just to give people a sense for people who aren't like deep in the culinary world like we are, like, I mean, Alinea and Noma, like this is this is top of the heap in the entire world. Generally, if you're going and you're working there, it's because you are on the path to be a chef at that stature.

21:23And yet you left it behind. So what was it in that experience that made you say, I want to do something else, actually? Yeah. So very easily, the reason why I left was not because of, you know, maybe the stigmas of the industry or everything like that. But at that current moment, I was at sort of the peak. I was working with the best chefs. I'm at the best places. It just happened where it was Thanksgiving. I was opening team with the Momo Food guys. And it was American Thanksgiving, Canadian Thanksgiving. And we're all deciding what to do for Thanksgiving. and I was just asking chefs or we're just chatting and then some of them like oh I'm going on vacation solo vacation I haven't talked to my family in ages or like oh I'm just gonna hang out here I need some rest and I'm like I've been around the best chefs in the world and I realized that a lot of their lives and more so of looking forward into the future of stuff I'm like I don't know if my life would be any different per se of like things and I was like it doesn't align with how my vision or my heart and mind wants with life because of my experience with cancer.

22:27So that's actually why I left. And it wasn't the life you wanted. Yeah, it was more like it didn't align with being able to, you know, spend time with family maybe on a Friday night, right? Or being able to do different things. So that's why I left. But then I ended up becoming, I still wanted to cook. Food, like we talked about, is still such a fundamental part of me. So I just wanted to find a different way to showcase food and being a chef. Okay, so tell me then about spatula foods and how it came to be. There's obviously like so many kind of meal kit options on the market. What is the unique value prop of spatula foods?

23:08Yeah, so spatula foods came to me as an opportunity. Opportunity between friends. So back in university, I was with a friend who's—so one of the co-founders, her name's Sheila. We actually went to Chinese school together in like way, way young and back, right? With Velcro shoes kind of vibes. You never know when those relationships are going to come back around. That's what I'm saying. So we went to Chinese school together. We also went to university together. Like she went to the university down the road. We still kept in touch and things. And then come pandemic time, her fiancé at the time, which is now husband, um also our our co-founder ian that he was doing his mba program in italy so they were both over in europe and in his in his uh mba program they had this their their final project is this like vc competition and you have to build the company so i haven't met ian yet and she was like hey my uh i want to introduce you to my husband he's kind of doing this thing and kind of we just he just needs some insight and some thoughts on stuff i'm like cool so we talk and he's like hey I'm over here in Europe we're over here in Europe there's this brand there's this like company called Picard which think Apple Store meets M &M meat shops yeah it's all frozen foods right exactly yeah and like they make billions yeah they make billions and like this is the French this is the French people buying frozen food and eating it versus regular like fresh what we current so you know it has to be high quality exactly right so he's like do you know anything about this like all this kind I'm like I don't but we can take a look he's like you think Canada can do this?

24:41Like do you think like I'd love to bring this over to the state or to North America and like kind of use this for my MBA. So I was like yeah let's run it. He's like yeah so this is like a real competition with real people. The companies are real. There's actually prize money as well. So it's like let's want to do it. So I took some time and that's sort of how Spatula came to be. It was actually started off from a school project. And the crazy part and sort of where everything starts to like rocket ship, like start the hockey curve or hockey stick is that we won the competition. You've got a thing about winning competitions, it seems.

25:23I'm competitive. I'm competitive. And so we win this competition and like we beat out crypto companies. We beat out like wind turbines and like these like IT things and all these incredible companies that smart individuals made. but yet we won. So we ended up winning it was about$60 ,000. And then I remember we celebrated and then we as a team were like, hey, so do we want to just kind of like split the do we want to go 20-20-20? And then call it a day. And then for me, I was like 20K is not going to do much for me. It's not life-changing or anything. We have something. I was like, hey, I'm cool if we want to just keep going, right?

26:04All in. So yes, we all took the 60 and we started with that. We started with that and then we just kept going because that venture competition that was in, they also had real VCs. They had real VCs and stuff and had people that were interested in what we were doing and kind of talks happened, happened. Fast forward, we ended up getting our first fundraise and then we got 1.5 USD. And that converts to almost$2 million Canadian, right? And that sped things up because we went from when we first started Spatula for that competition, Ian and Sheila were in Europe. So I did all the groundwork over here in pandemic lockdown.

26:47So it's like getting baggage samples and like taking photos and sending it back to them, trying recipes, getting someone to do, cook them and bring it back and all this kind of stuff. To then when we all came back, was able to rent, you know, a commercial kitchen. We started off with one table and like one shelf. That's usually how commercial kitchens work. And then you just, you know, you keep on renting things, keep on renting and adding another table, adding another shelf space, whatever. And we were in that commercial. We went from that little one table to ended up being a section to then being a full section to ending up.

27:20We right now have a 10 ,000 square foot facility near the airport, which is where we do now. So that really, really helps things. That is some serious growth. Also, a$1.5 million investment is no small feat. We've got a lot of aspiring and fledgling entrepreneurs at different stages of their journeys watching this. What is your advice on successfully pitching and getting investors to buy into your concept? Of course. So it always starts off with the team. right for me Sheila Ian we all have our skills and we all fill a pocket we all fill a pocket we know about every single each person's things but we let each person do their do their stuff right and because each of us had knew our responsibilities so well that when it comes to funding when it comes to pitching purely pitching in general it's I say pitching is like it's like going on a date, kind of, right?

28:31It's like going on a date. One of the things that's most attractive to people is confidence, right? What I mean by confidence is not about, you know, just telling them who they are and everything, but being able to just put yourself out there. Put yourself out there, answer questions. And in pitching, especially if you're asking for something from someone, right? The key is that's the difference, right? You're asking for something from someone. I'd argue if you're on a date, you might be asking for something from someone too. Yes, yes, that too. And it's like, whether it's like, you know, companionship or the dinner or whatever it is.

29:01But one and a half million dollars. But the key there is you want to make them feel safe and you want to make them feel like they can trust you. Right. So for me, if any of the VCs, anybody, we were also on like Dragon's Den and it's like any of those individuals asked about food, I can answer it with no problem about how we do this, how we do that. Where is that? Sheila, in terms of the marketing, the demographics, and with Ian, in terms of the financials and the operations and sort of the logistics, the three of us were able to answer any question that someone would ask us. And I think that's a big thing because ultimately, someone needs to trust you enough to give you money.

29:47And that's sort of the tip there. It's just you just not be confident and know your stuff. Know your stuff. Okay. But like you go from first being raised in sort of more like hole in the wall, non-pop restaurants to working at restaurants at the highest level. And then you're trying to build something where you have to scale in a very specific way. These are like all vastly different worlds. And obviously you seem to care deeply about high quality food. So what was your and is your sourcing process to assure that like People are still getting high quality food when you've grown in this way. So what's unique about spatula and what we've kind of wanted to do and tried to do about it is, I'm not an engineer, right?

30:32But I can tell my family, I'm like, hey, I'm a culinary engineer, if you will. Where all these dishes are engineered to a point where they're meant to be perfect on our customers' plates at home, not in our kitchens. so going into that scaling the biggest thing that with restaurants or food in general is that making it for one person two person four people can scale kind of linearly but when you go from four to four thousand or four to you know two hundred even it's a different ball game because your pots are bigger you know the time of reduction the condensation how long does something freeze right um the ability to maybe it takes five minutes to freeze a tray of vegetables right but now suddenly you have a freezer that has a hundred trays and then now it's like you have a hundred trays of hot things coming into a freezer that the freezer temperature drops then it's like oh it's not five minutes anymore it's more like 50 minutes right or even an hour or something like that then it's like but within that 50 minutes those vegetables for instance they're still kind of cooking.