My frozen dumpling company brings in millions a year

That upbringing taught Liu Spielman the value of sharing authentic Chinese cuisine and inspired her to open her first Dumpling Daughter storefront in 2014. Based on her family's recipes, she now sells the dumplings, which are factory-made and fresh-frozen, in her restaurants and shops. Grocery stores.

Those frozen morsels, plus additional products sold on Amazon, brought in more than $4.5 million from November 2022 through October 2023, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. Liu Spielman says her three restaurants, all in the Boston area, account for most of that income and sell up to 4,000 dumplings a day.

Dumpling Daughter is intentionally less glamorous than Sally Ling. It was designed by Leo Spielmann on the advice of her father. He told her that if she entered the food industry, she should not “open a high-end restaurant. [Instead] “Create a business model where you can sell a lot, but you don't always have to be there,” Leo Spielman, 41, tells CNBC Make It.

Here's how Leo Spielman used her parents' advice to launch a restaurant chain and why she branched out to build a more profitable brand:

Despite their success, Leo Spielman's parents did not want her to enter the food industry. She says the restaurant burned their relationship, and her father urged her to find a career that would allow her to be a “self-sufficient woman.”

I moved to New York City and worked in finance for five years. Despite her demanding job, she realized that she preferred cooking and being in restaurants to the office.

“When you get older, you think about that [the] Highlighting your childhood moments, and somehow, I really wanted to relive them “These moments,” says Leo Spielman. “I also wanted to respect my parents [legacy]”.

So, in 2008, she quit her job with $97 in her bank account She moved in with her mother, who ran the Sally's Ling's location in Fort Lee, New Jersey. She served as the restaurant's general manager for two years, and used her observations to develop the “quick-service” restaurant business plan.

Leo Spelman married her childhood sweetheart, Kyle Spelman, She returned to Boston at the end of 2010, a year after her father's death. Soon after, the Dumping Daughter launch plan was put into action.

Leo Spielman spent nearly $120,000 — most of which came from two loans from family members — to launch the first Dumpling Daughter restaurant in her hometown of Weston, Massachusetts.

“Naturally,” the press continued: “People were eager to experience the next generation of what my parents had built.”

Then came the crowds. Three months after opening, Dumpling Daughter had lines “out the door and around the block” and was often sold out, Leo Spielman says. “There were moments where I would stand in the walk-in freezer and cry for 30 seconds…and then I would come back out because there were 40 people…waiting for food.”

Inventory wasn't the only challenge: In 2015, two former Dumpling Daughter employees opened a copycat restaurant called Dumpling Girl less than 40 miles away. far. Leo Spielman filed a federal lawsuitCompetitors soon demanded a settlement.

The legal drama hasn't slowed Dumpling Daughter's momentum: In 2018, it opened a second location.

“I was very happy with one restaurant, but it was the customers and the response we received that forced me to grow the brand,” says Leo Spielman. “No matter what's going on in your career…don't let all the noise derail your goals.”

Dumpling Daughter has grown consistently through 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced restaurants to adapt to survive. Leo Spielman's team has launched a direct-to-consumer website, where customers can order boxes of the same frozen dumplings directly to their homes.

The strategy worked, and Dumpling Daughter eventually began selling more products, like its brown sugar dipping sauce and chili oil, on Amazon.

Packaged dumplings — sold in grocery stores throughout the East Coast and Midwest — and new products now account for about a third of the business, bringing in just over $1 million a year.

Despite its multi-channel success, Dumpling Daughter is not yet profitable. This is not uncommon for online startups: e-commerce margins are slim at first, but “scale helps,” consulting firm says McKinsey & Company reported in 2021.

Most restaurants are profitable, but also on a narrow margin. The average dining establishment has a pre-tax profit margin of approximately 5%, according to National Restaurant Association.

“In the consumer products line, you have to spend money so people know who you are [and] To find you online, says Leo Spielman. “It's a very scary job for me [because] “You're actually losing money because you're spending… to grow the company.”

Leo Spielman estimates it will take at least another two years for Dumpling Daughter to become profitable, but he hopes the brand's e-commerce efforts will eventually make it a household name. Her goal, beyond just scaling her company, is to keep Dumpling Daughter serving people as long as possible.

“I knew I couldn't follow my father forever, and that I had to create a brand, a feeling, or a product that served today's customers,” says Leo Spielman. “They certainly served customers in the 1980s, but I believe Dumpling Daughter will serve customers today beyond Chinese comfort food.”

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