Feeding Souls: How Chef Nikky Phinyawatana Built the Asian Mint Empire | Restaurants & Franchises Series

Intro: Welcome to another edition of inspired stories where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes how they’ve overcome adversity and explore current challenges they’re facing.

Anthony Codispoti: Welcome to another edition of the inspired stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Kodespode and today’s guest is Chef Nicky, a Thai Texan chef and entrepreneur who is the force behind the Chef Nicky lifestyle brand and the Asian Mint restaurant group celebrating 20 years with five Dallas locations. Known for her approachable Thai and Asian fusion cuisine, her cookbook, Thai food and travel with Chef Nicky, easy Thai recipes to feed your soul, won the Best in the World Gourmand World Cookbook Award and was a best seller on Amazon as well. She hosts the YouTube series Thai Takeover and leads culinary trips to Thailand.

Chef Nicky was named one of Dallas’s top 10 best chefs by Culture Maps Tastemaker Awards. During the pandemic, she launched Thai cooking sauces and virtual escape to Thailand experiences. Her restaurants have been acclaimed as the best Thai restaurants by the Dallas Morning News and Eater Dallas. Featured in D magazine as a top North Texas leader, Chef Nicky mentors future culinary talent and supports over 100 charities.

She enjoys midnight baking, Texas barbecue and exploring vibrant food scenes with her family in Dallas. Now before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Add Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. One recent client was able to add over $900 per employee per year in extra cash flow by implementing one of our proprietary programs. The results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible.

To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at addbackbenefitsagency.com. Now back to our guest today, the founder of Asian Mint and Chef Nicky.com, Chef Nicky herself. I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.

Nikky Phinyawatana: Yes, thank you, Anthony. It is an honor to be here. So, Adi Ka. So Adi Ka.

Anthony Codispoti: Okay, so Nicky, tell us in your own words first what Asian Mint is all about. Wow.

Nikky Phinyawatana: Asian Mint is, wow, even more and beyond what I ever started when I started it. It was funny story. Let’s hear it. I love funny stories. I love funny stories. When I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do at 25-ish, somebody told me said, whatever you do, Nicky, do not open a restaurant is the hardest thing you could ever do in the world and you would not have a life.

So I said, bling, bling, bling, light bulb, let’s start there and then we’ll work myself backwards. 20 years in, I’m still doing it and I love it and it really honestly feeds my soul to be able to feed other people through my passion. My love language is feeding, is food and so it’s a passion project that has turned into a multi-unit, multi-million dollar business that now also supports an amazing group of people because I do this for the people and my employees who I call my mentees really keeps me going in addition to our Mint Fanatics, our customers and with that, it really, I love it. I love what Asian Mint is all about.

Anthony Codispoti: So aside from wanting to prove that person wrong who told you don’t start a restaurant, what else got you excited to start this? Did you have a culinary background? Had you been in the restaurant industry before?

Nikky Phinyawatana: Everything was pretty much self-taught. I went from a host server position then while I was serving during that time, my dad had asked me to come back to Dallas. I was going to school, finished up school in Boston and then was working in an advertising agency and he said, hey, would you be interested in coming back to Dallas? Let’s start a food delivery business. He was doing that at the time and he was like, I would love someone to come and kind of run the operations in the office and I’m like, you know what?

That kind of sounds fun. And I told him like, give me two years or I’ll give him two years. And during that time, I was serving in a restaurant.

I was singing in a band. I was going to culinary school because I love to bake and I really wanted to figure out how to use like commercial kitchen equipment and starting to batch things at large. I met my husband and we decided to do something related to food. He fell in love with me because of my chocolate flourless cake. I found out later after we got married. But when we got married one month in, that’s when we started our business, our restaurant together. So that’s kind of like the backstory. You never really know why you decide to do things, but if you just kind of go with the flow or just listen to the energy around you and I’m kind of that kind of person, you just kind of do it and just kind of give it all.

But I never knew it would turn me, you know, to what I’m doing today and what I’ve been able to do to feed, you know, over a million souls in a year through all the restaurants.

Anthony Codispoti: Is your husband, Tai as well?

Nikky Phinyawatana: He is. He’s 100% Tai. I’m more of a 50-50 Tai Texan kind of gal. But yes.

Anthony Codispoti: And so he was also excited to start a Tai cuisine focused restaurant.

Nikky Phinyawatana: I don’t think so. The funny thing is, so we were servers working in two different Tai restaurants and we met like at Tai karaoke night. And once he started to hang out with me, he knew that my passion was in the kitchen. He has always had a chef tongue. So a chef tongue is like, when you taste something, number one, you can tell like what is in it in addition to like, he can say, okay, this is what like the general public would enjoy.

And with that, he, he already had the talent. So we basically jumped in without having any full restaurant management operation experience and just kind of went with our gut saying like, we’re going to do this and we’re going to see how it goes. And if it doesn’t work, then we’re both going to move back to Thailand and figure out what we want to do then.

Anthony Codispoti: All right. So for someone who’s never been to one of your restaurants, what’s the customer experience like? What’s the decor, the ambiance? What’s the food and the menu like? Paint a picture for us. Absolutely.

Nikky Phinyawatana: So at Asian Mint, we are known for our fresh flavors, minimal seasoning, really highlighting the ingredients, simple, but amazing comfort flavor profiles and very friendly service, just kind of like that Thai smile that we were talking about earlier and comfortable, but modern atmosphere. We are all about highlighting the colors in the dish. So we have like white plates, white tables, a lot of like white, bright, open air atmosphere in the store. When we first open, we had a writer who wrote about us and say, it’s like an Apple store feel, but in a restaurant setting. So if that kind of gives you a hint, that’s kind of like what we are and who we are, modern, minimal, but just full of flavor and really soul feeding.

Anthony Codispoti: That’s a pretty cool description. The Apple store really helps to paint an interesting picture. So you start the first location. You don’t have a lot of that restaurant management experience. What was that those first months or years like?

Nikky Phinyawatana: It was hard. I mean, we worked, I feel like 20 hours a day. We literally opened the restaurant and rented an apartment across the street that we could look out the window and see like, did we turn off the lights? Did we remember to lock the doors?

Is the gas turned off? So it was it was hard, but it was really fun. You know, you’re like 20 in your late 20s. You have all the energy in the world to do it. You’ve got friends and family to come in and help. And it was it was long hours. And you know, that can really beat you down and not being able to be off during the holidays.

Those are like your busiest seasons. More or less when we did the first restaurant. We went we we were lucky enough, I would say, to make like the top 10 best new restaurants of 2005. And with that, we were went we went from like serving, I would say, maybe 70. We covers a night to like 250 with the weight out the door.

Anthony Codispoti: And with that really helped. It does. It really, really does. And but I think the important thing in the restaurant world is.

Nikky Phinyawatana: Once you get that person to come in that first time, how do you turn them into a repeat customer? You want them to come back over and over again. So that first impression, literally when the guide came out, it was in the Dallas Morning News. I didn’t know that was going to happen. First of all, then when it happened, I had to call in literally aunt’s uncle’s friends, family like we just need bodies at this point because we couldn’t keep up making sure that they everyone had an amazing first time experience. The kitchen was running at capacity. We had to learn how to time manage everything, you know, from the front door with the host, not just like, OK, we have an overtable, let somebody come in. But we really had to pace everything. We had to learn how to schedule in more staff.

Where do we need to put them? What do we need to train? Everything was on the job because I didn’t have corporate restaurant experience at all and everything was just based on intuition of, you know, being a server at a restaurant, knowing what the host does, figuring out how to bartend like I was self taught.

But I don’t know, I guess I just love to learn on the fly is what I figured out. But looking back, like if I had had more corporate experience, I think my life would have been a lot easier. But I was able to create my own culture systems, operations and the management team based on what I find to be a successful, I guess, perfect sauce.

Anthony Codispoti: Were you able to lean on anyone with more experience during this time? Any, I don’t know, peer groups or mentors who you could go to and say, how do I do this?

Nikky Phinyawatana: I would say I did not know a lot of people at the time because I just moved to Dallas. I didn’t have or even knew about mentorship. We did hire an amazing chef who came in and helped us, which also she helped train my husband and myself. And she was the one who would be like, OK, Nikki, this is what you’re going to need for tomorrow.

Here are all the things. So we did have someone back of house that we had hired on at way at the beginning because she came on and she said, you know what, you guys don’t really know what you’re doing. I’m going to come in, help you set up everything.

And like in two years, I’m going to teach you all and then we’re going to leave. So in a way, like she offered herself up, she quit her other job and came in and just helped us really solidify the system operationally from the back of house. Front of house, I think it was mostly just from my learn experience as a server and observing how that all works and my husband as well. But yeah, I could have probably been a lot better if I had more mentors. When we open, though, oh, I do remember this this really particular fond memory of another restaurateur who came into the restaurant because they lived not too far away and they heard about us and they came in and they introduced themselves and said, hey, basically got to learn me like who I am, any experience whatsoever. And he would offer, you know, his experience share of hard situations that he had with customers and how he overcame that. So having, I think, talking to a lot of people up front, which is like my favorite thing to do is just get to know my clientele or my mid-fanatics. And then I learned more of those through those conversations of how in every business, no matter restaurant or not, people is pretty much the hardest thing to manage, whether they’re customers or employees. And we commonly shared experiences of successes or lesson learn from each other.

Anthony Codispoti: So how long into the first location, Nikki, was it before you thought, OK, we’ve really got something here that we can replicate and we should keep with it and we should open up more locations?

Nikky Phinyawatana: I will. They were four years apart from from restaurant one to number two. And in that time, I also started a family, right, and then had a child. So kind of balancing that all was interesting when I was opening the second location or looking for the space. I didn’t even know I was pregnant. So I kind of like had like felt like I had twins. But the thought process from going from the first location to the second location, it was also one of those things that came to mind like, OK, we got one going.

It’s awesome. How do I make it better? How can I make it more efficient and effective? And my goal when I opened the second one was, OK, I want to open a restaurant where we have systems and processes to an extent where I wouldn’t have to be there. How can it run without me being there?

Because I can’t be at two places at the same time, right? And I think me being pregnant, literally, I think we opened the restaurant September of 08 and my son was born March, 09. So there was a big need to create that system because I was not going to be able to be around, didn’t know how was how long I was going to take, you know, a maternity leave for because it is your old business. And that really, really put a put a pin in it to say I need to find the right people, put in the right systems and hope for the best, because this would be the first one where I wasn’t even going to be able to be there.

Anthony Codispoti: Well, they say mother is the necessity of all invention and you becoming a mother was the necessity that prompted you into building systems and processes. And so that’s great. That’s sort of expedited and sort of highlighted like, OK, we got to get we got to get this stuff done and put it in place. How long was it between opening the second and third location? Shorter timeframe?

Nikky Phinyawatana: No, longer time frame. So I said, I don’t know what was that. So we my husband was good with two. So he’s very comfortable with two. I was comfortable with two for a while.

I was more interested in having another child because I wanted to have more than one that was one of the highlights of my life still today is having a child. And so we kind of that’s such a good question between two and three. I would say maybe another three, four years. Yeah, I think it was like oh, seven or oh, eight, I believe.

I can’t even remember, but I know I already had my second child. Yeah. And therefore, four and a half years apart. So maybe four or five years after I had my third one, you know, in the restaurant, well, there is a momentum like right? You open one, two, three, four, there is a momentum when people want to continue to open more restaurants, but we didn’t have that mentality. It was more like, how can we have a balanced life at the same time? Continue to grow.

And we grew with the team. So the third location came about because I had a manager who was interested in having their own restaurant. And I said, would you like that experience? She said, yes.

So I’m like, OK, we’re going to open the third restaurant and you’re going to be in this process from the beginning all the way till opening and you pretty much will need to be running that store. And that’s I believe in my people. I believe in teaching them a lesson. And I always learned on the job. And I feel like that is really the best way to learn. And that’s kind of how it came about that third location.

Yeah. And even a third location, we were also in the process of expanding our first location because we had an opportunity to open, expand that first location next door because we were like bursting at the seams. We had 30, 45 an hour wait for lunch and dinner at that location. So there’s like multiple things going on at the same time. But the third location came about before we were able to expand our first location. And then are you going to ask me about the fourth? And maybe the fifth?

Anthony Codispoti: No, the bigger part of what I’m trying to get at here is, I talked to a lot of founders that, you know, they start a business. It’s small, a restaurant, and they’re involved in every facet of it. Right? Yeah. Like they’ve got their fingers in everything. And then as they grow to another location and another one and another one, they have to evolve their personality, their skill set, their management style to be able to support that.

Because like you said, you can’t even with two locations, you couldn’t be in two spots at once. So once you get to five, like your involvement in the things that you’re doing now have to be a lot different than they were before. And so I’m kind of curious to understand like how you personally managed that type of transition. Not everybody can grow from being the founder to being a manager of something bigger. Absolutely.

Nikky Phinyawatana: So I would say after my second location, four years in, I started to be really comfortable, right? I had two locations. Now I have kind of like a semi-management team of like two or three people. And I had more time and I’m all about self-improvement. Like, you know, what else can I learn? Or is there something else that I could be doing that would be more fulfilling? And at that time I went out and started networking a little bit more. And I found, I think that’s when my first Fem Tour came in, a female mentor who put the idea of maybe even an exit plan, right? So let’s, or let’s say if something happened to you, Nikki, you know, how would the restaurant survive?

Do you have those kind of systems in place? If somebody wanted to come and buy your business tomorrow and offered you like, you know, the right number, can you walk away? And that really stuck in my mind. And we worked on even more creating, you know, mission statement, value system, the corporate structure and putting the people in, in between me and the restaurant of how can we create that system where I really am away?

And there was this really fun exercise that I did. And basically figuring out, OK, what are all the things that Nikki can do? And what are the things that only Nikki should do? And what are the things that Nikki should not do? And that really helped step me out of the day to day and figuring out, OK, what are the things that make the registering that Nikki does?

And list all those things out, put a correlation of the things I do want to do, align those and create a pretty much a job description of all the things I shouldn’t be doing to hire that person to come in and take care of all the things that need to get done that I should not be doing. So these are the steps that we did to be able to, number one, be able to sell the business if we wanted to or grow. In our case, it’s like, OK, if I’m not doing these things, I have more opportunities to do things that I love, which is business development, finding new locations, going out to network, talk about the business and all the marketing fund that I get to do now through social media, being online, these presence, amazing podcasts that I get to be on. And just sharing the love of a successful business in an industry that is commonly known as the life sucker of the world is kind of what people say. And it’s actually been really fun to also see, I don’t know, you have interviewed a lot more restaurant tour, but the restaurant pre-COVID after post-COVID, I think a lot of restaurant tours have the time to think about what is important.

What are the really true priorities in our life that we shouldn’t from open to close? Then came a lot more light bulb moments to these entrepreneurs to create more systems and processes to hire more people who might not have restaurant experience, but more experience in other areas that also apply to the restaurant world, whether it be financial people or realtors. You normally don’t think about but hiring all those out because we’re known, restaurant tours are known to do it all. Like we have to do the accounting, we have to do the payroll, we have to do the marketing, we have to do the operations, we have to buy the stuff, check the inventory, but in reality, that’s not the case. We’re just been taught back in the day, like you just need to do it all. So that’s kind of probably leading to what you’re thinking about.

Anthony Codispoti: Do you want to give a shout out to your mentor?

Nikky Phinyawatana: Yes. Sandra Yancey of eWomen Network. We are still working with them today and I’ve been able to even invite my mentors, my management team to go and learn through her program and her system.

It’s really, really amazing. They’re based here in Dallas, but they are an international company. We’re just lucky to have her down the street and be able to tap into her all the time.

Anthony Codispoti: So you’re at five locations now. Any desire to grow further?

Nikky Phinyawatana: We do. We do have a growth plan of 10 locations by 2030. In the restaurant world, people will be like, wait, that’s all you want to do. But we believe in a balanced lifestyle, not killing ourselves in the process. And that can change, right?

But that seems like a very accessible goal. I have two kids, my staff have also started to grow their family. And we want to have a lifestyle where we can enjoy what we do and have fun in the process.

That’s kind of my main goal. If we’re not having fun, why are we doing it? I have a 15 year old and a 10 year old going on. I feel like she’s going on 18. But being able to have that and enjoy growing them in addition to really growing the business, that’s important to us.

Anthony Codispoti: Are there things that you miss about what you were doing on a regular basis when you first started the restaurant versus now when you’re in a bit of a different role?

Nikky Phinyawatana: There are. I still miss maybe going in to the restaurant every day, having to go into the restaurant and connect with my team. So I now do that. I literally will have to schedule myself.

Okay, go into these locations at these times so that I can go and have more of a personal connection. Cause that’s really what the business is all about. It’s hospitality. It’s really soul to soul connection. It’s not just like spreadsheets. And I do miss that. That is a part of my personality, my DNA. And now in my new role, what I also love about it, because it now has given me more time is to be able to mentor my staff, but not really be in charge of like the hiring or the firing.

That was not some of my favorite times. Um, but you do that enough that you know how to do it and being able to teach those skill sets, letting them know that when you hire and fire, it is all about, you know, are they in alignment with our value system and really instilling that value into every point, not just every person, but even in our systems, even in our communication language, our marketing. A lot of times they will forget. And where that person who has to continue to remind them what are our values and why are we doing what we’re doing today?

Anthony Codispoti: So everybody can find Asian Mint at AsianMint.com. Uh, I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about the Chef Nikki brand. So Nikki is N-I-K-K-Y. So chefniki.com. Tell us about the Chef Nikki brand. How this idea came about, what it’s all about.

Nikky Phinyawatana: The Chef Nikki brand came about in around 2019. So going on five years and it was more of me wanting to share above and beyond outside of just my restaurant. How can I really share my passion and inspire people beyond just hanging out at the bar or in the restaurant?

How can I touch more lives? Cause one thing that I’ve learned is the restaurant became a platform for me. I would be in the restaurant.

I would sit down at the bar. I would talk to the person next to me and literally did I know that they walked out of the restaurant, sometimes even quitting their job and following their passion. Cause they were inspired, hopefully also by the food that they got to enjoy, but the stories that I got to share with them.

And they would look at me and be like, you’re so inspiring, Nikki. I want to do what I love to do too. And I would literally turn that question around like, what do you want to do? Why aren’t you doing it?

What’s stopping you? Just asking those questions that I ask myself all the time, because we have to be reminded, are we still in alignment with what, you know, our true calling is, our passion. And just based on those stories that they would come back and tell me of like, okay, because of that conversation, or because of something I saw you do in the restaurant, or because of something that that staff talked to me about, or that dish, you know, really evoked this passion in me. It just made me realize like, I want to share my life experience with more people. The chefnicki.com started off like, okay, how can I, you know, inspire people through food, culture and travel, which is actually still my core main reason of why I do what I do through this brand. And with that, I was able to birth the YouTube channel because people are interested in knowing where can I buy the best groceries from the Asian grocery store, because it could be very overwhelming.

Number one, I learned that people really enjoy that. Or where does Nikki like to eat? What does she like to enjoy? Favorite restaurants, favorite places to visit. I love to travel. And all of those cultural connections that people forget that when you go to a place, it’s not about, okay, let’s hit all of the checklist. Let’s make sure we hit all of these favorite things that people do when they go to places.

But that deeper connection with the people in the culture. Did you look into their eyes? Did you ask their stories? Did they talk about you?

Did you talk about them? It’s those deeper story connections and experiences that really change you and potentially that other person that you meet in a whole nother country. Right. And also the food. The food is that language that kind of bonds all of us together. And that’s where the chef Nikki brand came about in 2019. Then I started trips because I would go to Thailand every year.

Anthony Codispoti: So you organize trips, people to go with you.

Nikky Phinyawatana: I do. I do. I started organizing trips and it was all because again, my fanatic said, Hey, Nikki, the next time you go, I want to go with you. And I’m like, okay, I don’t think you would want to go when my whole family is going because we’re doing all these family things.

But let me figure something out. So I started to create a work trip to go to Thailand again. I’m doing one of the favorite times of the year, which is like retongue, which is the full moon festival in November because they have this beautiful cultural ceremony where they do the floating lanterns and the floating flower baskets in the water. And it is just a magical, magical once in a lifetime for anybody to go to Thailand at that time. And I put it together and I posted it and I said, Hey, you know, are you really interested to go to travel with me?

And literally I posted it within one week. I was able to fill this small group of 12 to go on the trip to Thailand with me. And it’s my favorite thing to do every year. Um, I only get to do it once a year right now because, you know, I still got to do what I need to do with the restaurant and everything else and the kids being around.

Um, but it was, it was one of those moments where I said, this is what I was meant to do. I love this. It feeds my soul. I get to change people’s lives.

They come back, you know, with new perspective of their life and getting to change even just a little bit, if not a whole, um, life trajectory. Um, cause you’re really going to another side of the world like Thailand and Texas or America are on their 12 hours difference. Imagine how different of a culture chalk time change, um, and everything else that you can experience.

It just, it just changes the rhythm in your body and the way you’re thinking, the way you see life. And those are just magical moments that I really enjoyed being able to curate for people.

Anthony Codispoti: We were talking before we went live with the interview that I’ve spent a little bit of time in Thailand. It’s been several years. Yes. While going to Thailand, I had traveled quite a bit in Europe. And so I thought, oh, I’m a world traveler.

I’ve seen things. And then my first introduction to Bangkok is this enormous city with so many people and traffic and all kinds of bars and restaurants and all kinds of crazy nightlife. And one of the things that really stuck out to me, and I still remember to this day, even though it’s been years since I’ve been back, are the people. Like the friendliness of the people and how welcome I felt everywhere that I went. And people are just always smiling. I don’t know what it is in the water there in Thailand that people are drinking. They just greet you with a smile. So a wonderful place to be. I’m kind of curious though, what part or parts of Thailand do you take your group to?

Nikky Phinyawatana: So I’m from Bangkok and we take people to three different regions in Thailand because I’m all about you understanding the food culture, the three different food cultures. There’s technically four or more, but we do north, central and south. And with those three understandings, you will really get a full become kind of like a Thai culture and food and travel expert when you come back to your hometown.

So those are the three regions, mostly Chiang Mai, Phuket and Bangkok are the three regions that will hit and will also hit like some other smaller cities around Bangkok. When we go visit, you know, the floating market or the fresh, fresh market that we get to being on the river. It’s a lot of fun. So fun.

Anthony Codispoti: Those are some of those are places that I’ve been before and I will echo chef Nikki’s comments. Those places are a lot of fun. They’re a real treasure if you’ve never been. Do you have a favorite to put on your bucket list? I really enjoyed the floating market. And I enjoyed being up north in Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai a little quieter, like a little bit of a different pace. And but the same, the same friendly people and lots of beautiful scenery to check out.

Nikky Phinyawatana: So yeah, we are called the land of smile.

Anthony Codispoti: Is that right? I didn’t realize that we are. It makes a lot of sense. It fits. So, in our culture, chef Nikki chef Nikki.com. Are those some of your sauces that I see behind you? Can you tell us more about this?

Nikky Phinyawatana: Yes, they are. So we launched a sauce line. It’s kind of like a COVID baby. I’ve been teaching cooking classes since we’ve started the business. And one of the main pain points that I noticed is you don’t have an Asian grocery store on every corner in America.

Right. You have to go to Asian markets, which is in Chinatown or Koreatown. And once you go in there, it is extremely overwhelming. Not everything is in English.

And there’s like a hundred kinds or maybe a thousand kinds of sauces that you need to purchase. Right. And so what I’ve decided is let’s take away that pain point. I want to simplify you thought process when you go into the kitchen and I want to create something that’s Asian.

That’s Thai. How can you make it super simple? So created the sauce line. These are the exact same sauces that we use in our restaurant today. So you can create restaurant quality, perfect every time Thai dishes at home.

I have a few here. This is our gluten-free stir fry and you use it more than just stir fry. So on my website, on the YouTube channel, even in my cookbook, we’ll have recipes where you can really break it down and use traditional sauces or you can use my sauces to cut out, you know, sometimes 10, 15, 20 minutes of time trying to put all those seasonings together when it’s just like one sauce you pour, you go, you’re done. It’s perfect every time your kids will love it every time. They won’t be saying, why is it taste different this time? Right. You don’t have a lot of time.

Me as a mom, it’s really important to be able to create flavorful, nutritious meals for my kids and I don’t feel bad of, you know, going out and buying another burger and fries every single night or fried chicken. Awesome. Yes. There’s the cookbook. So those are the sauce lines we have them at Central Market, which is a local foodie supermarket here in the Dallas, Fort Worth area, along with my cookbook as well.

So those kind of go hand in hand. The cookbook came out in October of 24 and it is my new baby project, my new baby, my new project, not a baby project at all.

Anthony Codispoti: A huge giant project, I’m sure.

Nikky Phinyawatana: Yes, exactly.

Anthony Codispoti: And you can buy it here from your website as well as from Amazon. Tell us what people should expect from it. We’ve got five star review rating and tell us about the awards that it won. Awesome.

Nikky Phinyawatana: So the cookbook came out October of 24. My goodness. We had won this award when we were about to go into print and we submitted it to the World Ghermand Cookbook Competition. And it is an international award for cookbooks and we won the best female chef cookbook, number one first place in November of 2023.

And we were on a trip. We were in Chiang Rai actually on a trip when we found out that the book won this award. So it’s awesome because we won the award soon enough that we were able to really change up the graphic and included in the book.

Yeah, it is. It’s just really cool, honestly, to be recognized and to be able to say, hey, we are, you know, a best in the world best in class cookbook. Hopefully that would inspire you to want to purchase the book. More importantly, when my cookbook creator, PeeCops in studio, this was all done in Thailand. And he was looking at my personality, who I am, what kind of recipes we were creating. And he was like, Nikki, you have so much color.

You’re so colorful. I had to, you know, be able to open the book for you. It is more of like a coffee table book at this point because there’s so much beautiful photos, hopefully to inspire you to want to go to Thailand or travel.

Anthony Codispoti: Oh, it’s all really glossy high color. Yeah.

Nikky Phinyawatana: Yeah. So it’s a coffee table book all in all one third of the book is my life story. There is the celebration that I was talking about where they do the floating lanterns. I think there’s my family back in the day. So cute. Beautiful.

You’re not that small anymore. This is my personal copy. So I have a lot of signatures. It’s like my little yearbook. And basically coffee table book, one third of the book is my story.

Hopefully to inspire you to follow your passion, your calling and everything in the back. There’s 53 recipes that are very simple and easy Thai recipes that you can create at home with under 10 ingredients or less, five steps or less. Super easy and you can use ingredients that you can find in your pantry, your refrigerator, your supermarket around the corner. Really, really hoping that you can talk yourself out of saying Thai food is so hard to make.

Anthony Codispoti: But that’s especially when you can incorporate your sauces. Like you said, sometimes going to an Asian grocery store when they’re hard to find and then to a lot of the products are coming right from Asia. They have foreign languages on the labels. You’re not sure what you’re kidding.

But with your sauces, you can really add a lot of that traditional Thai flavor in and that removes a lot of that perceived complexity that people have when thinking about making Thai cuisine. Yeah.

Nikky Phinyawatana: And it’s so funny. I had another funny story. We were doing a book signing and one of my super regular customers, this was at a supermarket, the central market supermarket we were at. And he came up to me and like, Nicky, I feel like I’m cheating if I buy your sauce.

I’m going to go figure it out. And I’m like, okay, fine, you do that. But by the way, your favorite thing is Pat Kimau.

He just went on and on how much he loves our Pat Kimau. And I’m like, here’s a bottle of my black soy. Use it or not.

Let me know what you think about it. And he literally texts me the next day. He said, this was so easy. I don’t know what I was thinking. I would actually just use your sauce to make everything.

I don’t feel like I’m cheating. The ingredients that you use in here are basic ingredients that I could buy. It’s sugar. It’s salt. It’s soy.

So I mean, like, come on, how is it cheating if all I’m doing is kind of mixing these things in the same bottle? And he’s like, I’m never going back again. I’m really just going to be using all your sauces to make all these dishes. But I was able to convert him and just that text that he sent me just made my day. Because even I was feeling like, you know, am I making this too simple? Because a lot of times all the Thai cookbooks that I’ve been looking at, it’s like very detailed. You need to make your own curry paste to be authentic.

But I’m like, do you really? And in my cookbook, honestly, it doesn’t tell you how to make a curry paste. It’s like go buy this curry paste, the red, the green, the yellow.

And I’m going to show you how to use that. Who has time to go buy all the ingredients? Number one, is it readily fresh as fresh as you can get it in Thailand? No, it’s not possible to get the lemongrass, the galangal, the ginger, all the time that’s always fresh. And being grown, something that’s been grown in Thailand versus here also has a different flavor profile.

But if I can recommend to you a curry paste that has no preservatives, that has been freshly made in Thailand, packed in a can, as fresh as it can be to really get that authentic flavor profile, why wouldn’t I tell you to use that? That’s really, you know, my thought process. And just again, that text message is saying like, you know, I’m not cheating. I’m actually being able to create and more interested in making this dish more than once in my life, because it is that simple. It is that easy. And I can start putting vegetables that I love or what I have in my refrigerator to create these flavors. So, yeah.

Anthony Codispoti: You’re like the easy button for Thai cuisine.

Nikky Phinyawatana: Absolutely. I’m all, we’re busy. We’re busy, Anthony. Moms are not. We got a busy lifestyle.

Anthony Codispoti: I get it. So where do you take the chef, Nikki Brandt from here? What else do you want to do with it? Wow.

Nikky Phinyawatana: I’m good right now. I’m going with the flow. And yeah, we got we got enough. I’m still enjoying it. And I see what people are telling me is, you know, with the cookbook, I will would be able to share my story more and maybe hopefully different and more platforms. Maybe doing speaking engagements through big corporations. I think I would really enjoy that any way possible that I can really take my story and share my experiences, my successes, my challenges, my failures so that you would not have to go out and do the same thing and, you know, waste money to learn these lessons is really what I feel. And passionate about to share.

Anthony Codispoti: So in the intro, we mentioned that you support over 100 charities. How, how do you choose? How do you do that? Yeah, I guess that’s a two part question. One, how do you do that? And then how do you choose the causes that you want to support?

Nikky Phinyawatana: That is so true. So when at first, you know, when we’re in the restaurant business, people are constantly coming up to you. Hey, I’m a super regular customer. Would you be interested in donating a gift card?

Or would you be interested in donating a chef table and things like that? And, you know, to a certain extent, you’d be like, I can’t do it all. I really can’t. So I think my what really speaks to me are pretty much two things. Education. And it really boils down to the quote that I often hear is, you know, you can give a fish to a person, but if you teach him how to fish, they would be able to really take care of themselves for life. And I’m not doing quote for quote, but education for me is really important. So anything causes that are related to education and feeding people, you know, there are people that are starving down the street. So we do a lot of work with Feed America. I have a project going on constantly now. So every time somebody buys the cookbook, I will donate $2 to Chef Jose Andres Foundation.

World Central Kitchen almost skipped my mind. So I truly believe in what he does. His passion to feed people when in need and crisis is really speaks true to my heart. And I really want to support that. And then, yeah, the children of the role, right? We got to feed them. So anything related to feeding and education is really how we boil it down. And then any big charities or charities that surround any of our local restaurants, so supporting our community is also a big part of who we decide to help.

Anthony Codispoti: You know, earlier in the interview, you are a couple of times now you’ve referenced your employees as mentees, which I think is a really cute name. And you also said, you know, that one of the hardest things in business is managing people, whether it’s employees or customers. And, you know, I’ve talked to a lot of business owners, both in the restaurant and hospitality space as well as other industries.

And a lot of folks are telling me it’s still a pretty tight late remark yet. I’m curious how you approach that. What are some things that you’ve tried and found success with both from a recruiting standpoint as well as a retention standpoint?

Nikky Phinyawatana: Absolutely. We have tried it all. We have hired firms to help recruit. We have done a lot of job posting. And we have found that the best way to recruit the people who are in alignment with our mission and our value is through referrals.

And they stick the longest. They kind of been pre-screened, right? If you have an employee that goes out and recommends somebody to come work for you, they have pretty much already pre-screened because, number one, they want to work with them. They’re going to maybe make sure that their success of the person that they refer is also a part of their success. So we have an internal program where if you go and recruit somebody and they stay for at least three months, they pass the 90 day test. We give them, I don’t even remember the dollar amount, but we basically give them a nice gift card for each referral.

So that’s what I have found to work the best. And also just through Turk talking to our customers, sometimes we have converted customers, kids. Again, the restaurant is one of the best first jobs I feel.

And if they already love our place, they know who we are. It’s a lot easier to train them. You can train skill sets, right? Those are easier things to train, but you can’t train hard.

You can’t train value. Do they have integrity? Do they have teamwork? Do they have the sense of innovation and just being a part of a group? So those are the things or the core values that we look for.

It actually spells Mint, M-I-N-T, Modern, Inspire, Nurture and Teamwork are four main categories in our value. And when we hire, even our staff will know that those are the things that we’re looking at when we’re hiring or firing at the same time. And with that, it keeps people in the business. Even I’d say this all the time and my managers, our neuro managers didn’t believe it at the beginning, but we have such a fun culture. We pay well. That’s really important. We have great benefits, but we are a family yet slash, you know, have a corporate mindset, but we really take care of each other. Sometimes the grass looks greener from the other side. They will feel like they’re very comfortable here.

I want something more. They would go work somewhere else within the Euro. So they’ll come back. So that to us, I feel like it’s a winning success story saying the grass isn’t always greener on the other pasture and knowing that we’re probably doing something right that is keeping people or they’ll go out, test something out and come back because they do come in.

Yeah. And I believe that they would only really appreciate us if they do have a little bit more experience. Let’s say we are their first job, go and try two, three more jobs and then decide who is really a good fit for them, for their growth. And if it’s not and you guys decide to come back and we left on good terms, you know, we would be happily to take you back. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti: It’s so important to have that ability to compare and contrast. So, Nikki, I want to shift gears a little bit and I’m curious to hear about a serious challenge that you have overcome, either personally or professional. Maybe some lessons learned going through that.

Nikky Phinyawatana: Wow. The first thing that really popped in my mind, this was probably the most expensive lesson that I learned. So I’m going to share this one, probably up to a million dollars that I lost on this lesson. And I decided to start another restaurant concept. This was pre-COVID in around 2017 or 18 and I wanted to do a fast casual concept of Asian men. So we came up with a bowl concept, kind of like a Chipotle concept where you kind of like pick things and put them in the bowl and you have like this perfect dish. You would have like fried rice with some like beef skewers, chicken skewers, shrimp skewers, tofu skewers with similar flavor profiles that you have come to love with Asian men.

It’s very different from what Asian men stands for. We are known for, I mean, our food was already really fast, which is really funny because the customer said, Nikki, how can you be faster than what you’re doing already? And I’m like, I don’t know, but I’m going to try it out. But that’s pretty much means like, you know, we’re making fried rice in batches and we’re kind of scooping everything in kind of like what Chipotle does. But we’re Asian men is really known for fast food, but everything is custom made to order. We can make a dish that is stir fried wok tossed. All of our wok dishes could be done, you know, within two minutes, but then it kind of gets in the queue.

So we have to operate that. So faster bowl Asian concept. Great concept. We hired a couple of firms to create the branding.

We have hired consultants to help figure that out because I didn’t know how to create a fast casual concept, let alone something that is similar to chain or franchise restaurants. Right. So we did all that, spent a lot of money. And everything was completely different. The operation, the hiring, who we hire, how we hire, payroll was very different than what a full service. Restaurant is.

We opened it, got great hype. Also, we did cashless. This was pre COVID. I mean, if I had, I feel like if I created this concept two years later after COVID, it would have been like the perfect concept.

We switched it. So I said, let’s give this concept a year and see how it goes. So divide that up. There was a lot of money that was went into this testing process. I probably should have spend it or switched it over to an Asian at six months earlier.

I gave it six months way too long. We were competing a lot of other franchise brands that are around the area. The location that I picked was probably not the best. But my reasoning behind that was, you know, I was surrounded by a Chipotle. I was surrounded by a burrito chain, a taco chain, a burger chain, a McDonald’s, a Chick-fil-A, like everything. I’m like, if I was going to test my franchise concept, it should be around where everybody else was going to be.

So I was competing against them as well. Thai food, unfortunately at the time, or maybe still today is not as well known as fried chicken or burgers just yet. I think it’s coming. We are now commonly referred to whenever I watch another Netflix show that be like, hey, let’s order Thai takeout. It’s no longer Chinese takeout, right? So we’re coming.

Thai food is coming strong. And I always knew that that location, we could switch it because we always had to have a backup plan. If this doesn’t work, what are we going to do with the lease? We have a five year, 10 year lease.

So we could always switch it to an Asian mint. When we decided to do it, we started getting all of our regular customers coming back in. And the message did come through. So if you listened to your guests, this was main lesson number one, like listen to your guests.

They will tell you exactly what they want, but you really got to be listening to them. So when we opened, they came in, congratulate, had everything like, this is great, Nikki, but man, I really would love an Asian mint. And I’m like, okay, you know, we’ll try it out, bring your friends and all that. So we come back every once in a while and they would taper off and then we go back to our other location and be like, because I really wanted, you know, the Asian mint. I wanted it to be served.

I wanted this food style, I wanted this menu. So that is one of the most expensive lessons to share. Number one, listen to your customers. Maybe test out the concept in a smaller format. There are ways to do that. You could do pop ups.

That’s what a lot of restaurants started doing after COVID, right? How do you test or prove a concept before you actually go all in? Some people will try test kitchens or ghost kitchens in areas that they’re not in. So you can see like, okay, is there really a market for my type of cuisine when you’re something a little bit different?

If you’re opening here in Texas, I believe, you know, tacos, burgers, pizza, you can put one anywhere. People would already understand what you’re trying to sell. So test out the market, listen to your customers and listen to your staff. Even my staff was saying, this is really cool, but really do you really, really want to do that? I’m one and only sometimes innovator in the business and they really have to like reign me in. But, you know, that’s my strength and we all have agreed. But there are certain things that they have to say, okay, you know, let’s prioritize number one.

And, you know, what is what does really make make a difference financially and for the brand itself. So we have to really constantly rethink what we’re doing. That was a big challenge.

Anthony Codispoti: Yeah. And, you know, I hear this story a lot and I’ve been through it myself as, you know, a business leader, somebody who’s got creative ideas, right? Your strength sometimes turns around and becomes your weakness and bites you in the rear end, right? You’ve got these great ideas. But I think, you know, for me, even hearing your story and having versions of that myself, you know, I try to look at what happened there and learn from it, of course, but not beat myself up too much over it because I don’t want the next time I have a great idea or what I think is a great idea to be too scared to, you know, delve into it a little bit more.

Think about exactly like you’re talking about, okay, if I’ve got another idea, what is a smaller scale way that I could test at a pop-up kitchen, maybe set a shorter time length. And I’m saying, okay, like I’m giving myself a new framework in which to try the next idea that if it weren’t successful, isn’t going to hurt as much financially, but doesn’t scare me away from still trying those new ideas. Absolutely.

Nikky Phinyawatana: I was lucky enough at the time. I just joined EO, Entrepreneur Organization, and I signed up for a mentor program. So my mentor at that time that really coached me through that process, just like you said, you can’t beat yourself, you know, to death because of this mistake. But what did you learn? And like, what truly were, you know, the obstacles that you think were really working against you that you might have not seen before?

What were your blind spots? So Brett Murler really coached me through that whole process. And it wasn’t easy, but he was, you know, he kept me on track of like, okay, are you looking at your numbers?

I’m not a big numbers person. I’m all about, you know, being the front of house. I’m in the sales side and marketing. And he was more financial and he really made sure like, okay, you know, you’re doing great over here, but are you looking at all your numbers? Are you looking at, you know, stats?

Are you really checking out your competitors? Constantly reminding me to do all those things was extremely helpful. And he was the one who brought it up like, you know, you picked a location. Yes, it sounds great on paper if you could like compete with them. But man, you’re competing against corporations that have 10 millions of dollars to market themselves. And I’m like, yeah, I did not think about that.

Anthony Codispoti: I just thought about how awesome I am and how awesome my food is. Yeah, I get it. And Nikki, I’ve just got one more question for you. But before I ask it, I want to do two things. Everyone listening today, I know you love today’s content. Please hit the like share subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. I also want to let people know the best way to get in touch with you chef Nikki. What is that?

Nikky Phinyawatana: Um, social media, I am on Instagram a lot. I do reply to all my direct messages would love for you to subscribe to my YouTube channel. If you just search chef Nikki and I Kky I would pop up subscribe like as well. And you can always find me. Round and about the restaurant at Asian Mint. If you’re in the Dallas Metroplex area, please come and visit. We would love to feed your soul with really amazing Asian food. And, um, yeah, reach out to chef Nikki.com and you can find everything and everything that I’m doing. Keep current on when I can come and see you in your neighborhood or reach out if you want me to come and speak to your organization. I would love to come and share my passion with them.

Anthony Codispoti: That’s awesome. Okay, last question for you, Nikki. How do you see your businesses evolving in the next year or two? What do you think the big changes are that are coming?

Nikky Phinyawatana: It is major. What do we got AI, right? A new administration coming in. We have a new workforce, a different generation that we’re constantly evolving our operations to really fit for them and really having, I have a team now to do that, right? Like we’re constantly evaluating our staff and what works and what doesn’t work. So constant change and being staying up to date, being innovative. That’s one of our, like our core value is modern is really staying innovative in what we do. Yes, we are a restaurant. We serve food, but we need to stay up to date in every single part of running a business.

Just keeping up with trend. We are really honing in on using AI in our operation. We started using it. I first in our marketing messaging, right?

How do we communicate? But now I have my team, I task them to start figuring out new technology and systems that are using AI to really make our business run more efficiently, effectively through costs and through operations.

Anthony Codispoti: Can you give an example of the AI that you’re looking at now?

Nikky Phinyawatana: We are looking into inventory. So we, you know, we are an Excel spreadsheet kind of operation when we’re doing inventory. But I said, Hey, I know there’s an app out there that can help with liquor inventory. I know there’s a lot more back of house inventory control programs and how we can incorporate that with our POS. So we use toast and they have a lot of plugins, you know, that have come up and since, I would say maybe last year, you know, there used to be maybe one or two operation programs to look at. What it can do and we’re in that process right now. So hopefully in 2025, we have a better program that would help with our inventory back of house cost control.

Anthony Codispoti: Tell me more about what you mean by the new workforce.

Nikky Phinyawatana: New generation, right? Think about it. They have different mentality from when what I grew up with, which is, you know, work hard, work, work, work to you, you know, can’t work anymore. But now it’s all about life balance.

So this has probably been 2020 that a number on us. But I think for the benefit of us all, it made us really prioritize what’s important. The newer generation comes into the workforce looking for a company that they can align with in terms of their value and their interests, right?

They’re looking for a place that’s not going to chain them to the store. So we have actually had to evolve, let’s say even our scheduling program. We have an app that we use that allows them to switch, you know, shifts that they want or don’t want with their peers. That used to not be the case. I mean, we’ve been in business for 20 years. We used to work on an Excel spreadsheet where once the schedule is published, that’s the schedule.

We have to be more flexible. They might not even have a reason. They might not be sick. They say, hey, I really don’t want to come into work tomorrow. You know, they need to have a way that they feel comfortable and that it’s not going to hinder their job performance when they’re making these kind of decisions to take care of themselves first and foremost before having to decide that they want to come into work or not. We have to be flexible with that. Respect it.

Anthony Codispoti: Chef Nicky, I want to be the first one to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I’m really grateful for it.

Nikky Phinyawatana: Thank you. It’s been an honor. Thank you. These are really fun questions. I’ve never really had the time to go so deep and in a lot of these questions. So thank you for the opportunity.

Anthony Codispoti: I appreciate those kind comments. It’s been a lot of fun for me too. Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today. .