YouSaid · the spoken record

Vincent Kitirattragarn

lines on the record: 81
first: 2022-01-24
most recent: 2022-01-24
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah, at this time, coconut in general was very trendy. And so that became our anchor when we started talking about it. We said, hey, do you like coconut water? Hey, do you like coconut oil? Like you'll probably like our coconut chips.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so patch them in these foil bags. And each of these, you know, now it's a product, right? So we have coconut chips in a bag with a sticker on it. And it says toasted coconut chips on it. It says dang. And it has a picture of coconuts. And I found a consumer show called the New Taste Marketplace, which is like an artisanal market in St. Gregory's Church in San Francisco. And we did pretty well. And that's where we really learned how to talk about the product and say, hey, these are coconut chips. They're a healthy snack. They've got all the health benefits of coconut oil. And you can put it on your salads or your ice cream or your yogurt. And so that's where we really kind of got the pitch down for how to sell coconut chips.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. So we talked to all these manufacturers, figured out the one that we liked. The next step for us was, hey, testing it with consumers. So I think we went to Thailand that Christmas. And then I brought back with me a duffel bag full of, I think it was one ounce bags with stickers on them because I wanted to. Show consumers what a product would look like with this.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I walked in with a messenger bag with samples, and the first person I saw getting out of the escalator had a Whole Foods badge. And I was like, great. And I stopped him. I was like, hey, can you try these coconut chips and let me know what you think? And he was nice enough to stop and try the product, which I learned later on. That's not a good way to approach a buyer. And he stopped and tried the product and said, Yeah, this is really good, but you don't really have a product. You have chips in this little cup. I need to see pricing and I need to see packaging. And I thought to myself, great. Like all I need to do is create a package and then we can sell this product. It was enough to give me the confidence to take the next step.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, so we didn't want to spend more money by getting a booth, and we didn't have a product. We had chips in these little cups. But I did want to get feedback on the product, which is the chips, like just the coconut chips. And so I filled these souffle cups, probably a couple hundred of them with coconut chips, and then put a sticker on top with my contact info And the Dang logo.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so everyone in Thailand gets a nickname, right? Like a short nickname. And so hers is dang. So, people always call her P dang or no dang. And yeah, we just, it just came to me on a run and I was like, all right, let's put that as our logo.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that's where the entire industry goes. To find new items and talk about them and get business right, so I was like, all right, well, what's the big trade show in food? And decided to book a flight from San Francisco to DC. And we took some of the samples from the box that I got sent and I put coconut chips into these little plastic souffle cups and put a lid on it and put a sticker on it that said, dang. And we called it dang because my mom's name is Dang. And when you eat it, it's dang good.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I kept some of that sample, the samples from the box, and I heard about this food show, a trade show called The Fancy Food Show, which was in DC that summer. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to bring some there. I don't know anything about this industry. I don't know anyone in this industry. But if I can get people to taste it, maybe they'll tell me if it can be a product or not.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, because people wanted to snack on it at my home kitchen, why wouldn't they want to snack on and buy it at a supermarket? And I remember I called Andrew, who was in Thailand at the time, and asked him, hey, have you ever seen any toasted coconut snacks or chips? And he shipped me a box. And then we identified the sample that we liked and talked to the manufacturer.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, alright, now just to be clear, right? Because when people think shredded coconut, I think, certainly in the United States, they think of coconut macaroons, right? Like shredded sort of syrupy kind of treakily sweet coconut product or like an almond joy, right? Like shredded coconut. You're talking about shaved coconut, right? That's what you were working with.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, so you're making this because you need it for the next iteration of the underground farmer's market But you're thinking, wait a minute, maybe there's something with these coconut chips, this shredded coconut.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they started just dipping their hands in the pan and eating it. And I was like, first off, get your hands out of this pot because, you know, this is gross. But secondly, this is really interesting that, you know, all of these friends of ours love to eat. This toasted coconut straight out of the pan.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I couldn't find unsweetened, so I bought sweetened coconut. And the traditional way to do it is you put it in a wok, turn on the heat, and you start starting. And the moisture evaporates and it turns golden brown. And what she didn't tell me was it creates this amazing smell. And because I was making 20 pounds of this stuff and multiple burners going, the entire house smelled like toasted coconut. It's filling the house with like a sweet, nutty aroma, and we had multiple roommates, seven roommates, and they all came out of their rooms saying, what are you cooking? It smells amazing.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think two months later, I was like, all right, let's give it another shot. And my mom gave me an index card with a recipe on it. And it was for a Thai lettuce wrap called Miang Kum. And she said when she was in college, she would race out of her classes to this one vendor on the street because it's so good. And it's made of these six or seven ingredients as peanuts. It has young ginger. And I was like, okay, I'll do my own spin on it. I'll do it with braised short ribs instead of dried shrimp like they do in Thailand.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And Panda cell, which is a Filipino bun, marinated the chicken. So I have all these buckets and coolers just filled with chicken that's marinating in coconut milk. And all these spices all over my house. And I remember opening up shop and starting to serve people and then realizing, wow, there's not as many people here as I thought there would be. As it turns out, there were a lot of people, but they couldn't get in. There was a line around the block. But the place only held a certain amount of people and it couldn't allow in everybody.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I made a chicken sate burger And before the event, the New York Times had written an article about this event. So I thought it was going to be way overpopulated. And they told me to make 150 servings. And I was like, no, you know what? I'll make 400 servings because I think it's just going to be nuts, like way, way too crowded. So I bought organic chicken thighs at Costco, boneless.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I found out about it. I want to say through a friend who knew that I liked to cook. And it was a group that got together at a nightclub and created a night market. And they got around your food safety regulations by having people sign a waiver at the front saying if I get sick, it's not your fault.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think for the first six months I was very focused on the startup that I was in. I think after about six months, I started kind of keeping an eye open for what else I could do. And Andrew and I lived in this seven bedroom house in Chinatown in San Francisco with a bunch of roommates. And I remember we used to have like monthly dinners. So I'd cook these pretty big elaborate dinners for large amounts of people. I just love creating food for people”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think I saw an opening at Santa Barbara to go into accounting and then get into a big four accounting firm? Think a lot about risk. It provides a lot of downside protection, like in the event of a recession or anything. I could always fall back on being an accountant.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, the hours, you're on your feet for. Half of a day at the end of the night, it didn't feel like I had accomplished something. It felt more like relief that I got through it. You know, I just didn't want that lifestyle. I knew that from the outset.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A full-time job. We did ever do schedule. So I work four days a week, and with my extra days, I went and helped out at Thai Crossing. But you're right, I definitely didn't do it for the pay. And yeah, I think after that experience, I was like, no way.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I had an inkling that Thai food in the US punched above its weight. There's so many Thai restaurants, but generally too, they had the same dishes, which were Americanized Thai dishes like Pa Thai, right? And there's nothing wrong with pad thai, but it's... Way that it's served in America is typically sweeter than the way it's served in Thailand. Andrew and I travel to Thailand. We have a lot of family there. And every time we went there, you know, we were like, hey, the food tier is so different. And so I was like, you know, there has to be something else you could do here in bringing all these dishes from Thailand to the US. And I remember telling my friend hey, I think there's some opportunity in Thai food. Maybe I'll start a restaurant. He was like, you should probably work in a restaurant before you start a restaurant.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, large institutions have to buy a lot of stuff, right? And they have policies on what they have to buy. So universities, cities, states, some of them have policies that say, okay, if you're going to buy a vehicle, you have to buy the most fuel-efficient vehicle available. So, what we would do with this nonprofit was create guides on how to create these policies. So I was the manager of this program.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Everybody likes my chicken satay. And, you know, when you move to a new country, you lose a lot of stuff. So you might change your name and you might change the way you dress. And you might change the way you talk because you have to learn a new language. But I think food is that one thing that sticks with you the longest. And even though I didn't grow up in Thailand, I have so much affinity for Thai food because that's how I ate growing up.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“With peanut sauce And I remember bringing it in for all the parents to come and eat and looking around and seeing that my tray was the first one that was completely empty. And I had so much pride. I was like, oh my God.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I want to say it was a blend. And each parent kind of treated it differently. So at our dad's house on Lunar Near or Chinese New Year, we would kind of get together and have a meal and sometimes we're red and collect Angpao, which these money and envelopes from relatives. And so I think he was keen on keeping some of those Chinese traditions alive. And at the same time, when we went to his house, we would eat konji in the morning, you know, which is, there's a lot of Thai Chinese cuisine that we grew up eating. I remember there was a fourth grade school project where we had to bring in a dish. From your country, your family country of origin And so I brought in, my mom helped me make chickens a day, which is like grilled chicken on sticks”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. And, you know, she was a busy, single working mom. And we both had to kind of figure out how to feed ourselves sometimes because she was too busy to cook. I remember, you know, we could either order McDonald's because they delivered at the time, or we could learn to cook. And so I think some of my early memories about cooking came from cooking for my brothers, cooking for Andrew, cooking for our other brother.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“With each other, they had a very tenuous relationship. I remember multiple times where they were in the same room and there were screaming matches. And there was one time where I was helping my dad at a trade show at his booth. And afterwards we went to go get dinner. And we went to a Thai restaurant near the trade show. And my mom was there. And she was eating at the same restaurant. There was a fight and there was a beer thrown on somebody. One of them threw a beer on the other.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'd say we did everything together. We went to chess tournaments together. We played Little League together. We played baseball. We would always make it up games around the house. I remember growing up in an apartment building on the 23rd floor. Luckily, we've lived near big parks. So Andrew and I went out to the park to play a lot. What's interesting is I think back on it and all of the sports that I played, Vincent played before me. And it's funny, and chess too, like we both picked that up together. We happen to like a lot of the same things with sports and with that and even with academia. And I was like, if I'd had a different brother, maybe I would have liked a completely different set of”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Spend an inexcusable amount of time in grocery stores. I stroll up and down the aisles looking for interesting things to try. Last week I bought a box of frozen plant based chicken nuggets. I don't even like plant-based chicken nuggets, but the brand leaped out at me, covering nearly eighty percent of the box, a giant rooster head being fed a plant-based chicken nugget. That alone made me want to buy it. I'm a sucker, what can I say? But really, what I do when I buy these products is show a kind of silent appreciation for their branding. A really good design or logo that pops suggests that the people behind the product have thought very intentionally about what it is they want to convey to you, the person who passes by thousands of items at the grocery store. There are lots of choices, lots of”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Heard about this other trade show and got two feet of table space in a shared booth. So we stood in the aisles, just we made a wall, and it was me, my dad, my brother, and my girlfriend at the time, now my wife. And nobody got through the wall without tasting some coconut chips.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT