Inside MìLà’s Pivot to Direct-to-Consumer Chinese Delicacies

At the heart of MìLà is storytelling.

The modern Chinese food brand uses design, videos, influencer marketing and more to tell a story that honors heritage while taking it into the future.

“On the soup dumpling bag is [a picture of] my mom, as well as her friend who helped us fold dumplings in the restaurant in the very beginning,” MìLà co-founder Jennifer Liao shares with Restaurant Influencers host Shawn Walchef. “It’s this really personal touch.”

Liao and her husband, Caleb Wang, co-founded MìLà, which provides restaurant-quality dishes for people to enjoy at home. The brand started as a brick-and-mortar shop in Washington state but expanded into selling frozen, direct-to-consumer products in 2020. It now offers a selection of soup dumplings, sauces, noodles, potstickers and ice cream.

Part of MìLà’s storytelling North Star led to powerful partnerships with Uncle Roger, Simu Liu and others, which helped them share their journey with even more people.

Related: How This CEO Breathed Life Into a 75-Year-Old California Ice Cream Brand Without Losing Its Nostalgic Identity

Rebranding as MìLà

Liao and Wang’s restaurant concept was called Xiao Chi Jie, shortened to XCJ. Due to the difficulty with marketing, specifically SEO and customers’ difficulty saying the name correctly, the couple decided to rebrand to include more personal touches, with an easier name for loyal customers to pass along.

“We didn’t actually do the rebrand until [March 2023],” Liao says. “We wanted to choose a name that was more representative of us.”

They liked the name Mila for a daughter — but instead, it became the name of another type of baby: Their growing food business was reborn as MìLà.

“Essentially, it means sweet (mì 蜜) and spicy (là 辣), which is perfect for a food concept,” Liao says. “We loved how personal it was to us; it means something in Chinese and English. It embraced that duality, that ‘third culture‘ piece for us, which is important in capturing a name.”

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After rebranding and finding investors, they hired actor and author Simu Liu as their chief content officer. “Many Asian kids like myself grew up being made fun of for the taste, look or smell of food that wasn’t familiar to other kids,” Liu said when partnering with the brand. “MìLà is demystifying Chinese cuisine and creating an inclusive conversation around third culture in a way that I’m thrilled to be a part of.”

Plus, he added, “MìLà’s soup dumplings got my parents’ tough stamp of approval.”

For Liao, MìLà must have an organic connection and similar goals if it partners with a person or brand.

“We have talked to a lot of different celebrities or public figures, and you can tell sometimes it’s just not the right thing,” she says. “For partnerships, I think it’s being really realistic… And if you feel that there’s a thread, keep pulling on that persistently.”

When it comes to connecting with their online audience, Liao and Wang took to Instagram polls to find out what their core audience wants to see. They learned that some followers love their tempting food photos, but a good percentage enjoy the behind-the-scenes, non-scripted videos of the co-founders in action running their business.

“That allows us a different avenue of storytelling of who we are and behind-the-scenes pieces that are not polished and not necessarily about food or recipe content,” Liao says.

Related: This CEO Was Tasked With Helping an Iconic Hawaiian Brand Regain Its Footing. Here’s How He Used Storytelling to Do It.

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