LV Asian Night Market — Our Debut Event

The Opportunity:

I was shopping around Shanghai Plaza on September 17, 2022, when I noticed a table advertising that the first LV Asian Night Market since pre-COVID was happening in 3 weeks on October 8, 2022. I thought about it, didn’t act right away, but took a picture of the stand with all of the information on it just in case.

At this point, we had literally nothing together. No team, no equipment, no website, no POS, no apparel, no kitchen permits, no suppliers, no marketing materials, no experience, no brick-and-mortar, no food truck, and no one who knew who we were. And this was 3 weeks out from the event so even after applying we would have to wait to be accepted to know if we needed to pull the trigger and get everything together.

We legit had an Instagram account with a picture of our logo and an incomplete picture of our Taiwanese Braised Pork over Rice, a recipe, a dream, and that was it.

But literally two weeks prior to seeing the stand, I had delivered some braised pork over rice to a big foodie friend, Drew Belcher (founder of UNLOKT), and before we parted ways in the parking lot (yes it was one of those shady underground braised pork over rice dealings), he told me to just do it, go out and go save myself … so I applied anyways.

I thought. Worst case scenario, I can back out and just tell people that I wasn’t accepted and no one other than myself or the organizer would know. It would be my way to dodge falling flat on my face and making a fool out of myself. But we both know that I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I did that. I knew I had to step into a different identity, one that was eventually going to run an international brand, and not stay in the one that was scared to take that first step.

September 21, 2022, 2.5 weeks before the event, we were accepted and it was GO time.

So how did we actually get into the event??:

I spoke with the organizer, Brian Kieatiwong, recently as we’ve become good friends in the past 6 months, and found out that they were initially very skeptical about our application up until we got on the phone and I was able to explain the concept. It makes sense though because, from an event organizer’s POV, we didn’t exist… yet (honestly I wouldn’t even have let myself in 😂).

I asked Brian to share some of his thoughts on when he first received our application after he brought it up and because I’ve been curious since day one as to how we got accepted.

“When OCA Las Vegas first received Little Ding’s application, we initially assumed it was spam or a fake application. We don’t usually have that reaction to vendor applications for our events, but this was a unique case. Our team tried looking for information about the restaurant on the internet and on social media, but absolutely nothing came up, which was really odd because restaurants normally have some sort of presence online to market their business. There wasn’t even an address or location for this restaurant. I was personally very perplexed by this because we have never had an application for a vendor that did not exist at all. This irked me to the point that I decided to investigate further and do a deeper dive on Little Ding’s. The only thing I could find was a Nevada business license that gave it some legitimacy. After a few exchanges and a phone call with the owner Derek, it became more apparent to me that this business was actually real, and there was a real person behind it all. So, we decided to go ahead and accept their application, even if they only had a single dish to serve — their Taiwanese braised pork over rice. The goal of OCA Las Vegas and the Asian Night Market is to give small AAPI businesses and owners in the community the opportunity to uplift their businesses and bring better awareness of their existence. We want to ensure that even new businesses like this can flourish and provide for our ever-growing community of AAPIs. Little Ding’s is the exact type of business we strive to support. After their very first — and busy — introduction at the Las Vegas Asian Night Market, Derek and his team looked very tired but seemed happy to have been a part of this one-of-a-kind event that put them in front of thousands of people. Our team was touched by their reactions and social media posts that showed their appreciation for OCA Las Vegas and being a part of the event. It was evident that this significantly changed their business for the better. These are the success stories we want to champion and foster in the community, and we are happy that we continue supporting each other in order to strengthen the AAPI community”

Thank you to OCA and ACDC for giving us that opportunity and the platform to make a name for ourselves at the LV Asian Night Market. We would not be on the trajectory we are on today if we didn’t start then and we will be forever grateful.

Preparation:

Because the timeline was now less than 2 weeks to get EVERYTHING (highlighted in the first section) together, I was on the phone every single day for almost entire days trying to figure out what I was supposed to get (health regulations/fire department regulations), what was required (permits/licenses), what I needed to make and serve (food and equipment), and what I needed to learn so I don’t end up getting shut down when either the health inspector or fire department came around.

Most places that dealt with commercial equipment/custom designs/apparel have a standard 1–2 week turnaround time but anything longer than a 1 week turnaround time wouldn’t work for us. So how did I make it work anyways? The answer is simple but underrated. I got on the phone and asked how we could make it work but I didn’t get off the phone until we either came up with a solution or they referred me to someone who could get it done within the time constraints we had.

Side note: I leveraged the sh*t out of my past experiences and businesses. I had an old chip reader from running FREESTYLE as an apparel brand (the brand I was building before Little Ding’s was started) that I could use as a temporary POS system. I knew how to spin up a website on Shopify within a day from building my own websites and helping others with theirs. And I was very familiar with how print shops operated, what blanks were good, and what was needed on their end to start production. *Just because the industry/career path is different from what you were experienced in, doesn’t mean the skills and knowledge from your past experiences can’t be applied in your new role/venture.*

As for the team, I had 3 people that I had brought onto the End Goal Meal Prep team and 2 of their friends who were interested in helping out. I honestly don’t know what they thought when they agreed to work the event because if it were me, I would’ve thought I was crazy for selling a dream that had no shape or form yet. Next week’s blog will actually cover their thoughts!

Okay now… Equipment, marketing, permits, kitchen, team, all of that stuff was out of the way and it was time to figure out how much food to prepare. Initially, I was told only a few hundred people would be there so I thought 80 servings would be a great amount to test the waters with especially since it’s our first event. Zach told me I was being stupid and told me I should be making AT LEAST 160 servings. After way too many back and forths we decided on 200 servings (later we found out there were 8000+ people there so our initial number of 80 would’ve sold out in about an hour).

Event Day — LV Asian Night Market:

One thing I want to do with these blogs is to be as transparent as I can about our journey because what’s the point if all you read about is rainbow and sunshine?? Another thing is that I want to keep all of the blogs as PG as possible but oh man, we pulled this entire event out of our asses and it wasn’t even funny because no one working had any idea what was going on. Everything we did that day we figured out in the moment or through making mistakes.

On the day of the event, I was running the kitchen for End Goal Meal Prep like any weekend while also preparing 200 servings of braised pork over rice while also figuring out how to prepare that many servings without compromising quality/taste. We also did not account for how much time it took to peel 200 eggs so up until the event started, we were still peeling eggs in a circle in the back of the tent.

Setting up took forever despite ACDC and OCA providing most of the resources we needed and even after setting up we were scrambling. I forgot the wash station and had to make a trip back to the commissary kitchen to fill it up, our rice wasn’t ready in time because we shorted the circuit with all of our appliances and didn’t realize it while we were running around setting everything else up, we couldn’t use some of our equipment because we didn’t consider how much total wattage we had, we never used these rice cookers before so the rice was coming out super inconsistent (had to fix on the spot), and we ran out of water halfway so Calvin had to take my car to get more.

BUT at the same time… the team did so well that I could step out whenever I was called to the front of the tent. We made the electricity limitations work, we fixed the rice each time so that no one got undercooked rice, we developed a system to handle orders, and we served customers at a speed no other booth was capable of because of the simplicity of our menu (our one menu item, braised pork over rice 😂). We impressed the event organizers, we made customers happy, we made a name for ourselves, we even served and impressed the governor at the time, and we sold out!!

We ended up crushing our launch and debut, selling out of everything at almost 300 orders within 3.5 hours of the doors opening.

And for the next 2 hours of the event, we could’ve explored and enjoyed the rest of the night market but we were so dead that we sat lifeless the entire time. At the point of selling out, all of us had already worked on our feet for over 14 hours with the last 3.5 hours of it all being nonstop insanity. We ended up being one of the last vendors to load out (around midnight) because of how slow we were moving but our ridiculously slow clean-up made everything we accomplished that day feel that much more real.

This event marked the beginning of something incredibly special and even now as I’m writing this, I have no words to describe how amazing that night felt.

Lessons Learned:

You get to choose which identity to take on, choose one that serves you instead of one that holds you back.

Leverage your experiences to serve you in what you’re working on today.

No one is coming to save you — save yourself. In other words, don’t depend on someone else to change your life for you, go out and make it happen for yourself.

Pick up the phone and call to make things happen.

You lose more when you give up an opportunity that could’ve changed your life entirely than if you fell flat on your face, making a fool out of yourself taking it.

Founder Derek Ting

Thank you so much for reading! I hope you are enjoying our story so far and are excited because we have a new blog coming out every week!

Socials:

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