Food People #002: Hannah Hong & Must Love

Hannah Hong, along with Mollie Cha, is one of the two co-founders of Must Love. Until this year, Must Love manufactured incredible plant-based ice cream treats. They recently pivoted to focus on their super delicious Classic Graham Cookies sweetened only with dates.

Must Love won Stacy's Rise Project 2019 (a Pepsico/Frito-Lay mentorship program for female founders), Women Founders Network Fast Pitch 2019, and Natural Products Expo West Pitch Slam 2019.

In the first part of our conversation, Hannah and I discuss her path from earning an MBA at UCLA to realizing her dream of becoming a brand manager with Bolthouse Farms via Campbell's to becoming an innovative food founder.

In part two, we explore where her love and passion for food originated, examine how food has shaped and influenced her life from childhood through becoming a mom, and finally, uncover her greatest food adventure.

When you're finished reading, don't forget about dessert. This story continues on our social channels with a few rapid-fire questions about the foods Hannah loves (and doesn't love) and other fun food questions.

Bon Appétit! - Read Time: 12 Minutes

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Part I: Business

Lex: Describe your path to working in food.

Hannah: This is very nerdy, but I've wanted to be a brand manager for a CPG (consumer packaged goods) food company since undergrad when I was 20.

That was my dream job. [said with laughter]

I'm laughing because I didn't even know what brand managers do back then. 

When I was an undergrad, a brand manager from Clorox came to my marketing class. He told us what brand managers do and explained "consumer insights" and how a brand manager activates consumer insights.

I was like, that is so amazing! I really want to do that!

Then I realized you can't easily get that job out of undergrad, especially when I graduated in 2006. Becoming a brand manager with only a bachelor's degree is rare. So I did the financial services thing because everyone was doing that.

When I went to get my MBA, I wanted to be recruited by a CPG food company. It's very unromantic, but that was my dream, to work in food as a brand manager.

So, where did you go after getting your MBA?

I started at Bolthouse Farms, owned by Campbell's at the time [now owned by Butterfly Equity]. It was part of a big CPG company but still felt like a small one within the larger parent company.

I had to do a lot myself—more than a brand manager at a large conglomerate. That experience was invaluable, and I'm still super close with my past colleagues there.

So, yeah. That's my path to working in food. 

Dang, that's probably one of the most businessy answers you get from your guests.

I love it! Knowing what you want to do so early in life is rare.

When did you make the leap from Bolthouse Farms to start Must Love?

So my best friend at the time, wait, no, sorry, my best friend FOREVER…

Mollie Cha!

Yes. Mollie was finishing her business degree on the East Coast and wanted to move back here.

At MIT, correct?

Yes, Mollie was at MIT. She wanted to come back to California, but recruiting from across the country is very hard, even if you attend a fancy school like MIT.

She had strong experience in finance and strategy, and our team at Bolthouse had an opening that didn't require CPG experience. It was more of a strategy role on the innovation team. 

So I sent in her resume and pretended she was just an acquaintance from college and not like my maid of honor.

Of course, she got the job because Mollie is amazing.

Then, literally within two hours of her first day, people were like, wait, what is this? What is going on between you two?

We were so giddy to be working together. Here we were, two best friends working at Bolthouse in arguably the best function in CPG, innovation.

So, both of us are children of immigrants who came to this country for the American dream. 

Our parents became entrepreneurs. We grew up watching them hustle with the grit and spirit needed to make it through the toughest of days as business owners. It was in our blood and work ethic to try and start something for ourselves, and we're very interested in food. 

We worked in food all our lives—our ideas were all food-based. Mollie and I were ideating different things we could do together. We landed on frozen desserts because we're both lactose intolerant, and that was a space in which we wanted to see more innovation.

All these things drove us to start our own food brand.

Our food background primed us with the experience you need to be successful. We knew enough to be dangerous but not enough to be effective in every aspect of running our own company.

It sounds like you had the right corporate background to get started and were wise enough to know that there are still functions to master.

What was the most challenging obstacle you've had to overcome?

This interview is only 30 minutes, Lex! How am I supposed to explain all of it?

You know this because you also worked at a big CPG company. Everyone thinks marketing sits in an ivory tower, and they don't really know what's going on or how to do stuff.

It isn't necessarily true everywhere, but for us, the actual making of the product was very challenging.

In the early days, it was super fun and super cute. Mollie and I had a tiny commercial kitchen, and we would make our ice cream and deliver it in our own trucks. My husband Jerry rigged a Ford to become an ice cream delivery truck.

Production was cute and fun at first, but once we started to scale sales, it became awful because we were doing everything. We were in production every day, so we were limited in our ability to work on the business. 

Every day, I drowned in production, sometimes into the night, and then tried to squeeze in an hour of reading and responding to emails. I was constantly behind and treading water for about a year before we finally figured out co-packing.

That was the hardest thing I've ever had to go through.

I can relate; that's where I am now, and tough is an understatement.

Now that production is off your plate, I've read that you love sales and marketing the most. Is that still true after eight years of running a very successful startup?

Is it successful? I don't know, but thanks, Lex. Is it true, though?

Very successful!

My favorite part of running our company is getting to work with my best friend every day.

Honestly, our husbands think we don't work and are just hanging out because it's always so fun now. Even when solving terrible problems, we have fun solving them together. So that's the best part. 

In terms of function, sure, sales is better than making the ice cream ourselves.

What is your most cherished memory of working in food?

There are actually a lot. One memory? I'll give you two.

In my corporate life, an experience that ignited my imagination and made me fall in love with innovation is focus groups. It was a big company, and I worked with a great agency to co-create my ideas with consumer focus groups. Being able to ideate together live for a few hours excites me about food innovation. It reminds us to focus on fitting into the lives of consumers and solving a real need that they have but might not even know that they have.

In the entrepreneurial world, I have a love-hate thing for Expo West and the opportunity it offers.

Deals that may or may not happen are more of a luck-of-the-draw situation, but the best part is connecting deeper with your team and everyone else who loves food—thousands of people from across the country who love good food.

Talking about your product and getting live feedback and engagement is super fun, too.

I'm very extroverted. Even if I dread going to Expo West, I love it when I'm there because I get so much energy from the show.

I can relate to both. The first part is that, as a design researcher, you can never ask people what they want because they don't know. The creativity is asking the right questions to find those unmet and unknown needs. Visualizing a solution that doesn't exist is like a super fun puzzle.

Totally.

And I feel the same way about Expo. The magic is not the deals you make but the relationships you stumble into. Especially when you're walking the show and not at a booth, you don't know who you will run into on the escalator or between halls.

Right! Like how we met at Expo East! We just bumped into each other.

That's the magic of Expo. I started LXB after 15 years in skincare, knowing nobody in food. Within a year of attending these shows, I now know more people in food than in skincare. I'm very open to meeting people, and it's truly changed my life. So, thanks for being a part of that magic. ✨

I think you also draw people towards you, Lex. You get what you put out there, you know? That's why you've been able to grow your network so well, too.

That's awfully kind of you to say. Thank you.

Who are the women in food that inspire you?

Alice Waters, who opened Chez Panisse, was like the pinnacle of California cuisine when I was in college at Berkeley. That was where I developed my love for the food business and food in general. Before college, I never made anything at home. I didn't know how to cook. She really ignited my love for food. She's a creative genius.

Oh! You know what, actually, I'm gonna name-drop. I got to meet Padma Lakshmi. She's sensational and also very funny.

I won an award through this accelerator through PepsiCo, and Padma was a celebrity judge. It was very much like Top Chef. She gave me my final prize.

I met her in New York with the other finalists, and I've been watching her since season two of Top Chef. She's another source of huge inspiration for me, but watching food being cooked live triggers PTSD now. I can't watch The Bear. I think about myself in the kitchen, and it really stresses me out to no end. 

With Padma on Top Chef and Taste the Nation, it's inspirational and fun to understand food at the highest levels and locally with all the cultural influences behind food.

They're both celebrities. Is that lame?

Not at all. Sometimes, the people who have the most awareness are the ones who have the greatest potential to influence lasting change in you and inspire you to do something. So, no, it's not lame at all.

Thank you.

PART II

Describe your childhood in food.

California Roll Party Night! 

I don't know if that means anything to anybody outside my family. My mom worked full time. I love her a lot, and she tries really hard, but she's not the best at cooking. 

My upbringing is very different from that of many of my friends who are second-generation Korean Americans. They all ate Korean food at home, and their moms cooked it.

My mom came here when she was in high school, so we ate a lot of enchilada casseroles and Stouffer's lasagna. That's what I ate growing up because my mom also grew up here.

We ate a lot of Western food at home. Of course, we ate Korean food, too. But more so than many of my friends growing up, I got to eat all the classic American treats.

So, California Roll Party Night.

You buy all the ingredients and lay them out, and then everyone gets to make their own deconstructed California rolls. That and Taco Party Night were huge hits for our family growing up.

I would love both of those nights, tbh.

Next California World Party night, you're coming. If you want to trek down to Orange County.

I will bring brownies!

What other family food traditions are especially memorable?

This is going to sound so cliche because I am Korean American, but my grandmother, who used to live with us, would make kimchi from scratch.

I don't know if you've ever tried pickling anything, especially a long-term pickle.

It's very labor intensive because so many ingredients go into it. Every family has their own recipe, too. It also varies depending on where your family is in Korea. I know someone who puts coffee in theirs.

When I was little, my mom and I would help my grandma make it. It's a dying art because the generation that used to do it by hand is dying.

Now, my mom and I just buy it from the store, but that is one of my most cherished memories of my grandma.

Most of my cherished food memories are with my grandma, too. 

Grandma love is the best.

You've answered this next question, what snacks remind you of home?, but is there anything different from what you've already shared?

Roasted sweet potatoes, that's the only thing I'll add.

Tell me more about these roasted sweet potatoes.

Trader Joe's sells these little Japanese potatoes, and I roast four at a time. I eat them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner until they're gone.

If you roast them long enough, they become custard-like. Some people freeze them and eat them as a frozen dessert. A lot of Koreans—at least Koreans I know—eat them as a snack at home.

You have to get the little Japanese sweet potatoes, though. Not the yams you make during Thanksgiving; those are gross.

That sounds so delicious! Potatoes are my favorite vegetable.

One hundred percent. No competition.

How would you describe your current dining habits/rituals today?

I was depressed for a while after I had my baby. Not to get so deep, but I stopped cooking because I was going through that. For a long time—like the past three years—I would mostly eat takeout. Not every day, obviously, that's unsustainable, but I ate a lot of takeout.

I've got a better handle on my mental health this year, maybe last year. I've been cooking a lot more. 

Oh, and we moved houses, so it's a different kitchen now. It has an electric oven, and it's awful. It's easy to clean, but I'm used to having gas appliances for cooking, so that was a big change for me.

My child is really picky, so I end up eating everything she rejects, which is a big part of breakfast anyway. 

Mollie and I have a cute little kitchenette in the office where we keep some milk and cereal. I'll often have that as a snack—dairy-free milk, obviously.

We have this one place that's walkable from our office. It's like a really divey diner. Guy Fieri would love it. We eat there a lot.

How do you consider and evaluate new foods today? Whether walking down a grocery aisle or reading through a restaurant menu?

I bet when you ask food people this question, you don't get an accurate answer because we overthink everything. Most people just look at the packaging. I immediately look at the ingredients list. I definitely don't count my macros or anything like that.

If the ingredient deck is healthy enough, I believe the nutritional facts, the calories, fat, protein, and everything will be balanced. That's how we look at the development of our products.

At a restaurant, that's really difficult because there is no ingredients list. You only have a description and, if you're lucky, a photo. So, that would be different in that situation.

If you come across something unfamiliar, are you curious to try it?

Oh, of course! I would have to Google it because I'm allergic to shellfish and obviously lactose intolerant.

So, if there's an unfamiliar term or cooking method, I'll look it up for safety.

But I'm always curious, especially if it's something I don't know. I look up the definitions of words I don't understand when I come across them daily in life anyway; it's the same with food.

What feelings does food invoke in you?

I'm always excited to eat. I don't understand people who eat to live. I live to eat.

Even if it's something simple, like Captain Crunch or Peanut Butter Crunch cereal. It's my mom's favorite cereal from when she was growing up and she's imparted that love to me and my brother.

Even that with dairy-free milk is such a pleasure for me. It doesn't have to be fancy, you know?

Yeah, I crave Cocoa Puffs all the time. It was my childhood favorite. Sometimes, I used to refuse to eat if it wasn't a bowl of Cocoa Puffs.

What was your last great food adventure?

Ooh, that's such a hard question!

I don't know if this is a lame answer because it's from when I was traveling.

My friend from business school got married in Thailand, she lives there. A bunch of us traveled for the wedding, and she took time off work before the wedding to take us out to her favorite spots.

She also took us to places that I would never be able to find again if I went back. They served very traditional Thai cuisine, which was very spicy. That was a huge adventure because it was such a departure from what Americans know as Thai food. There was lots of food I'd never even tried before.

I'm allergic to shrimp, which was kind of a bummer because a lot of dishes had shrimp. However, I loved the vegetarian versions of things.

Sounds like an epic food adventure.

It was! and super fun.

This issue of Salt & Main is brought to you by

Part III: Dessert

This interview continues with 10 rapid fire questions on TikTok and Instagram. Follow @SaltAndMain on TikTok and @SaltAndMain on Instagram and don’t miss the rest of the story including…

Hannah’s favorite ice cream flavor, best and worst cookie, favorite international snack, worst food smell, best fruit, what food she would not share with anyone and more.

Connect with Hannah & Must Love

• Follow: @HannahandMollie

• Follow: @MustLove

• Visit: Must.Love

• Shop: Must Love on Amazon

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