The food industry is not what Ericson Li imagined for himself.
The 29-year-old Daly City resident graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 2020, and pictured himself becoming a mechanical engineer. He later pivoted to business analytics, obtaining a master’s degree from Columbia in 2022.
By 2023, he found himself as a co-owner of the popular Dots Boba on Ingleside’s Ocean Avenue with his high school best friend, Adonis Chu. Last month, they opened opened Paku, a sushi and inari restaurant, a block away from Dots.
“I own my boba shop now and I have my second business so life for me is always about trying new stuff,” Li said.
Li, who came to the U.S. from Guangdong, China when he was 15, is all about business management. Li said he is already thinking of their next business and hopes to open it on Ocean Avenue as well, whatever it may be. He has also gotten into the supply chain business through Dots, where he has sold tea through wholesale markets.
Though this wasn’t the original path Li set out on, he has come to be a problem solver and has found that in order to run a successful business you need to be unique and adaptive, have luck and resources and work alongside a team that shares the same goals as you do.
“At the end of the day, business is not for everyone,” Li said. “It's not as easy as people think, but then, to us, it's more like our team. We always try to solve problems and then evolve and then become better.”
The Ingleside Light caught up with Li to learn more about his business-owning journey.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What does a typical day look like for you, especially now, running two businesses?
With Paku, because it’s a new business, all of our staff should be here every day, not necessarily that we have to do it, but it’s more like we monitor it and see how it goes. We have to talk to customers, get feedback and have to keep adjusting like we’re a ship. We have to shift direction, but to do that you have to be here every day, and then you have to be here to show yourself, show your face, so people know that you’re the owner. I would definitely say it’s easier than Dots because, at the time, we were in survival mode and we just tried to be good. You try to do well and show the best of you, our high standards. Every day we wake up at six or seven o'clock, and then we just have to start dealing with a lot of emails and stuff, and then ordering and then dealing with different business stuff. Then we come to Paku around nine o'clock. I have to basically watch the back kitchen and the front. We divide the work, so Adonis, Vicky, and Ben are more in the front, so I just stay in the back and then make sure the food is good, everything is good and then everything is well stocked. During the day, we just deal with different areas; like let’s say I have to find more source stuff. In the past two weeks, we were still selling the yam, the ube yam, but then we wanted to keep that, but we couldn't yet because the source of that is very unstable. We always try to look for a more stable ingredient source, so we would be able to offer it to customers. It's all about a lot of small, tedious tasks. After this close, we kind of just discussed what happened today, what needs to be changed with us four and the team and then when we go home, we keep working. Back to planning. Basically, all of our attention is on this one now.
Do you have a favorite memory from working on Ocean Avenue so far?
For Paku it’s definitely when you open, because once you open and then you see people lining up and then try your food like all the hard work for the past three months basically, like not go away, right? But then you'll be like, it's worth it, pays off, right? We open almost like the third week now and then seeing people giving like good comments and then like good feedback makes us happy too. Regarding Dots, it's not like a single moment, but it's more like how we brought it up like from not having good workers, we don't have space to do anything because Dots is very small, so we basically had to optimize everything to the very extreme side, like very efficient, like how you place this and that, right? Like, Dots is always memorable, like how I proved myself and Adonis too, how we showed people because I can still tell you, not everybody wants you to do good.
How do you like working with your best friends? Are there any issues that arise or are you pretty in sync?
Everybody has problems, but I think we don't really have big problems because both of us know we have common goals to try to bring business better, and then we try to just show people what we think is the best. But then I think sometimes maybe the hard part is that different people have different life phases, right? So, like me, I'm single but then like Adonis, he's married so, sometimes we just have to make sacrifices, let's say in terms of like scheduling. We also, beside this, we also do events too… We have so many things going on but then I guess at the end of the day, it's more about whether you can communicate well with your partner. What our expectations are, right? Are we still in the same boat? Like what we're trying to do. But then I would say Adonis is always very supportive. I'm more of a visionary. I will have a lot of crazy plans. People would be like, “Oh, you're definitely crazy. It's not going to work.” But Adonis would just be like, “Okay, if you want to do it, then we'll just do it.” I would just always start with an idea and then I would try to create a body shape and then I would pass it on to Adonis and he would basically put the skeleton in. We’re kind of like a good combo because he's very detail-oriented too.
What's one piece of advice you have for someone that also wants to get into the food service industry or open a business?
Everybody can sell matcha, everybody can sell this and that but what’s making your product so unique? If there's no uniqueness, then it's very likely for the business to die so always ask yourself that.
