Consumers move fast. They read fast. They decide fast. A name they can say and a use-case they understand outperforms clever every time.
$35,000 spent on a trade show booth that generated zero sales.
7,000 jars that arrived without an ingredient panel. A PO she couldn’t fill because the product was close to expiration.
“I’d say the toughest year in my life was 2023,” says Jia Liao, founder of Hotpot Queen, a Sichuan sauce and noodle brand rooted in her family’s 20-year hot pot legacy.
As Asian cuisine started breaking into the American mainstream, Jia jumped at the opportunity to bring her hometown flavors into U.S. homes… and ran into every early-stage mistake imaginable.
Two years of hard-won lessons later, those early bumps became her learning curve. Today, Hot Pot Queen is stocked in 1,000 stores across the U.S. and Australia.
Don’t just educate consumers; translate for them. Jia didn’t try to teach Americans hot pot culture. She put the flavor in ramen, another noodle dish that had zero learning curve. “Find a product people are already familiar with and do a twist. Do not bring a brand new product because that cost of education is way too high.”
Push back on your manufacturing. They don’t set your standards; you do. Jia asked for no MSG, no additives, no shortcuts… in China. The factory’s reply: “If you don’t put MSG in, it won’t taste good.” She didn’t budge. She worked with a local chef, mailed over U.S. sauces to train the team’s palate, and proved clean-label could still hit Sichuan depth. Factories take the easiest route available, until you direct them somewhere else.
Follow the Four Times Rule. Landed cost × 4 = SRP. This is Jia’s formula for surviving distributor margins, retailer margins, promos, freight, and ops. “People think scale will fix their margins. It won’t,” she says. If the math doesn’t work on day zero, it won’t magically work at 10x.
Stay lean longer than you think. Jia hired a full-time salesperson her first year and quickly realized she didn’t need one. What she needed were brokers, trade shows, and her own presence in the aisle. When she went solo and cut the overhead, the business finally turned profitable.
At trade shows, visibility beats aesthetics. Jia has spent $35K on a booth and $1K on a booth. And saw the same results. What actually moved buyers was her tactics: standing in front of the booth (not behind it) and designing a bold, uncluttered backdrop, and pulling buyers in before they drift away.
Market insight → Global flavors aren’t emerging; they’re localizing. A shopper shouldn’t have to interpret a product. They should be able to picture themselves using and enjoying it tonight.
The sauce is the boss
The rule of threes (CPG Edition)
Aside from margins, growth boils down to these 3 levers
1. More doors → More distribution.
Adding stores is the fastest way to grow, but only works if your operations are ready for scale.
2. More velocity → More sales per store.
This is what actually moves the business. Velocity improves when you remove friction, which means clear names, simple use-cases, familiar formats, good placement.
3. More SKUs → More ways to sell.
New formats, new flavors, new sizes. But only if the core product works. Every new SKU adds complexity long before it adds revenue.