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Nick Wong & Lisa Lee: We Opened at 40 on Purpose
Description
What if the smartest thing you can do for your restaurant is refuse to rush it?
Nick Wong spent twenty years in kitchens like Momofuku and UB Preserv while peers opened their own places at 28. He waited until 40, and his partner Lisa Lee left a tech career at companies like DoorDash and Facebook to build it with him. Together they opened Agnes and Sherman, an Asian American diner in Houston, on their own terms: two days off a week and staff benefits from day one.
In this conversation, we get into why patience beats FOMO in a fear-driven industry, how they engineered product-market fit for a category of one, and why they invested in their team before profitability made it easy.
If you're rushing to prove something, this one will make you slow down.
To learn more about Agnes and Sherman, visit agnesandsherman.com.
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