A Career in Sandwiches, With Brief Stops at Goldman Sachs & HBS ...

Michael Wang heads up Foumami, Boston?s only Asian sandwich bar, and his family has been in the restaurant industry for three generations. His grandfather founded a restaurant chain in Asia that his family ran for 50 years, and by age 13, Wang was actively working in the restaurants his family was operating, doing everything from washing dishes to cooking to serving.

With all that experience, naturally, Wang would want to go into the restaurant industry as well, right?

Wrong.

?I grew up in the business, but I always told myself I would never end up in this business,? says Wang. ?My focus was to do other things.?

Those ?other things? meant going to New York University, graduating and working for Goldman Sachs in the fixed income division. During that time, Wang also got involved in a few startups, including a magazine and a Japanese salad dressing company.

?After joining a couple of startups, I realized entrepreneurship was something that I really wanted to do,? says Wang, who moved to Boston to enroll in Harvard Business School. He used his two year MBA program to do research on the food industry, consumers and growth sectors.

?That?s where I came up with this Asian sandwich bar concept,? says Wang.

He noticed three trends that lent themselves perfectly to what would eventually become Foumami.

First, people in the U.S. eat a lot of sandwiches, and when Wang was an MBA student, sandwiches were a $65 billion market, and the specialty sandwich market grows about five to 10 percent a year, explains Wang.

Second, Asian food has become mainstream. ?It?s not really a novelty cuisine anymore,? says Wang. ?Every restaurant as some type of Asian fare on their menu.?

And finally, there has been a recent emergence of ?fast casual? restaurants, which provide the high quality food and service of finer dining couple with the convenience of fast food.

?These trends were speaking really loudly to me,? says Wang. ?Why not an Asian sandwich bar??

With no answer to that question, Foumami was born.

As for the actual menu, which features favorites like wonton soup, curry chicken and braised pork loin, most of the inspiration, concepts and family came from Wang?s family. Similarly, his family?s work ethic, learned at a young age, reminded him that running a restaurant isn?t an easy gig.

?If you?re going to do it, you have to be prepared to put in the time and put in the work in order to make it successful.?

Source: http://bostinno.com/2012/08/15/a-career-in-sandwiches-with-brief-stops-at-goldman-and-hbs/

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