GARY: Next on "Start Up," we head to Federal Hill in Baltimore, Maryland, to meet up with Colin Liang, the owner of Water Song, a restaurant that brings the traditions and flavors from his hometown of the Yunnan Province, China.

All of this and more is next on "Start Up."

[ding] ANNOUNCER: Spectrum Business recognizes the importance of small businesses to local communities, so we're investing $21 million to help small businesses access funding to help them grow.

Spectrum Business.

More than an internet, phone, and TV provider.

♪ The first time you made a sale online was also the first time you heard of a town named... MAN: Dinosaur.

We just got an order from Dinosaur, Colorado.

MAN: No way!

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♪ My name is Gary Bredow.

I'm a documentary filmmaker and an entrepreneur.

As the country continues to recover, small business owners everywhere are doing all they can to keep their dream alive.

So we set out for our tenth consecutive season to talk with a wide range of diverse business owners to better understand how they've learned to adapt, innovate, and even completely reinvent themselves.

♪ This is "Start Up."

♪ According to legend, the story of Water Song's signature dish, Crossing the Bridge noodles, centers around a young scholar studying for his exams on an island in the middle of a lake in southwest China, and his wife, who would bring him lunch every day.

After walking from home and crossing the bridge to the island, she would find that the noodle soup would be cold.

She soon switched to packing all of the ingredients separately and found that when she added them to a piping hot broth, it cooked the ingredients perfectly for a nice hot bowl of noodle soup.

It is this technique that became the staple of Yunnan cooking and the philosophy behind the wonderful dishes at Water Song.

Today I'm heading to Federal Hill in Baltimore, Maryland, to meet up with Colin Liang, the owner of Water Song, a restaurant that brings the traditions and flavors from his hometown of Yunnan Province, China.

From what I know, Colin came to America to study finance and business.

But after a series of twists and turns, he realized that his heart was set on bringing the signature cuisine of his hometown to his new home of Baltimore, Maryland.

I can't wait to learn more and maybe even try my hand at preparing one of his most popular dishes.

I want to clear up some misconceptions about what Americans call Chinese food versus Chinese food.

So, like General Tso's chicken, orange chicken, the egg rolls and stuff, is that real Chinese food?

COLIN: Yes.

GARY: It is?

Okay.

COLIN: Let me put on this.

So every Chinese food, you can call it American Chinese food, Nigeria Chinese food, Jamaica Chinese food, because the Chinese population everywhere.

International.

GARY: I get it.

Okay.

COLIN: And when the people go over there and if you are making a living by cooking, you're gonna cook it well and make an adjustment and fulfill with your customers needs.

That's the first priority, right?

So there is no shame saying, oh, there is a Chinese food, but it's a typical American style, and there is no good.

No, they're good.

Without those first mover, like who bring the Chinese food in the States... GARY: Yeah.

COLIN: ...cannot be the Chinese food nowadays.

GARY: It paved the way.

COLIN: Yeah.

GARY: Tell me about where you grew up, where you're from.

COLIN: I originally grew up in mainland China, Yunnan Province, and which is southwest part of China.

And we got a border connect with Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos.

And my city named Kunming, which is the capital city of Yunnan.

GARY: Tell me about food growing up.

COLIN: Yeah.

I have the passion of that.

When I was young, food for me is kind of the thing that like very easy to get whatever you want to eat.

My parents feed me well.

But when I travel around, I see the different stories.

When I was traveling with my mom, beginning to, like, six years old, right?

We went to the Vietnam, and I saw the people there.

They don't have a lot of food to eat.

And I tried to the pho, and there was one girl look at me, like stare at me.

And kind of like aggressive.

End of the day, my mom told me, "You cannot, you cannot waste the food."

Because I wasted-- I didn't finish the whole dish.

GARY: Oh.

COLIN: And that girl was staring at me like really seriously.

And I feel so bad.

And I was just like, okay.

And from then, I never waste my food.

That's a culture right there... GARY: Something that has an impact on you.

COLIN: Yeah.

If I haven't traveled, if I haven't traveled with my parents, go to the other countries, see the different stories, try the different cuisines, I don't know how important food related with people's life.

GARY: Yes.

COLIN: It's not only the things that feed you well or make you not feel hungry, but also give you the very, very emotional attached feelings.

I can remember that feeling even today.

I can easily recall, and that's still painful.

I'm really, really not the professional chef, right?

I never learned or stepped my foot into the culinary world.

My undergrad, I was doing business, majoring in finance at Boston.

The most important thing for me is I couldn't find like my hometown food in the States.

GARY: Okay.

COLIN: That's the reason why the whole idea changing from, "Oh, I really, really miss this kind of food, miss these flavors.

If I cannot find it, I'm gonna learn it by myself."

I moved from Boston to the Maryland and working in the same company with my current partner.

GARY: So that's how you met?

COLIN: That's how we met.

GARY: Okay.

COLIN: And I pitched him my idea all the time.

I was like, "Let me do some cooking for you.

I have some, like, a very good dishes."

And he couldn't stop eating.

GARY: He was hooked.

COLIN: And I start like launching different ideas, like, "Here's what I can cook.

Here's what I can cook.

Here's what I remember I loved eating when I was young."

And I kept calling back to my mom, my grandmom... GARY: Recipes?

COLIN: Give me some.

Give me some recipes.

GARY: Right.

COLIN: Share me what we can do.

Like, how you cook that?

How you cook this?

That was the start learning journey.

And we found out there is no good Chinese food in the, like, Baltimore area, and we have a lot of the Chinese and Asian students in Hopkins.

GARY: Yeah, so, high population, but none of the authentic cuisine.

COLIN: Exactly.

And I find out this is a good niche market.

GARY: That's opportunity.

COLIN: That's opportunity.

That's the starting point, I believe.

Oh, this could be an opportunity for the business, not for the passion, not for the hobby, but a passion-oriented business.

GARY: Was it good?

ANDREW: It was amazing.

Yeah, like he...

I couldn't stop eating it.

And it was one of the things that really introduced me to not only Colin as an extraordinary chef, but the specific cuisine that they cook in the south part of China, in the Yunnan Province.

I love food.

I love... More than tasting the food, it's what food can do for people coming together.

GARY: Yeah, bring people together.

ANDREW: And so to be a part of not only what could be maybe a market opportunity was doing something I loved and was passionate about.

GARY: You could not find, either there or here, like, food from where you grew up specifically.

What are some of those key dishes?

COLIN: Typical Chinese Yunnan cuisine is kind of flavors of the thick spice.

We eat a lot of weird ingredients.

We have the wild mushrooms.

We have eating the flowers, because we have many flowers, and sometimes even the insects.

GARY: Insects, yeah?

COLIN: Yeah.

So this is a culture in my cuisine.

GARY: What are we doing here?

How do I eat it?

A lot of these foods I'm unfamiliar with.

COLIN: Definitely.

So for our most famous dishes in my province, is there's a Crossing Bridge rice noodle.

GARY: Okay.

COLIN: The soup base itself is making from the chicken, duck, and pork.

GARY: Okay.

COLIN: So this is the mixture of the broths.

In the middle, we have the quail eggs, and on the big pan, we have some raw meat, which is ham, pork tenderloin, and fresh fillet.

GARY: All right.

COLIN: Those three are raw.

GARY: Got it.

COLIN: What we're going to do first is we're going to mix... GARY: Scramble the egg?

COLIN: Yes.

Scramble the eggs.

And what we're gonna do next is get the raw meat, dip into the scrambled eggs, and put them in a pot.

GARY: Nice.

It adds a level of involvement to your food.

Instead of just getting it to the table and eat it, you got to invest some time in it.

COLIN: And you also have the good story of that.

We call it "crossing the bridge."

The way you drop it into the bowl is like crossing the bridge.

GARY: Yeah, yeah.

♪ ♪ ♪ COLIN: Be careful.

It's still hot.

♪ GARY: It's so good.

Oh, my gosh.

Really good.

COLIN: Have a sip of the broth.

You want to eat them together.

GARY: Mmm.

That is so good right now.

I know everybody in the crew is very jealous.

Right?

[laughs] I can hear stomachs rumbling.

Mmm.

I'll end up sitting here eating the whole bowl.

All right, so what is this?

That looks like a tofu.

COLIN: No, that's a potato.

GARY: A potato?

COLIN: That's how we do a fried potato.

So basically this is street snacks.

Back when I was like six or seven years old... GARY: Yeah.

COLIN: ...everybody have like small vendors.

Right after the school, all of the kids run into the vendors.

GARY: This was one of the dishes.

COLIN: Yes.

Give it a try.

GARY: Does this take you back?

Is it nostalgic kind of?

COLIN: Yes.

It's spicy.

I'm telling you.

GARY: It's a very unique flavor.

COLIN: Yeah, we have the bean paste, and we have the, if you feel... GARY: Woo!

It's got a kick.

COLIN: That kick is from Sichuan cuisine.

Sichuan is right next to Yunnan.

We use peppercorn oil from Sichuan to make the dish as well.

GARY: I love it.

♪ ♪ ♪ ANDREW: He was talking about his business idea.

I thought there was some potential.

And it was about, okay, how do we structure this?

It's like, well, you know, LLC.

You got to have an operating agreement.

You got to raise money.

GARY: Sure.

ANDREW: You got to have a business plan in order to raise money.

And then from there it was, you know, we need a first location.

GARY: Did you end up bringing on an investor, obviously?

ANDREW: Yes.

Every square foot of your restaurant is an extra $100 to $200 of construction costs.

The other thing is you have restaurants that are shells that you have to put in everything.

GARY: Sure.

ANDREW: And then you have second generation restaurants, which very much like this first one here in Baltimore, it was already somewhat built out, so that was gonna reduce our start-up costs considerably.

I'm sure a lot of restaurant owners are so focused on the menu, they forget about the financial resources required to build it out... GARY: Yeah.

ANDREW: ...and then to market and then to buy your booths and chairs and tables.

Everything's got a cost to it.

And so we needed to be very careful about the first location and what the cost would be to get it up and running.

COLIN: I'm working with Andrew.

Andrew become my mentor.

And Andrew was like, "You know what?

You should go back to school."

GARY: Yeah.

COLIN: Well, I was thinking about that and talking with my parents, and my parents agree and said, "Why don't you just get a master degree?"

I was thinking, "Which field?"

"How about business administration?"

GARY: Okay.

COLIN: I said, "Okay."

GARY: Did you end up graduating with an MBA?

COLIN: Yeah, I graduated 2020.

GARY: 2020.

What a great year, you know, for... COLIN: Yeah, I graduated 2020, and the same time we opened this restaurant, Water Song first location.

GARY: What month?

COLIN: March.

GARY: What?

COLIN: We opened the first day after Maryland locked up.

GARY: Did you panic?

COLIN: I don't even know how to describe the feeling of that.

GARY: I understand.

COLIN: It's not even a panic.

I don't have the chance or time to feeling about a panic.

I need to feel about... GARY: What am I gonna do?

COLIN: What I'm gonna do.

GARY: Yeah.

COLION: I literally spent like three, four days, I couldn't sleep.

I was talking with my girlfriend.

I was like, "What are we gonna do?

What I can do?"

And she told me, "Are you sure you cannot do something like a carry-out?

Maybe you can modify with your menu."

We changed our menu in the first three days.

Practicing, practicing.

Spend, like, 14 hours back in the kitchen doing testing, make sure everything is right.

And testing the palate and go, making it happen.

GARY: How did it go?

COLIN: So bad.

GARY: It went bad?

COLIN: So bad from the beginning.

GARY: Oh, no.

COLIN: I literally remember first, first two months, nobody visited my store.

First month, I was waiting.

The Uber Eats, Grubhub, build up my channels.

They take forever.

And once I finally have the channel, I started cooking.

And I find out, wow, I did a lot of testing, but when I finally cooking, my food suck.

GARY: Your food was bad?

COLIN: Yeah, because when we start cooking, we don't recognize it's so hard for packaging.

We didn't recognize that the food for here.

GARY: Ahh.

COLIN: Delivered is gonna be eaten by the customers after the half hour, after 40 minutes.

GARY: It's not gonna taste good sitting in the containers like that.

It's meant to be enjoyed here in person.

COLIN: Yes.

GARY: Oh, no.

COLIN: So I have to redo it over and over again.

And I find out another draft of the menu after two weeks.

So I already have the two different menus in three weeks.

GARY: Oh, my gosh.

COLIN: That was so bad.

GARY: That's a nightmare.

COLIN: Yeah.

If you are the professional chef, you are like, "Stop.

You cannot do that.

You better close your business."

GARY: Probably good that you weren't a professional chef, or you'd probably quit a long time ago.

COLIN: Exactly.

GARY: So did you figure it out?

COLIN: Yeah, we figured it out.

ANDREW: Colin did an absolutely fantastic job with the menu items, and it took a little time to make sure that the packaging was right.

But after two months, we were really able to deliver the high quality food via delivery.

And then we realized, of course, well, how do people get to find out about us?

So Yelp reviews and Google reviews were number one most important priority in those first 60, 90 days.

GARY: Those reviews are crucial.

They can make or break businesses.

ANDREW: Absolutely.

So we had done a lot of experimentation at R. House, which is a public food market, and different other individual private parties.

And so we had been able to build somewhat of a following early on.

And so we let them know, "Hey, we're open.

We'd love for you to try our food, and we'd love for you to leave a good review."

And we were getting four or five stars pretty much exclusively.

GARY: Amazing.

ANDREW: Hundreds of them.

And so all of a sudden, we're one of the top choices on Yelp, one of the top choices on Google.

And that was really when we started to scale our delivery business.

♪ ♪ ♪ GARY: Start by telling me your name and where you're from originally?

DALIA: My name is Dalia, and I'm originally from Beijing, like, the north part of China.

And I just moved to-- not just-- I moved to Baltimore since, like, June.

So almost a year.

GARY: Tell me about the first time that you came to Water Song.

DALIA: First time, I think it was just like three days after I arrived.

And I think the noodles was great.

I just come here pretty often, and since it's really convenient.

And also my roommate, she's from Yunnan, which is, like, the same province where, like, the same hometown where the... GARY: Yeah.

Where the food is originally from.

DALIA: Yeah, the food is originally from.

So she also loves this place.

We always come here together.

♪ GARY: When you came to this country to go to school, you were, what, how old were you?

COLIN: 19.

Almost 20.

GARY: You were 19 years old.

Okay.

COLIN: Yeah.

GARY: Did you ever think, you know, you're going into finance, you end up in business, did you ever think that you would open up a restaurant?

COLIN: No.

GARY: Never in a million years... COLIN: Never.

GARY: ...thought that you would be cooking the food you grew up on.

COLIN: Never.

I kept asking myself, like, what I'm trying to be?

This is a business.

I want to make the business good, successful.

GARY: Yeah.

COLIN: But besides the business, where is my happiness from?

GARY: Yeah.

COLIN: And after graduating I found out that my happiness is sharing.

Sharing from the bottom of your heart, telling the stories, sharing what you are appreciated with to no matter who you met on this journey.

GARY: And that's your purpose you've come to terms with?

COLIN: Yes.

If we weren't doing the business in this way, and no matter what kind of mission or vision we have in a business standing point, we need to have the culture of this brand.

GARY: Yes.

COLIN: And I think the culture in our group is very diverse with different people from the international.

And back into my kitchen, we have the chefs mainly from local.

We don't even have any Chinese chef because I couldn't find a Chinese chef.

GARY: Okay.

COLIN: Hiring them is very, very expensive.

Because I need to sponsor their visa, come over.

GARY: Mm-hmm.

COLIN: And so finding a Chinese professional chef is not easy.

GARY: Got it.

COLIN: So we have to hire in a chef from local.

GARY: And train.

COLIN: And training.

♪ GARY: Tell me your name and what are we gonna cook today?

KATHERINE: So my name is Katherine, and we're gonna make Xiao Guo today.

GARY: Xiao Guo.

KATHERINE: It's a very popular rice noodle dish that we have here, so.

GARY: Okay.

KATHERINE: We're gonna start, I kind of got it started ahead a little bit.

You're gonna grab a scoop of this pork broth, and you're gonna put it into your pan.

GARY: How did you get into cooking authentic Chinese food?

KATHERINE: It's kind of like a crazy story.

So I moved here to work with the Orioles as a game presentation assistant, but I've always worked in kitchens as, like, side jobs to make extra money.

GARY: Got you.

KATHERINE: And so I applied here, and I was a little nervous 'cause I've never done anything like this before, but it's worked out so good.

And it's just so awesome, like, I've never done this before, but I'm learning quite a bit, so.

GARY: Fantastic.

KATHERINE: So I'll do about a third of this chili oil.

GARY: Okay.

KATHERINE: And a third of this chili paste.

So, not too much but... GARY: Spicy.

KATHERINE: Yeah, it adds a lot of flavor.

And then after this cooks just a little bit, we'll put some bean leaves in there and some chives, and then it'll pretty much be done.

♪ KATHERINE: And what we'll do now is we'll kind of grab it with our left hand.

GARY: Got it.

KATHERINE: You can keep the spoon.

It'll help us scoop it out.

GARY: Okay.

KATHERINE: So we'll turn.

It's gonna-- it might make a mess.

GARY: Got it.

KATHERINE: Sometimes it does.

But you pour it right into the bowl.

GARY: No mess.

KATHERINE: You're a natural!

Yeah, I'm im-- Yeah, you were good.

And then we add a garnish of some green onions right on top.

So if you want to grab some green onions, put it on top, and then we get to put it up in the window.

♪ [ding] GARY: Did you start making money?

COLIN: Yes.

GARY: Okay.

COLIN: We started making the money, and we are expanding.

Matter of fact, two weeks ago, we signed another lease.

We're gonna have the second location at Towson.

GARY: At Towson?

COLIN: Yeah.

Towson in Maryland.

GARY: Wow.

COLIN: Yeah.

GARY: That's huge.

Congratulations.

COLIN: Yeah.

Everybody feels excited about that.

And we're gonna do much, much more and continue doing with our journey.

GARY: When is the right time for a restaurant to scale?

ANDREW: It depends on, on, on what you're doing.

Right now we're, our next, our second location is gonna be a little bit downsized.

It's gonna be really focused on kind of street food.

And so that was a step we took because we figured that to open another one of this would take a little bit more money and a little bit more time.

Because it's smaller and because it's a little faster casual, we are gonna be able to open up another location of that style even faster than it would take to open up another one of this.

So we're kind of thinking ourselves having two different concepts.

One is kind of our core, the one we have first in Baltimore, and our second being a little faster casual and a little more focused on the street food experience.

GARY: What is the biggest challenge that you've faced since opening Water Song?

COLIN: It's very hard to introduce a very niche cuisine.

Every customer come over, they have no idea what you're selling.

Even the Chinese from the other city.

They want to have the different feeling and experience, and we want to make sure we can provide a good experience for them.

And when they recall about Water Song, it's always be good, not bad.

And we'll be trying so hard at doing that because the truly hospitality we want provided here is equal to the good food plus the good service.

GARY: What does the future hold?

How far can you take this?

I mean, you have another location going up already, which is amazing.

COLIN: That's another journey.

That's another challenge.

GARY: Are you excited?

COLIN: I'm excited.

GARY: Yeah.

COLIN: I'm excited.

Before I opened the Water Song, I was excited, but at the same time I was scared.

Now I'm excited and confident because my team is solid.

I love my team.

I love the co-workers, I love everybody work with me.

GARY: You're in a good spot.

COLIN: A good spot.

This is a journey, and it just started, and we have many, many more new chapters facing to us, and we are super confident about that.

GARY: One of the things that I love most about filming this show is the knowledge gained by stepping into someone else's life, if even for one day.

And today I learned a lot.

And while growing up, it seems like there was a lot of misinformation that I was taught about cultures outside of America.

And through the years, I began to unravel these misconceptions and gain a level of tolerance, empathy, and understanding by simply talking to people with an open mind and an open heart.

Collin spoke about the tightknit community that exists in China's Yunnan Province, something that seems to be rare in America these days.

He talked about the fact that he'd never seen a homeless person until he came to America, something that completely shocked him, that a society that is so outwardly rich and abundant does not do a better job of taking care of its people.

That education and family is of the utmost importance, and that food is so much more than just something we consume.

It's an event that brings families together and allows us to better understand our history and culture.

It's the recipes specific to a region and a lineage, and it's part of who we are as people.

And far beyond Colin's desire to establish a career and make a living, he felt a calling to share his story with the world around him through the delicious recipes passed down from his ancestors.

It provides a better understanding about his origins in China to the people in his new community of Baltimore.

And that is where change begins.

For more information, visit our website and search episodes for Water Song.

Next time on "Start Up," we head to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to meet up with David and Aaron Cabello, the owners of Black and Mobile, a food delivery company that's on a mission to help elevate underserved Black-owned businesses.

Be sure to join us next time on "Start Up."

♪ Would you like to learn more about the show or maybe nominate a business?

Visit our website at startup-usa.com and connect with us on social media.

♪ ♪ We got a long road ahead of us ♪ ♪ A long road ahead of us ♪ A long road ahead of us before we pay our dues ♪ ♪ We got a long road ahead of us ♪ ♪ A long road ahead of us ♪ A long road ahead of us before we pay our dues ♪ IAN: Awesome!

♪ ANNOUNCER: The first time you made a sale online was also the first time you heard of a town named... MAN: Dinosaur.

We just got an order from Dinosaur, Colorado.

MAN: No way!

ANNOUNCER: Build a website to help reach more customers.

WOMAN: Wait, wait, wait, wait!

One more.

ANNOUNCER: GoDaddy.

Tools and support for small business firsts.

Spectrum Business recognizes the importance of small businesses to local communities, so we're investing $21 million to help small businesses access funding to help them grow.

Spectrum Business.

More than an internet, phone, and TV provider.

♪