Martin Yan shared fresh dishes during an Asian Favorites Tour in Malaysia in January. (Photo by Faris Hadziq/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Martin Yan isn’t a household name around China, but for millions of people around the world, he is one of the planet’s most successful Chinese chefs and restauranteurs. His award-winning PBS television show “Yan Can Cook” has been running for more than three and a half decades in the U.S., giving him popularity and staying power comparable to pioneering Western cooking show icons such as Julia Child. Yan’s show also runs on the Canadian Food Network and Asian Food Channel. He has published 31 books and attracts crowds as far off as Singapore when he appears.
How has the Guangdong-born, U.S. immigrant kept his staying power in business and media all of those years? In an interview in Shanghai on Friday, Yan served up several tips for long-time success. One of the keys, he said, is to be different from others in the crowd. “There are millions of restaurants in China as well as around the world, but only a few become really, truly successful — and not necessarily just Michelin-star restaurants” he said.
“Of course, good food is always important. But even if you have the best food, even if you have good service, it’s still not good enough. It’s about differentiation.” His successful restaurant in San Francisco, “M.Y. China,” is an example, he said. “Rather than Shanghai cuisine or Cantonese cuisine, I call it M.Y. China. I want to utilize my experience traveling all over China,” combining some of his favorite dishes, Yan said.
That combination, he said, is what his customers want. And understanding what customers want and changing with the times are two other keys to Yan’s success. Many chefs run into trouble because they only cook to their own taste – not their customers’, he believes. Of course, that’s a lesson that applies many other types of product designers, too.
Yan has been careful over the years not to overextend himself and his personal brand, even though friends from different countries ask him to open shop there. “Since it is a restaurant bearing my name, if I open too many, I will be running around the world just to appear,” he said. “I wouldn’t be able to create. I only want to open a few of these in a sphere of my favorite cities” where he has time to work with the chefs.
Promoting yourself to a big audience is useful, however, even if your business isn’t terribly big. When he launched his PBS show, “You Can Cook,” Yan said he “wanted to reach the masses, so I created the slogan, ‘Yan can cook, so can you! If I can do it, you can do it.’” Compared with a handful of cooking shows in the U.S. when he started, “there are today thousands and thousands of cooking shows. We’re still very much on top.”
A secret of a successful broadcast show, like his restaurants, is to be “very fresh, always different and very engaging,” he said. For Yan, being engaging for an audience is different from speaking at home. “When I perform, I am very different than my normal personality,” he said. “When I perform. I very much talk like our president, Donald Trump: very, very emotional, very, very down to earth and I try to captivate the audience.”
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Martin Yan shared fresh dishes during an Asian Favorites Tour in Malaysia in January. (Photo by Faris Hadziq/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Martin Yan isn’t a household name around China, but for millions of people around the world, he is one of the planet’s most successful Chinese chefs and restauranteurs. His award-winning PBS television show “Yan Can Cook” has been running for more than three and a half decades in the U.S., giving him popularity and staying power comparable to pioneering Western cooking show icons such as Julia Child. Yan’s show also runs on the Canadian Food Network and Asian Food Channel. He has published 31 books and attracts crowds as far off as Singapore when he appears.
How has the Guangdong-born, U.S. immigrant kept his staying power in business and media all of those years? In an interview in Shanghai on Friday, Yan served up several tips for long-time success. One of the keys, he said, is to be different from others in the crowd. “There are millions of restaurants in China as well as around the world, but only a few become really, truly successful — and not necessarily just Michelin-star restaurants” he said.
“Of course, good food is always important. But even if you have the best food, even if you have good service, it’s still not good enough. It’s about differentiation.” His successful restaurant in San Francisco, “M.Y. China,” is an example, he said. “Rather than Shanghai cuisine or Cantonese cuisine, I call it M.Y. China. I want to utilize my experience traveling all over China,” combining some of his favorite dishes, Yan said.
That combination, he said, is what his customers want. And understanding what customers want and changing with the times are two other keys to Yan’s success. Many chefs run into trouble because they only cook to their own taste – not their customers’, he believes. Of course, that’s a lesson that applies many other types of product designers, too.
Yan has been careful over the years not to overextend himself and his personal brand, even though friends from different countries ask him to open shop there. “Since it is a restaurant bearing my name, if I open too many, I will be running around the world just to appear,” he said. “I wouldn’t be able to create. I only want to open a few of these in a sphere of my favorite cities” where he has time to work with the chefs.
Promoting yourself to a big audience is useful, however, even if your business isn’t terribly big. When he launched his PBS show, “You Can Cook,” Yan said he “wanted to reach the masses, so I created the slogan, ‘Yan can cook, so can you! If I can do it, you can do it.’” Compared with a handful of cooking shows in the U.S. when he started, “there are today thousands and thousands of cooking shows. We’re still very much on top.”
A secret of a successful broadcast show, like his restaurants, is to be “very fresh, always different and very engaging,” he said. For Yan, being engaging for an audience is different from speaking at home. “When I perform, I am very different than my normal personality,” he said. “When I perform. I very much talk like our president, Donald Trump: very, very emotional, very, very down to earth and I try to captivate the audience.”
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