Hi, Bombs Squad. This is Carrie Diamond, host of Radio Cherry Bomb

and editor-in-chief of Cherry Bomb magazine. Welcome to our new miniseries, Follow the Leader.

These days, everyone is hungry for more advice, especially about being an entrepreneur

or finding smarter ways to run a business. For this series, we're talking to four women at

different stages of their careers about how they handle key aspects of their business.

Today's show is all about expansion. We talk about the win, where, why, and how of growing your business.

I'm sitting down with Amalie Kang of the Mala Project, a unique Chinese food concept in New York City with two locations.

Amalie also has a second concept called Tomorrow.

She's here to tell us how she did it.

Let's thank Uber Eats for supporting this series.

Now for my conversation with Amalie Kang.

So, Amelie, how did you get into the food business?

I went to Culinary Institute of America for college. So CIA. The CIA, yes, yes.

Came to the States right after high school, went to the CIA for my, for my bachelor's degree, and I was in and never left the industry ever since. Where did you move here from? Beijing.

From Beijing, yeah. Did you know you always wanted to be in food?

I didn't. I mean, I always loved food. I loved eating. I didn't know how to cook growing up

because my grandma and everybody in my family were such great cooks. I just never had

the opportunity to cook. My mom was terrible,

so we always go out to my grandma's for dinner, so never learned how to cook until last year

in high school, where I decided. I took a baking class with this pastry chef from New Zealand,

and he's Chinese, but his work is nothing like what I've ever seen because he's, it's just

at another level coming from New Zealand.

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