The baker’s daughter bringing mochi to the mainstream
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 7 May 2026
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We meet the creator of a dessert business whose story starts in her parents’ bakery.
Vivien Wong tells us how she faced a family loss and eventually channelled that experience into building a company making mochi with a twist: taking a traditional Japanese rice cake and wrapping it around balls of ice cream. She shares how she turned a niche treat into a global brand, Little Moons.
If you'd like to get in touch with the team, our email address is businessdaily@bbc.co.uk
Presenter: Rahul Tandon Producers: Niamh McDermott, Victoriya Holland and Jay Behrouzi
(Picture: Vivien Wong. Credit: Jack Ladenburg)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:07.0 | Hello, I'm Rahul Tandon, and welcome to meet the founders from Business Daily on the BBC World Service. |
| 0:14.0 | This is where we speak to innovators around the world about the ideas, risks and realities behind starting a business. Today we meet the creator |
| 0:23.4 | of a Japanese ice cream treat business. She grew up, helping in her parents' bakery, later |
| 0:29.2 | faced a family loss and eventually channeled those experiences into building a company around |
| 0:35.5 | mochi, a traditional Japanese rice cake, and in this case, wrapped |
| 0:40.2 | around balls of ice cream. We learn how a sudden social media craze helped turn a niche treat |
| 0:46.5 | into a global brand. We've had 500 million views of our hashtag little means. It was a very difficult |
| 0:52.6 | period, but it was a period that changed your company. |
| 0:55.6 | Yeah, I mean, it's a good problem to have when you can't make enough product. |
| 0:59.3 | That's Vivian Wong, my guest, today. |
| 1:05.0 | But before Little Moons became a global brand, it was a family story. |
| 1:09.9 | My mum started her own bakery. Back when I think I was five years old, when my younger brother Howard, who I started Little Moons with, was born. And it was just a great place to learn to watch how she ran a business and was a mother. And I learned a lot from her. She's my role model. As a kid, it must be really cool to have your mum running a bakery. I think so now, but I'm not sure |
| 1:29.2 | I thought so. You didn't know the time. No, I didn't. I mean, we're children of immigrant parents, |
| 1:32.8 | so we were dragged into the business on every opportunity, weekends to help. School holidays were |
| 1:38.3 | definitely, you know, good six to eight weeks in our bakery. I learnt so much from it for |
| 1:43.7 | absolutely formative years. |
| 1:45.1 | Was there a lot of talk about business? When you would sit and have dinner, would your parents |
| 1:49.4 | be talking about business? Yeah, there was a natural conversation about their bakery. |
| 1:54.1 | But there wasn't conversation, like now I've met people from generational businesses where they've |
| 1:59.1 | really learnt the ropes from generations of |
| 2:01.7 | running the same business. But I definitely found an interest in business from just listening |
... |
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