Norma Chu, Founder, DayDayCook
“Fashion is in Europe, living is in America, but eating is in China.” This adage reflects the popularity of Chinese cuisine and its significant rolein the global food culture.Food in Chinese culture is more than just a source of nourishment. Food is life and health. It also signifies beliefs such as good fortune and prosperity, as well as promoting peace and closeness to families and relationships. Keeping the essence of this culture intact,some pioneering companies in the food and beverage industry are relentlessly working to bring people and food together in a welcoming, all-encompassing, and delicious way. One such prominent, Hong Kong-based, tech-enabled, direct-to-consumer food brand that is committed to creating fun experiences and inspirations in every kitchen is DayDayCook (DDC).
With a mission to inspire others to enjoy cooking as part of a quality lifestyle and culture, the company offers a bit of everything: an app featuring recipes and food videos, cooking classes in upscale malls and a product line of its own branded food products available both online and offline, which makes up the bulk of its revenues. Its long history of cooking and recipe content has influenced millions around the world.
The Beginning of Daydaycook
It all started when the founder of DayDayCook, Norma Chu, realized that there was no particular platform or brand to promote healthy Chinese home cooking to the young generation. Thus, she left an illustrious banking career behind to combine her business instinct and passion for cooking to form DayDayCook, a food startup catering to the needs of Gen Z consumers through sharing recipes, meal plans, cooking classes, and ready-made food.
DDC was born in 2012 with a vision to attract the young generation to try cooking and feel the inherent fun of gourmet food through this platform.Today, it stands tall as one of the leading content-driven lifestyle brands for young food lovers in Asian markets. And now, the company is on its way to a public listing on Nasdaq through a business combination with ace global acquisition corp, a blank check company in the US.
Offering Simple and Healthy Ways to Enjoy Cooking
Starting out with content creation, DDC has grown to offer the next generation simple and healthy ways to enjoy cooking. It delivers a wide range of ready-to-heat (RTH) and ready-to-cook (RTC) meal solutions to young food lovers. “The RTC market opportunity is expected to grow at a CAGR of 20% to reach US$150 billion in 2027, driven by structural changes in consumer behavior and preferences. DDC is well-positioned to ride on its omnichannel sales strategy spanning across traditional e-commerce, social-commerce, and offline retailer networks to capture this growth,” opines Norma.
DDC has also launched plant-based products to address the rapidly growing demand for healthier meal choices amongst consumers and also cope with the rising awareness of sustainability and environmental issues amongst the Gen-Z population.
Abiding by Its Precious Values
All businesses stand on their core values including the bedrock values of honesty, integrity, trust, and excellence. DDC goes beyond and integrates passion, responsibility, respect, focus, communication, and teamwork into its work culture. The company also emphasizes on the art of embracing change and efficiency as it believes DDC needs to keep improving and evolving. “It’s all about the product-market fit, we always try to do something new and be nimble, respond to market changes effectively,” affirms Norma.
Serving Clients with Excellence
Besides its value-driven culture, one of the key aspects that makes DDC truly unique is its commitment to building and maintaining trusted relationships with its customers. Over 80% of its customers are gen z and over 60% of them are female. The company constantly strives to innovate to make its meal solutions better and satisfy today’s young female gen z consumers who aspire better lifestyle by providing a modern 360-degree cooking experience to them.Apart from developing delicious and innovative meal solutions, DayDayCook remains very active on all video and social media sites to keep brand awareness and customer engagement levels high. DayDayCook is the most recognized plant-based brand on the most popular social media network “Little Red Book” in China.
Laurels That Reflects its Forte
Under the aegis of Norma, DDC has bagged considerable accomplishments across the industry. It was recognized as Ready-to-Cook Brand of the Year 2021 by Jiemian News. “We successfully build brand recognition through culinary and lifestyle content across major social media and e-commerce platforms to promote its products, aggregating over 3 billion videos and 15 million orders worldwide. DayDayCook branded plant-based products are also available in Canada and soon in the United States,” asserts Norma.
Being an incredible business leader, Norma has also been honored with numerous eminent awards and accolades over the years. A few of her notable achievements include Outstanding ICT Women Awards 2020, JESSICA Most Successful Women Awards 2020 and Harper’s Bazzar The Visionary Woman 2021, and PRESTIGE WOMEN OF POWER 2021 by PrestigeHK. She was also named as one of CY Zone’s Most Notable Female Entrepreneurs for 3 consecutive years in 2017-2019.
Set to Enhance Cooking Experience for Many Generations to Come
For the upcoming years, DDC will be focused on creating a future where delicious, healthy, and simple meal solutions areaccessible to future generations. With its current plans to become a publicly-listed company, it is also actively looking for strategic partners around the world to work together towards its vision of enhancing the cooking experience and lifestyle for many generations to come. “Enjoying delicious meals and eating healthy should be available to everyone. At DayDayCook, we strive to create and become a part of that future,” concludes Norma.