The Lucky Ox Approach to Asian Flavor
“The Lucky Ox honors Asian-American culture and the resilience of the immigrant journey…Culturally rooted beverages that go beyond refreshment, serving as a gateway to authentic flavors and timeless stories.” -THE LUCKY OX
Let’s be honest: the Asian section of the grocery store could use a little personality. For years, the formula has been pretty predictable… It’s the same flavors, lychee, matcha, or black sesame, slapping some cute packaging on it, and they call it “cultural representation.” Don’t get me wrong I love a lychee drinks, but there are, in fact, way more other Asian flavors worth talking about.
Enter Lucky Ox.
Founded by Kyle Nguyen and Fane, Lucky Ox is taking a much more specific approach to Asian American beverages, pulling from the flavors people actually grew up with rather than whatever is just considered “trendy” or “viral” at the moment. Vietnamese salted lemonade, Taiwanese roasted pineapple, pandan coconut, mango toasted rice, the drinks are nostalgic without feeling stuck in the past, and that is what makes them culturally interesting.
1. Before Lucky Ox was a beverage company, what was the moment that made you think, "This needs to exist?"
Growing up on the West Coast, I’ve seen very intimately how hot Asian culture has become. It’s amazing, but for a long time I did not feel like my corner of Asian life was a part of that. That’s why when we started the brand, it was just centered around this obscure old Vietnamese recipe for lemonade. I wanted to bring high-end allure to something in my culture, the same way you see with craft Korean & Japanese products.
2. What's the story behind the name Lucky Ox?
My Dad & I were both born in the year of the ox. It was something he’s been saying for years; he’d call us The Lucky Ox.
My Dad made a good simple, satisfying life for himself here in the States after coming after the war. This saying embeds that idea of realizing how lucky we are to have the life that we have.
3. If someone only had 30 seconds to understand your brand, what would you want them to know?
First and foremost, the drinks taste great. We’re doing this because we care a lot about doing our part to progress Asian American culture. There is a ton of cultural progression via restaurants & cafes as that’s where people go to learn and get a first impression about X culture, right? You don’t get that same cultural experience on the supermarket shelves. The rice paper is probably not even from an Asian brand; meanwhile, most Asian American brands haven’t moved past common denominator flavors like lychee & black sesame. It gives so “all asians are the same,” when that is obviously not true, which is why, for our brand, we try to have a drink for each specific culture.
4. Was there a specific childhood memory or drink that inspired everything?
Not really a specific memory, but I do often think about how there’s a very obvious price limit in the food industry based on each culture. People start rolling their eyes as soon as a taco is over $4 or a Vietnamese restaurant is over $25pp, but what about the time intensive recipes. What about the ones that use obscure ingredients? That’s been a core of our brand; we bring difficult to find flavors and package everything in a way to challenge these norms. We don’t scoff at $100 omakase or $12 tea, instead, it encourages people to learn about the craft and the cultural depth. We want the same for our stuff too.
REPRESENTATION & CULTURE…
5. Lucky Ox celebrates Asian flavors in a way that feels nostalgic to the Asian community. How did you pick what flavors to produce this feeling?
We pick flavors that are very special to each culture, like things that people grow up with. The Taiwanese Roasted Pineapple is such a good example of this. With the salted lemonade, most Vietnamese kids would remember their parents having a jar of preserved lemons in the back of the fridge. A lot of people tell us our drinks taste nostalgic when they try them; funny enough, a lot of non-Asian people tell us that too. It tells us we’re capturing the story well!
6. Which flavors do each of you co-founders feel the strongest connection to?
For me, it’s the Vietnamese Salted Lemonade, and for Fane, it’s the Pandan Coconut. Very reflective of both of our flavor palettes.
THE PRODUCT…
9. Which flavor surprises people the most?
The salted lemonade used to surprise people a lot because people didn’t know it was salted! It’s a bold twist on a Vietnamese classic, Chanh Muoi.
10. Which flavor best represents each of your personalities as co-founders?
That’s a funny question, I’ve never thought about this one before. I am probably like the mango toasted rice because I am sweeter whereas Fane is more like the matcha lemonade. You think he’s basic at first you try it out and realize how much hidden depth is there.
11. What's the flavor everyone should start with if they've never had Lucky Ox?
Mango Toasted Rice or Roasted Pineapple, it's the fullest form of us realizing our potential. The flavor notes really feel like a cocktail; we’re very dialed into how the juices play along with the other flavors to keep things feeling fresh while rounding out the unique notes.
12. Which flavor was the hardest to perfect?
What’s crazy is we actually didn’t have a whole lot of rounds of formulation, especially compared to what we hear from our other friends. I’m not kidding when I say each drink only takes 2, maybe 3 rounds of samples. We hear from many people that testing takes months and over 10 rounds of samples. That’s pretty ironic actually considering we’re taste forward compared to a lot of other brands being very macro driven, but maybe its the lack of stringent constraints that’s allowed our formulators to maximize on taste.
THE BUSINESS…
13. What's something about building a beverage company that no one prepares you for?
It is a very, very in-person job. You are spending many hours in a grocery store pitching yourself to customers, on top of pitching to buyers and the industry folks. I’m a natural extrovert, so I do love yapping with people, but even then I easily get my fill from this job. I have definitely noticed myself going out a lot less ever since starting the business, and I think that’s because my social battery can only handle what goes on for work.
14. What was the biggest risk you've taken since launching?
We said no to Whole Foods taking us nationwide pretty quickly after launching. I definitely wanted to take it, but ultimately it felt more like accolade chasing than what we needed to prioritize as a business. It is a big risk, though, because what if slow expansion doesn’t work. What if they find another up and coming brand who wants to go national off of our same merits. Those risks certainly still exist, but it was a good way to existentially confront our core values and why we’re doing this.
15. Was there ever a moment you questioned whether this would work?
Absolutely, to be honest, I didn’t expect and certainly didn’t plan for any of these things to happen. We didn’t hope to be offered Whole Foods expansion quickly. We never thought Costco would be a part of our year 1 conversation. When we first launched, it was just the Vietnamese Lemonade, and everything felt so homemade. Packing orders, going to account doors, etc. I knew we would be able to garner niche appeal from the start; that’s why we focused so heavily on branding. But we had no clue that we’d get this kind of retail interest.
16. Who is your company’s dream collaboration?
It would be so poetic to run a small collab with Nike, like for regional AAPI month or something. This brand truly started in the Nike office; this is what I was working on in my free time there. Having us work together with them would be a full-circle moment. I would love to do a collab drink for a specific athlete.
17. If you could share one Lucky Ox drink with anyone—living or dead—what flavor would it be and who would it be with and why?
This is an easy one; I’d share the Vietnamese Lemonade with my Dad. I am so glad we didn’t wait until the ‘right’ moment to start this brand. There were truly no market signals, no particular insight that we had to do this now, and honestly, if we waited a few more years, we’d certainly have a lot more money to play with. But we started this now, and my Dad has already gotten to see us take this thing pretty far, but he’s going to see us become a nationwide brand soon. And sharing that experience together is something I will never take for granted.
LOOKING AHEAD…
18. Five years from now, where do you hope Lucky Ox is?
When I look back at the 2010s early rise of cool Asian cultural movers, you can point to millennials like Nguyen Coffee Supply, Eddie Huang (Fresh Off The Boat), Lucas Sin - Asian Americans using food culture as a vessel to share how cool Asian stuff is. And you see the effects now, right? Asian stuff is revered in the culinary world. We’re doing that in the grocery world, for our little corner in drinks. We are a big turning point from thinking of Asian brands as “made for all” millennial basic pastel corporate kind of vibe. I hope we will be looked on one day as a brand that had a cultural / marketing impact, like with what ALD did for fashion in the late 2010’s / early 2020’s.
19. What's next for your company that you're excited for right now?
We’re launching cans right now, and that’s a big milestone for us. We broke so much glass along the way. The glass isn’t going anywhere, but it’s an evolution for our brand to come.
20. At NABI, we're all about celebrating food, fashion, and culture. If someone walked away from this interview remembering just one thing about Lucky Ox, what would you hope it is?
We do this because we care. I think if the goal was to use Asian culture as a medium to make money, you can choose a lot easier journey than what we did. But nothing about our journey reads as safe; you can clearly tell our story is very real, and that’s because we’re doing what we want. That’s rare in the business world, and I am shocked that we’re being rewarded for that, but hoping to keep this going for as long as we can!
