|
 
Peggy and Andrew Cherng
went outside
the mainstream by choosing for their restaurants
such locations as malls, super-markets, casinos, libraries
and universities. Photo courtesy of Panda Restaurant Group
|
Panda
Express is Alumni Brainchild
Note: This story was published originally
in the winter 2004 issue of MIZZOU, the magazine of the MU Alumni
Association.
Some people might think that Peggy and Andrew
Cherng have unlikely credentials for the couple who founded Panda
Express, the country’s largest chain of Chinese restaurants.
Andrew earned a master’s degree in applied
mathematics at Mizzou in 1972. Peggy has two degrees from MU:
a master’s in computer science in 1971 and a doctorate in
electrical engineering in 1974.
However, Peggy doesn’t see anything
unusual about the couple bringing its science background into
the business world. An education in engineering or math, she says,
“is mostly training you how to think logically. You can
apply that logic anywhere.”
The Cherngs applied that rational point of
view to the restaurant business. Over three decades they grew
a single family-owned Chinese restaurant called the Panda Inn
in Pasadena, Calif., into a chain of more than 600 eateries that
includes the Panda Express, Panda Inn and Hibachi-San brands.
It’s still a family-owned enterprise.
Andrew is chairman of Panda Restaurant Group, and Peggy is president
and CEO. The couple met in 1967, when they attended the same college
in Kansas. Andrew was born in China and lived in Taiwan and Japan
before coming to the United States to attend college. Peggy is
a native of Burma who was raised in Hong Kong.
In 1973, just after he graduated from Mizzou,
Andrew opened the Panda Inn with his father, Ming-Tsai Cherng,
a master chef who had trained and worked in China. Ten years later,
they opened the first Panda Express with the idea of providing
gourmet-quality Chinese fare to diners in a hurry.
The success of Panda Express, Peggy says,
relies on strict adherence to fresh, high-quality ingredients
that are prepared daily at each location.
The Cherngs went outside the mainstream in
choosing locations for their restaurants. Panda Express was one
of the first chains to set up shop in malls, supermarkets, casinos,
libraries and universities.
“Americans are very open to trying new things,” Peggy
says. But it wasn’t simply culinary novelty that propelled
Chinese food into the mainstream of American cuisine, she says.
More and more, Americans demand freshness and nutritional balance
in their food — and both have long been hallmarks of Chinese
cooking.
And in case the Cherngs make it look easy
to build an empire in the restaurant industry, Peggy cautions
that it took years of hard work to promote consistent quality
across the chain, to recruit and train the right staff, and then
to motivate them to pull together.
She acknowledges that the couple made a few
mistakes along the way and passes on a tip: “Don’t
grow ahead of yourself.”
Archives
| Comments | Home SUBSCRIPTIONS
Subscribe
| Change Your
Address | Unsubscribe
Copyright © 2007 — Curators of the University of Missouri
DMCA and other copyright information.
All rights reserved.
An equal opportunity/ADA institution.
Published by the Mizzou Alumni Association
Questions? Comments? E-mail comments@mizzoualumni.org
Last Update:
November 15, 2007
|
