Message from Noona

Noona, here. 🙏

As I sit and write to you on a rooftop somewhere in Asia, Im thinking: a decade of Noona’s ~

Exactly 10 years ago, I set up stand on the LES and launched Noona’s into the world at NYC’s annual ice cream contest. Noona’s won best flavor for our Toasted Rice ice cream and news of the win quickly reached press, chefs and all sorts of people who deeply love and/or work in food.

So naturally, folks in the industry were the bulk of my first batch of customers and collaborations. Growing my business without a shop, I worked with restaurants and specialty shops as well as hand-delivering to locals and shipping to peoples doorsteps nationwide.

For the first 3 years, I made, packed and delivered every tub-pint-cake on my own, moving from one commercial kitchen to another and then another. I drove all throughout the 5 boroughs making deliveries on specific days of every week and didn’t know sleep. It was a clear sign of growth, and when I knew I could make more than 300 gallons of ice cream in a production run with the confidence that I’d come back to do bigger runs, I partnered with a local manufacturer and a distributor and grew my reach farther to stores across the country.

After several years of growing Noona’s in that way, I began to understand what opportunities existed for us, and the ones that just weren’t up to me. Most of Noona’s sales opportunities were quite scattered which led to Noona’s being available nationwide but in a few stores in this city, that city ~ Logistically, with such a perishable product, it’s just worlds apart from moving around dry goods. So I kept working on getting Noona’s into more stores.

But the thing is I didn’t start Noona’s to be the Asian Haagen Dasz or Ben and Jerry’s. The bigger imported Asian brands do that easy with their bigness. And it wasn’t that I was thinking small. It just isn’t my personal way of measuring success or what I see as success or happiness for myself, so naturally it didn’t fit with Noona’s vision.

So, I slowly began to scale back. Simultaneously, opportunities arose in leading creative workshop classes for ice cream making, cake decorating and flavor development. I also began getting requests to host ice cream socials and guide people through each bite, every tasting.  It made me think of opening a shop to give people a space to really get to know Noona’s flavors. Despite the popularity and love of Asian flavors, most of us are still getting acquainted with these flavors and their relationship with food in general. Because the reality is our relationship with food is more complex than we ever imagined, and we’re also not very aware of the history of our nature and the foods and flavors that already do exist. Part of the reason on how I can create all these unique flavors and just play with my food and be creative in my cooking has everything to do with my relationship with food. I truly love being with food, flavors and nature in the same way I love being with someone I’m in love with.

And so I opened a shop and fell back in love with flavor, got to revisit old recipes and develop new ones and poured myself into Noona’s 2.0. Around the time the shop turned 1, I got news on a condition that significantly changed the way I chose to move forward with Noona’s and my life. My choice was to let go of the shop, and I’m good with that choice. I bet on myself when I started Noona’s in 2016, I bet on myself throughout this journey and I’m betting on myself again as we enter a new stage of Noona’s. So letting go of the shop didn’t need a farewell or bittersweet speech, but I did need time to process it with minimal external influence in order to say what I’m sharing today. I didn’t see it as a loss, because Noona’s is still here to be what it’s always been: our guide along our journey of flavor. It’s my guide as much as it is yours. And what I’ve realized after a decade of being your ice cream noona is that despite all the access we now have at the tip of our fingers, to any knowledge, the questions I got asked the most a decade ago are still the ones I get asked the most today. To say it simply, to possess knowledge doesn’t mean to possess clarity. Paradoxically, while access to information is more infinite than ever, it seems our attention, focus and clarity are at an all-time low. So on our journey of flavor, perhaps now is a time for me to start sharing more of my experiences and processes and share them in ways that focus more on unleashing the creative forces within and how certain practices naturally lead us to eat well, cook well and be well. I’m not here to tell you more facts to store in the brain. So in this new light, stay tuned to learn more on my creative initiatives and yes, I’m still gonna sling some ice cream but not as much - I just don’t see a need to pump out ice cream 24/7 anymore. I see it this way: There’s a reason why Noona’s Toasted Rice tugs at your heartstrings and why what I’d call our special flavors and limited editions put Noona’s on the map as a pioneer of Asian-inspired flavors & just one of the great ice creams America has to offer. For this, I am grateful since it was all of you and not me, who gave these accolades to Noona’s. So with great joy, I’m connecting with you today, with a reintroduction and clarification on Noona’s vision and with the announcement of creative initiatives via 1:1 and group workshops guided by me and of my 3 ice cream production runs scheduled for the upcoming year of 2027. Limited qty runs of top polling items every 4 months (subscribers get a list of what I’m loving and excited to share and make. Y’all submit your top list, I reveal the menu and open it up for preorder online. Y’all order and on a set month/timeframe, orders become available for shipment or pickup at a disclosed nyc location). And custom orders will be available but only during certain months or with sufficient lead time.

So if you’re still with me, much love and thanks! More updates and deets to come. Reach out if you’re drawn to do so.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY NOONA and HAPPY NATIONAL ICE CREAM WEEK! Enjoy ~

💌💫💌