The Man Who Built The Queens Night Market (Ep. 299)
My in-person conversation with John Wang
The Queens Night Market is one of New York City’s most beloved institutions — but it was never supposed to last more than a year.
Its founder, John Wang, joins me to explain how a side project with a “terrible business model” unexpectedly became one of the most celebrated food markets in the world. From leaving a traditional legal career to imposing a strict price cap in one of the most expensive cities on earth, John shares how the market evolved into a cultural institution representing more than 100 countries through food.
I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. We’ve shared some highlights below, together with links & a full transcript. If you like what you hear/read, please leave a comment or drop us a review on your provider of choice.
— Jim
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Links
Highlights
Putting Queens on the Map
John Wang: The one thing that people in Queens tell me […] you've put Queens on the map in a way that no one else. Queens has the Mets and the US Open, and that's pretty much it. And you were talking about some of the accolades, which, to me are pretty crazy in 10 years. Last year, Lonely Planet and the Financial Times listed us as a top 10 market in the entire world, which you're competing with markets with hundreds, if not thousands of years of history. And in 11 years, somehow we've broken into this crazy list. And so we're getting New York City accolades. Again, this is, I'm not trying to pat myself on the back, but trying to get into, how do you sell this thing to someone? We've gotten New York City accolades where on the list that only Paris and Marrakesh and Hong Kong have been on this list. All of a sudden, not only New York City, Queens has this sort of thing. So there's so many angles and then there's just the other thing people will notice when they come to the night market, I think, is that there's just this calm joy that radiates over the entire event. And I could speculate all sorts of reasons why that might be and I think affordability is probably a big one. But it's just the biggest mass of New Yorkers happy. Which is just a weird thing to see in general, right? New Yorkers are always curmudgeonly and bitter and hustling or whatever, but for eight hours a week, they are just in perfect harmony.
Everything Has to Speak New York… Except the Price Cap
John Wang: So anyways, I fell asleep that night and I woke up like, well, that sounds like something I could do. Not necessarily an expo, but why don’t I just start New York’s first night market? I was like, well, that sounds like something I could do that would impact New York City forever and ever. And so that day I decided I would spend a year trying to do that. But at the time there were two competing night markets in Vancouver and then a once a year night market in LA. And that was, as far as I could tell, that was all that existed in North America. And the thing with those three, they were all 95, 99% Asian focused, which makes a lot of sense if you look at the storied night markets around the world, they tend to be Asian. But I thought if this is my reason for staying in New York City, I have to make it New York in and out. Everything about it has to speak New York except the price cap, which in 2015, 2016 was $5 for any food you could buy. In 2017, we moved it to six and it’s been there since. So that was kind of an FU to New York. I wasn’t having a paycheck. I couldn’t believe how expensive New York was without a paycheck. And I was still on the privilege side. I had had a good paycheck and probably had a resume that if I really needed to, I could probably go find a job. But even still, New York was just unbelievably unaffordable. So the two premises that the Queens Night Market was founded upon was one, represent as many New Yorkers through a gross proxy, but like country of origin as possible, and two, to impose a price cap to make it necessarily or matter of fact the cheapest and most affordable place in New York City.
🤖 Machine-Generated Transcript
Jim O’Shaughnessy
John Wang, founder of the Queens Night Market, welcome. I am so taken by your story and I want to start at the beginning because you made a huge career decision, right? You were a Yale trained lawyer, on the fast track, and then you were like, this is not working for me.
John Wang
Thank you. I’m happy to be here. Thanks for inviting me.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
I want your superhero origin story.
John Wang
Origin story. Well, born and raised in Texas, wanted to leave. I was not a particularly good high school student, which meant I couldn’t go to the good local schools. UT Austin was where everyone tends to go, but you have to be pretty high in your class. And I actually was just a terrible high school student. Never went to class. Decided I would go to the best college that would take me as far away as possible from Texas. So I went to University of Michigan, spent four years there, graduated…
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Ann Arbor.
John Wang
Ann Arbor, yep.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Beautiful college town.
John Wang
Yeah, not bad. I mean, if you like college towns. Triple majored there and then finished up in four years, moved back to Texas, played poker and pool for a little while and then got into law school, went to Yale Law School. Then I was working for the dean of the business school. So joined the joint degree to the MBA as well and then left with a bunch of student debt. That was the big question or the big looming cloud over me. And I figured I would. So I graduated during the recession and tried to figure out what the best way to pay off the student loans was because it was either investment bank or law firm. When I was graduating, the stories were people, investment bankers jumping out of the building because they only got $100,000 in bonuses. And law firms at that time weren’t able, I don’t know if it’s still true, but it was bad PR for them to fire anyone, so they just had to hold onto their entire staff. So I figured I’d bite the bullet, become a corporate lawyer for a couple years and then figure out what I wanted to do once I paid off my student loans.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Let me stop you, because I have a couple of questions. Something that I’ve noticed, I have no empirical data for, so this is a vibe, right? But so many people who do really interesting, innovative, creative things were not great in high school. So what about your case? Were you just bored by it?
John Wang
Maybe. I am not a good student.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Says the guy who’s got a JD and an MBA from Yale.
John Wang
But I mean, there’s a lot of background to that, right? So I’m probably a very good test taker. The reason I was not a good student in high school is because I didn’t ever go to class. And there are attendance requirements and that kind of thing. I think if you gave me a test, I’d probably do pretty well. I can’t tell you whether it’s boredom or just not liking school. But also when I went to college, despite having three majors, I also never went to class.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
We share that.
John Wang
Okay, good. Well, good. And I actually went out of my way to figure out how to escape the attendance requirements. And so much so that I would become a thing that I would go into a class and propose to the professor. I would say, I know you have an attendance requirement. I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll take all your tests. If I get an A, you waive the attendance requirement. If I get anything less than an A, you can do whatever you want with the attendance requirement. And surprisingly, a lot of them said, okay, that’s a weird proposition, but sure, go ahead. And that’s how I ended up.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
And what was it that made you not want to go to class?
John Wang
I don’t know to this day. If you tried to stick me in a classroom, I’d probably freak out. I get very jittery. It’s not claustrophobia. I don’t know, maybe it’s some sort of deep anti-authoritarianism. I don’t know what it is.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
I knew I was gonna love you. I try to avoid all of the insane, crazy political debates. But what I will always go with I am fiercely authoritarian.
John Wang
There’s this funny story. I was in a seminar at law school and they had, it was only one day a month or something, so you had to go. And I had a friend who was beside me and I remember you could use your laptops and I was googling Nintendo games to play. And I started playing this old Nintendo game, but it started to get really into it. There’s only six people in the class or something like that. And so I’m sitting next to my friend and I’m just, it’s a three hour seminar, but at some point I’m just so involved in my game and I’m clacking loudly and my friend just starts poking me like, John, John, stop. And I look up, the entire class has stopped and everyone’s staring at me because I’m just jamming all these buttons. And everyone had apparently been quiet for three minutes. Everyone’s just staring at me, wondering what I’m doing and how can someone take notes so vehemently. But it was actually just playing a fighting game. Oh my God, I was so embarrassed. My friend was embarrassed. And I think they took a coffee break after that.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
When you took the corporate legal job, you were looking at that as a gig. You weren’t going to make that your career for sure.
John Wang
No. I counted down the days until I could pay off my loans and then figure out. I’m doomed to not be satisfied, I think. So I’m not sure there’s a dream job out there for me other than pure retirement, whatever that means. But yeah, it was definitely counting down the days. And I don’t mean that like I’m not a miserable person, but I knew it was temporary.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
And then what was the inspiration for the night market?
John Wang
A couple of things. Why a night market was definitely childhood summers in Taiwan. Each city has a bajillion night markets. They’re all super fun. And I remember every summer when I would go, all I wanted to do every single night was force my family to take me because they’re super fun. These fun games, the food and all this stuff. My lawyer days and shortly thereafter, I was still traveling a bit and I found myself always wanting to either go to the local markets or the local night markets anywhere I went. That’s all I really care to do. And my wife is probably displeased that I’m not a museum person and I’m not a sightseer. All I really want to do is go check out what the locals are doing. When I finished the law firm, I dabbled in a couple of projects. They all depended on someone else’s specialized skills. So one was an app, depended on a developer. One, I was going to move to Milan to start a Texas barbecue with my friend. He got cold feet. And then I was going to start a weather consultancy company with a superstar meteorologist who I grew up with. And they all got cold feet or disappeared. And I’d spent a year spinning my wheels and then decided I was going to move to New Orleans. I love New Orleans. I’ve always loved it. And then when I was about to move, I gave myself two weeks to think of something to do in New York City. Convinced my friend, my Italian friend to start, he’s old school Italian, loves talking, loves Italy. His English is better than most Americans. So I was trying to convince him to do the world’s biggest Italian import export expo. He gets to talk, he gets to schmooze, he gets to do all the stuff that he loves to do. And he thought it was a very good idea, but then just got cold feet again. Or just thought, I think he used the word “chicken shit.” So anyways, I fell asleep that night and I woke up like, well, that sounds like something I could do. Not necessarily an expo, but why don’t I just start New York’s first night market? I was like, well, that sounds like something I could do that would impact New York City forever and ever. And so that day I decided I would spend a year trying to do that. But at the time there were two competing night markets in Vancouver and then a once a year night market in LA. And that was, as far as I could tell, that was all that existed in North America. And the thing with those three, they were all 95, 99% Asian focused, which makes a lot of sense if you look at the storied night markets around the world, they tend to be Asian. But I thought if this is my reason for staying in New York City, I have to make it New York in and out. Everything about it has to speak New York except the price cap, which in 2015, 2016 was $5 for any food you could buy. In 2017, we moved it to six and it’s been there since. So that was kind of an FU to New York. I wasn’t having a paycheck. I couldn’t believe how expensive New York was without a paycheck. And I was still on the privilege side. I had had a good paycheck and probably had a resume that if I really needed to, I could probably go find a job. But even still, New York was just unbelievably unaffordable. So the two premises that the Queens Night Market was founded upon was one, represent as many New Yorkers through a gross proxy, but like country of origin as possible, and two, to impose a price cap to make it necessarily or matter of fact the cheapest and most affordable place in New York City.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah. I want to follow up on two things. You mentioned all of these other ideas you were going to do with somebody, but they got cold feet. That’s something that we notice a lot through our venture arm where we specialize in pre-seed. In other words, hey, you’d make a good founder to seed. And yet what’s really required is agency. Right. You’ve got to actually roll up your sleeves and go do it. When I was listening to you, I was like, wow, that seems like a lot of people to opt out because of cold feet. Obviously you don’t have cold feet. And what do you think was the separation?
John Wang
I have the personality that I always knew I was not going to be a lawyer, at least for a long time. And I have to take a little bit of a step back. I meet a lot of, since the night market started, we’ve launched about 500 businesses in New York City.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Which is astounding, I think you should be incredibly, deeply congratulated for that.
John Wang
Yeah. But they’re not all success stories. Right. There’s a lot of people that have packed up. So it’s a big number. But now pigeonholed as the kind of guy who knows how to spur entrepreneurship like very microbusinesses right, we’re not talking venture stuff. But I always tell people, one, you should never start a small business. Terrible idea, idiotic idea. The percentages are terrible. Yale Law School has this fairly new initiative called the Chae Fellowship program, where they try to incentivize, well, they try to tell Yale Law students that you don’t have to be a lawyer, you can go private. And there are all sorts of different avenues. And the world opens up when you go to Yale Law School. So they come every year to the night market now and I host them and they ask me for my candid advice. I’ve usually had a few beers and I started saying this off the cuff, and I started to believe it more and more that normally I would say a person should not start a small business from just the odds and the tax on your life and how it can upend your life. But I told the law students, you guys should take risks. You have what I had the benefit of, which was a resume, hire-ability, even if shit hit the fan. And the reason I was like, I thought the night market, I’d try it for a year and then I’d crash and burn and I’d go do something else. I might go begging someone to hire me. But the truth is, with that on my resume, I probably could get hired. So I told the Yale Law students that they had the benefit of a plan B, right, which most families don’t. Most families are like, you know, start a dry cleaner or whatever it is, a bodega, don’t have a plan B. And if that fails, their livelihoods are severely impacted. The Yale Law students, once they get there, they’re in the rarefied air where they have a lot of options. And I told them, look, you guys, outside of being a lawyer if you want, outside being a clerk if you want, or going to private equity, whatever, you can all make lots of money. But if you actually want, you have the privilege of taking huge risks and not having it ultimately permanently affect your livelihood, right? You can just go do something else. And so anyways, I don’t know where I got to that tangent, but that’s how I feel. I think most people should not start small businesses. I think it’s a losing proposition. There are certain people in the world who can do it without so much of a risk.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
So let’s walk through two vendors, and you don’t have to name them obviously. They come to you. They’re like, they get that advice, right? Hey, small businesses are rough, but they persist, right? What kind of guidance do you give them? And then walk me through one that did really well and then one that didn’t.
John Wang
If you can persist through so many nos and so many people telling you not to do it, there’s something to be said about that. Your odds of making it are probably incrementally higher than someone who just didn’t have to go through that gauntlet of nos. So the night market is exceptional. I don’t mean exceptional from value proposition, just means it’s unique in that I’ve structured it in a way that even if you lost everything you invested in setting up your business and coming to the night market, it’s maximum a grand, two grand. And so there’s no magic, I think, behind spurring really micro businesses. Just make it affordable to lose. Right. And then we’re popular enough, I think, at least in terms of visitorship, that it’s very unlikely you won’t at least break even. Right. So I always try to level set. What I’m telling people not to start a business is you can try the night market, whatever. It costs probably 500 bucks or a thousand bucks to get in. You lose that. I hope that doesn’t affect your livelihood. But to take on a lease is a completely different matter in New York City, right? So we are an artificial test bed incubator or whatever. What makes success stories, I also think it’s funny talking to successful investors because a lot of what makes a successful investor in hindsight or in the records in history, is the number of zeros you’ve created, right? Or you have amassed. Versus ours. I’ll give you one example. One of my favorite vendors, partly because she doesn’t complain very much at all. She’s been with us from day two, I think, way back to 2015. Her success for being at the night market is spending time with her sister and her kids and her husband and previously her mother, her parents under the tent. They don’t do anything with food six days a week. But on Saturday, their success is just being able to spend family time together for the eight hours of the night market plus the prep time before breakdown. And that is their motivation to be there. Beyond that, that is the sort of thing I like to harp on about, like the Queens… or not harp on, but the things I like to sort of promote with the Queens Night Market, because that doesn’t exist at any other event. Because at no other event in New York City, food focused event, you have the luxury to do that. If you’re not making your money, if you’re not selling, you’re losing your shirt. Right. But the night market is one such that it has this aura of vendors come because for all sorts of reasons. So that’s one success story. And I mean that very sentimentally. That is just a success story. We have another vendor who has now, I don’t know, 12 shops in the Northeast. And his desire is to take over the world. And he seems to be on his path to do so. He’s got business chops and he’s good at marketing and all that stuff. And he’s gone on to do what he intended to do. The difference there is complete motivation, aspirations. What are your ambitions? And so it’s hard for me to categorize and create buckets out of these vendors because we’ve created a quasi artificial, planned economy kind of thing where success is not how much your sales are, but whatever you want it to be. And we’ve created enough leeway in terms of cushion and the price and the investment that it can be that.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
So let’s take our viewers and listeners. Let’s walk into the night market at 400,000 square feet.
John Wang
It’s pretty close. When we flex our gates, it’s pretty close to 300. It’s definitely 300,000. Sometimes close to 400,000 square feet.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Okay, so let’s walk through. You’re going to be my tour guide.
John Wang
Sure. So you can enter, if you’re being literal, you can enter through the north gate or the south gate. The north gate is mostly for people coming off the subways or parking lot. The parking fills up very quickly. And the south gate is for most people, either cutting across the park, Flushing Meadows, or just coming up there locally. They’re both pretty busy. And as soon as you walk in, you’re immediately immersed in a wave or a sea of blue tents and orange tents, about 75 blue tents. Each blue tent is a food tent and about 35 orange tents. And each orange tent is art merchandise. And it takes, that’s over 105, 110 vendors on any given night. It takes a while to orient yourself and to realize that there are three alleyways, pathways full of vendors. And so most people, I have often heard they walk in and it’s not so big. And then they realize that there’s another turn and then there’s another turn and there’s another turn. They’re like, oh, my God, that’s overwhelming. And you’ll see smoke coming. And mostly the skewer vendors have smoke coming up the wazoo. They have charcoal, which makes for a great picture. But their neighbors are not particularly happy. And you’ll see, we curate, as I said, a rough proxy for diversity, if you can still use that word, but by country. And we have a quota generally of no more than two representatives from a country on any given night.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
And you have like 100 countries.
John Wang
We’ve represented since we started, we’ve represented 103 countries through their food. And we can talk about the curation a bit later if you want, but the one parameter outside of the country quota is that you have to sell what you grew up eating.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Which I think is really fascinating. But let’s talk about it now. Let’s talk about the curation now. If you can only have two vendors from a particular country, right, how do you adjudicate that? How do you decide who those two vendors are going to be?
John Wang
It’s tricky. It’s trickier for some countries than others. There’s priority for people who have been there before. If I have 100 applicants from Colombia, it’s just some sort of, is one grandfathered in because they’ve been there so long? There’s a soft spot for people who came in 2015 because they took a huge risk on whatever the hell I was doing. So anyone from 2015 kind of has an easier path getting in. And outside of that, it’s story slash, what has New York not seen before? So one of the entire points of the Queens Night Market is can you tell stories? Can you perpetuate traditions that are close to being lost? And some of that means if there’s a dish that I’ve never heard of or most of New York has never heard of, that either means it’s not super popular in New York yet or anymore. Or it’s such a small percentage of people that are practicing it or perpetuating that tradition that I would love to get it out there in the world. And maybe by doing so, there’s an article written about it for one time, and maybe someone thinks five minutes about it and then, all these traditions are going to be something very different in 20 years time. So trying to preserve these little nuggets of stories or traditions for however temporally I can do so. So it’s just a weird mix of how I’m feeling that day, whatever it is. And then there’s the other side, which is two, three years ago, I think we got an application from someone from Papua New Guinea. I was like, I don’t even know what food they eat. Don’t even know what food they source. But you’re in. If you can make it work, you’re in. Because she was from there. And I was like, that would be amazing. We’d probably be the only food festival in the US that has that representation. Turns out, went through this whole thing. I was like, give me, what do you normally eat? What do you want to sell? What are you passionate about? And then after she was accepted, she realized that she couldn’t source the ingredients. And so, sad story. But if you’re coming from a country, again, the story, the narrative has to match up, right? One thing, the whole point of this, you have to sell what you grew up eating is just to avoid someone going to culinary school and figuring out something trendy or making up a new dish and selling it. And not for any reason, there are plenty of markets in New York City and across the US that do exactly that, cater to exactly that kind of Instagram-ability and profitability. That was never the point of the night market anyways.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
So they get in, right? What are the most common problems that they come to you with? Am I going to be right if I guess the $6 cap on the food?
John Wang
It’s a pretty mixed bag of what people encounter. Some of it’s marketing. So I’ll give you a story. We have, I don’t know if we have a target demographic, but the people that come to the night market, that aren’t just locals, that actually travel from the other boroughs or the tourists are probably drawn because they’re looking for food that they can’t find elsewhere, outside of just the affordability part, because I think that’s important. I’m not delusional. I think that’s the main reason we are popular in the first place. But for the people who make that extra trek, because you could go to the bodega across the street and presumably get a $6 sandwich or something like that. But for the people that make a trek that’s not convenient, I think they’re there to eat, try foods and experience cultures and bridge across different horizons and cultures. So we had, for instance, we had this one vendor who went through the business seminars and she served African food. I can’t remember the details. Maybe it was West African or maybe Central African. Just something that we hadn’t had before. I was very excited. I was like, the narrative matched and it’s super cool. But she also had a restaurant in the Bronx, lower Bronx, and her restaurant in the Bronx, if you went to, if you saw her restaurant, and hopefully there’s enough restaurants I think like this in the Bronx that I’m not singling anyone out. But essentially the awning in her restaurant says, burgers, pizza, pasta, wings, Spanish food, whatever, the hodgepodge. And I could, there’s probably some markets where that makes sense, make a one stop shop for anyone that comes. But we had curated her because she had this amazing African story that we hadn’t seen before. And but she came with the same signage that her restaurant did, which was, and she was only selling the African food because that’s all we curated. But the sign was just the hodgepodge of stuff that people are coming to the night market specifically to avoid. Right. And so that was just a lesson in marketing. And another time we had a vendor who, I don’t know if it’s health code appropriate, but she was doing okay. But then one day she decided to hang those roasted ducks that you see all in Chinatown. And from that day on for the next 10 years she had a constant line, nonstop. And that was also just a marketing thing. So that’s one, is just how do you present, who do people come in? But there are also days of the night market where it doesn’t matter who you are, what you brought, you’re going to have a line because there’s just so many people, 20,000 people can go to so many stalls. Those are my favorite nights. Because the ones who are struggling or don’t have the marketing chops or whatever, don’t have the sophistication, they can still do well, right? I remember last year towards the end we brought on a Kazakh vendor and it was literally a piece of paper that they held up with a and had their sign hold up with a hand drawwn menu. And it was so busy though that they sold out. Normally you’d be like, oh my God, they look like, can’t trust their food, can’t trust their menu, can’t trust anything about it, it’s so sketchy looking. But it was so busy and people were so hungry for food that they sold out. And they slightly improved over the year, over the next three weeks because it was towards the end of the season. But there’s some nights that you can’t fail, right? Except for if you operationally fail, right? So there are some people that the first night they see how busy it is, they’ve come as visitors and I’m very upfront, I tell them exactly the stats that I know. The average vendor sells 550 portions a night, right? Huge variability. But that’s where it is. And I’ll tell you, there are probably vendors that sell 100 a night and there are some vendors that sell 1,000 a night on average. But that’s where this, and we’re talking about the mindset of entrepreneurs. There are entrepreneurs that start and like, well if the average is 550, I’m definitely selling 2,000, right? And so they pack so much shit that there’s not humanly possible to get to 2,000. You can’t even take 2,000 orders in that amount of time or whatever it is, right? So that’s one thing about the mindset. Those are, you know, if I was investing, those are like the business people I would not invest in, those entrepreneurs. But there’s also the other ones that are, the benefit of having such a low vendor fee and in order to break even, assuming you’re hiring just you and your family or son or whatever, right, you need to sell 50 or 100. And so there are a lot of also on the other end of the spectrum, people just easing their way in, bring 200 portions and sell out in the first hour and they just have to sit there and wait. But then they get to explore and see what other people are doing. But just, here’s the mean, here’s the median and here’s the variability. Do what you want. But I try to give them some common sense things about imagine it takes your son 30 seconds to just make the change. How does that affect your operational efficiency? And imagine it actually takes you two minutes to fry XYZ versus, just trying to talk people out of this 2,000 servings kind of thing. I try to give a top 10 list of random advice to vendors at these seminars. Like, please, at least smile and make eye contact with people that walk past you. Right? You never, and there’s so much, as a visitor, you have to make a guilty feeling decision not to look at someone’s stuff when they’re looking at you and making, smiling at you. But it’s amazing how many of these small businesses just don’t do that. They’re looking down at their phone and I get it, the conversion rate is small and all that stuff. But if you’re actually going to do it, going to do it, make the effort for those whole eight hours. And you can be tired, your eyes can be glazed over. But for the majority of time, try to like, you know, impress upon, that’s something that and small things like that I harp on.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
But that has always fascinated me. Just some basics, right? When I was in Hong Kong, for example, there were these big groups, led by a woman, almost always a woman, of little kids. And I’m a very naturally inquisitive person and I will talk to any stranger. And so I walked right up and said, what’s going on? And she was really blunt and she was like, “All mainland Chinese.” And I went, okay, but. And she goes, “They send them here to learn manners.” And I’m like, really? And so we kind of got into it and one of the things that she brought up first and foremost was when she gets them, they never look at her, they dismiss her, they don’t shake her hand. These are just really basic things to connect with another human being. And if you’re going to try to be an entrepreneur and you’re not doing that. I remember one guy I used to work with and he was very analytical, right? Which he was really good at. But I noticed when we would go and were trying to raise money for a company, when we would go to meet prospective investors, if he was there ahead of me, he was always in the corner looking at his phone. And I’m like, dude, come over and talk to these people. Maybe is there a story where you get somebody who started out like that but then kind of grew to being a good entrepreneur?
John Wang
A lot of them, I mean, the learning curve there is incredibly steep. And one of the things I talked about earlier, maybe that was with Nick. The camaraderie between the vendors is a remarkable thing that I never would have predicted. Maybe you could work backwards and say, well, at these other markets, and again, most of this was not planned, right? And so most of it’s just retrospect conjecture about how something happens. But at these other events, they’re all frenemies or competing, right? They want to be the person that makes the most money. At the night market, I was just telling your colleague Nick that they have intergenerational cross cultural dinner parties all the time. They’re friends and if, we have a Persian lady who is an on and off vendor, she usually comes by herself. Her neighbors, whoever they end up being that week, often help her break down and load up her car, which is just remarkable, weird stuff. So if you are not the greatest entrepreneur when you first get there, at least for the night market, like again, there’s so many concepts of the night market that just would never be sustainable outside of the night market. But for those eight hours on a Saturday, my guess is your neighbor vendors are helping you along. Like, oh, here’s tips of the trade, here’s how I would do it. They always talk about lighting and how to engage trust, but how to set up your stall so you can get by. And my guess is if I’m not the one telling you, they are, which I try not to do. Once they start, I try not to interfere with what they do. But that’s not true with all the other. Their colleague vendors are very quick to give them tips on branding and setup and optimization. So I don’t know if we’ve, we had a lady who came out of business school, she would load her car and she used it for operations training because she wanted to potentially break into the food industry. Came out of a very stellar business school, just loaded up her car with as much as she could fit. Very good planning. She knew the equipment, knew how much she could make, sold out every night. And then she used it as the first year, I think she only came one year, but used it as a training ground and then launched a restaurant to huge fanfare. It became, it was the number one on a list for maybe three or four years ago. Did great. But then from what I know she got married and moved to Paris. But for that year, she didn’t know what she was doing. The first time she ever sold a thing herself was at the night market, loaded up her car to the brim, figured it out and then parlayed that into a restaurant. So that’s, you can use it for, the night market is used for all sorts of reasons, but that’s probably one where they really used it and took the skill set and expanded on it.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
And how many people over the years, because you’ve also got great callouts as best food in New York. I’ve read a lot of the stuff written about it. Are a lot of people using it as a training ground to go on to launch other things like a restaurant or in the case of the people selling merchandise, a boutique?
John Wang
Sure. I mean, I don’t know. I mean I tried to keep track, but anecdotally I’d say the last official survey, which means me digging into my brain to figure out and remember who came through, maybe 30 or 40 restaurants came out and maybe 10 or 20 retail shops came out of it.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
So, okay, let’s continue on our tour. We’re in. We see that they’re color coded, the people selling food are one color, merchandise another. What sorts of merchandise would you find there?
John Wang
It’s funny, so there hasn’t been that much evolution in the night market, for better or worse. But the curation of the retail stuff and the merchandise has. When I first started the night market, I really chased after this cultural representation kind of thing. And so both through the food, so that part hasn’t changed, but also through the art. I tried to get culturally representative, diverse art. So that meant African art and Ecuadorian art and Chinese art and all this sort of stuff. Completely aside, I also tried to do that with entertainment. We had all these unique musicians and instruments that you’d never seen before. And anyways, on the food it caught on, it made sense and became sustainable in terms of at least the crowds and as long as the vendors are selling enough, that’s all that matters in terms of the economics. It didn’t really work at the retail side because one, maybe the price point and two, maybe no one’s coming to buy African art, right? Or how do you even get it home? That kind of stuff. So we sort of shifted more towards, at least either… the New York part still the same. So it’s locally designed, locally made or locally curated. So we still avoid mass production socks and that kind of stuff. But it’s become a little bit more what will people actually buy? So you’ll see a lot of, there are a couple tents and we still try to maintain, I try to maintain a pretty considerate mix of stuff. So if there’s someone selling anime stuff, I won’t have more than one out of the 35 or more than two out of 35 crochet stuff and paintings and stuff like that. So you’ll see some toys, you’ll see a fair amount of art, ceramics, crochet, whatever, some novelty stuff. So yeah, whatever. But still insist that it’s not just mass production stuff.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
And same rule apply for the vendors selling merchandise. Let’s say you’re from Iceland. Are the things that you’re selling of Icelandic origin, something they grew up with?
John Wang
Yeah, less so. We still, to the extent that there are some things like that, we have a Japanese vendor who’s been with us for a long time, sells very traditional Japanese stuff, nice chopsticks and that kind of stuff. But we also have really young kids selling anime toys and plushies and stuff like that. So we try to keep it mostly culturally appropriate and representative, but also mostly just focused on that it’s locally… The business owner is either locally designing it, locally producing it, or locally curating it. So it’s a little bit, it’s moved away from the cultural representation, but that was a pure economic thing. Right. We could curate it with all the esoteric art stuff, but the vendors just weren’t.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
And it seems to me that you’ve allowed a lot of emergence. Right. It doesn’t sound like other than your cap on pricing, you can’t have any more than two representatives from a particular country. Are there any other rules that you enforce?
John Wang
Yeah, not so much. There are in the weeds stuff. For better or worse, no vendor is allowed to leave before we close. Even if they sell out in the first hour, they’re not allowed to break down. They can stay. They can go explore the market. They can go, they can sit in their tent and just smile at people and tell people what they could have had. When we first created the, when we were curating performances, we have three or four live performances a night. I was very much about the cultural stuff and lots of dance troupes and lots of esoteric, very specific, unique musical instruments. And sometimes they would fall on deaf ears or it was hard to amp them up. They were historically acoustic, and so there are a lot of times you create these really cool things that no one had ever seen, but no one cared, or you couldn’t hear it. So we’ve definitely, we still try to sprinkle those in as much as possible, try to do better and amp them up and give them a platform. But we’ve also just created a lot more just local bands that people like. Right. Energetic. So on those two fronts, I would say I followed a little bit more what is appealing and engaging versus with a heavy hand.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
And how are the entertainers doing the performances? How are they compensated?
John Wang
So for the first three, four years, they weren’t. They did it pro bono. And then I, and then honestly, my wife probably thinks I’m the worst human being ever because she’s an artist. She’s probably like, you underpay these people, which is probably true. It’s very true. It is true. But I just didn’t have a budget. This thing was run on a shoestring, still kind of is. So the first three or four years, they just did it pro bono for the huge audience that they got. And then I got a grant, a small grant, arts grant that I started divvying up. And then when I either lost the patience or didn’t have capacity to keep re-upping or reapplying for the grants, I just made a small budget for it. So we pay them, disproportionate to their talent, the other way. But, you know.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
But can they also be buskers and have an open.
John Wang
They can’t, no. They also accept tips. So some of them make very good money in tips. The super, the same ones that would do really well on the subway station do really well there in terms of tips. We still give them, cut them a small check, but some of them do really well.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
And you mentioned that the enterprise itself is a bit still shoestring-y. Yeah. So what is your business model?
John Wang
So hopefully there’s not too many business people listening to your podcast because it’s terrible. It’s the worst idea ever, to be honest. Again, this is so much about my motivation doing it. And the idea that at least 11 years ago, I thought I could fall back on something. Right. I thought even if some of the partners in my law firm didn’t like me, enough of them did that I could probably go back and maybe even do relationship stuff, whatever. It’s funny you mentioned your horses staying in the corner when they arrive before you. I am totally that guy unless there’s something I need to have done, right? So in a vacuum, if I’m not looking to fundraise or I’m not looking to schmooze, I’m the guy in the corner pretending to look at my phone. I’m not even looking at my phone. I’m pretending to look at my phone just so I don’t make eye contact with anyone. But if it’s in a room, I have to talk to these people and there’s an agenda, then I’m out and schmoozing. And so anyways, the motivation for this idea, I literally thought I’d spend a year doing it. It would crash and burn. The question I started off with is, why is there no night market in New York City? And I thought after a year, I would have answered that question and then I’d move to New Orleans. So when I came out with this stupid idea, I was like, okay, here’s what I will do, and here’s how I force my own hand. So a lot of this is creating a structure where I cannot deviate from it, right? So I created a structure. I went out publicly. I was like, look, this idea I have, what I will do, one is I will never profit from vendor fees. Which means as a practical matter, I’ll figure out whatever my operating costs are and divide, essentially divide that by the number of vendors for as long as this thing has legs. That will always be the case. Stupid idea, no room for profit, period. From day one. And I thought, okay, well, if I’m so lucky and this catches fire, maybe I’ll get some sponsors. Maybe I’ll run a bar, whatever it is, but to start it in order to create this structure where nothing costs more than $5. The only way I can convince any vendor to do it. Because there was no case study, right? It was just, I had to convince vendors, it was worth it to sell things for $5 when they could go to any other event and sell it for 10 or 15. So I was like, look, from day one, I will never veer from, I’ll never make a dollar from your vendor fees. Burned so much cash, right? Because the idea wasn’t at capacity the first few years. And overestimating all sorts of things like a terrible entrepreneur does. And so that was the first thing that was a terrible mistake, terrible idea. And so much so. But it got tons of buzz, right? There’s one thing that is super lucky… the night market has had a honeymoon with the media for 11 years now. We put something out. And I was using this case. Someone asked me, we don’t have to talk about it on the show. I’m in constant fundraising mode, actually not constant, like, over the last two years, I’ve been in fundraising mode, trying to hit up foundations and philanthropists. And someone asked me yesterday, what’s your strategy for going after philanthropists? Haven’t… No success yet. But how do you get these meetings that you have? And I was like, you know what? I don’t know. I usually cold email, any email address I can find. And what often happens in these meetings I get is that the person who receives it has been to the night market. And they’re like, I fucking love the night market. It’s the coolest thing ever. Let me see if I can get some people to look at it. And that’s the same thing that happens at City Hall or any company. The difference between the people who have been and haven’t been is really just like, oh, my God, let me do what I can. So the same, the reason I brought that up is with reporters. Every reporter has been trying so hard to get the night market headlines or good reviews or whatever they do, because this is how they choose to spend their Saturday nights. And in year two or year one, I remember talking to a reporter, and it was the exact same time as Anthony Bourdain was trying to create Bourdain Hall. And a reporter told me, two press releases hit her desk that morning. One from Anthony Bourdain and mine, and she was like, I wanted to write about yours, but then my editor made me write about the other one. So I convinced the editor that I could write about both. I think in year three, we finally got to enough capacity with vendors, and so it broke even. And then we got the okay to start a bar. And then it was kind of humming along the entire time. It wasn’t until year nine that I had an employee. Hummed along to the pandemic. And then that’s when I feel like, at least anecdotally, it may not actually be true in retrospect, and if you ran the data, but that’s when inflation started to really test the $6 limit that we had. So then I started freaking out about the $6 price cap. I was like, at some point the economics are such that selling something for $6 is a losing proposition. And so out of the pandemic, not to name drop, just to name drop or give props, but someone approached me and said, would you like a big bank sponsor? I was like, of course. Of course I would. So Citizens Bank came in. They just broke into New York City, and they were looking for things to support, and someone from their outside marketing agency was like, you should do the night market. It’s the coolest thing ever. So that was three years ago. And my deal with them is basically, I want you guys to pay down half of the vendor fee. I mean, I tried to get them to pay the entire thing, but they agreed to pay down half the vendor fee. So that took the base vendor fee from maybe 200 bucks down to 100 bucks, which I could justify, was back of the envelope, almost accounted for the inflation, the cost inflation, both between labor and food cost. And so that happened for two years. We were happy as a clam. But it’s a tricky thing. The night market won’t go away if I’m not able to raise the funds. Right. But the economics of the vendors is such that the price cap does have to be adjusted, which I just have a personal obsession with keeping as long as humanly possible the $6 price cap. And as long as I can make it worthwhile for the vendors, I will do everything in my power to keep it there. So, anyway, terrible business model at the end of the day, terrible business model. So much so that I didn’t have a regular employee until two years ago.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Wow. Of course, the Costco hot dog is very famous because they lose tons of money on it. But that certainty that you’re going to be able to go to Costco, eat. And apparently the hot dogs are pretty good. And so I could see why, even though it might seem irrational, I can see why 80% would vote no, keep it, because that’s the draw. Right. People know that they can go and get great food at a reasonable price. Yeah. And obviously, if inflation, everything else, then you’re a bit fucked.
John Wang
So for me, it’s so much about the whole genesis of, a lot of this part probably a part I didn’t speak too much about. After being a lawyer, I was traveling around a bit, trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. And I’m always amazed outside of maybe Japan and Western Europe, going to these markets. What a dollar, a US dollar will do for you at a market. Right? I remember two of the best things I’ve ever eaten in my life cost a dollar. One was a ceviche in Peru and one was two tacos in Mexico. Deep in Mexico for a dollar. Unreal. Unfair. To be honest. Completely unfair. So the genesis of the $5 price cap, when I was no longer employed in New York City, it was like a dollar is inane. But what if you could take a $5 bill? Anyone in New York City could take a $5 bill and get something, anything they wanted at any stall, period. So last year, I had, no names, but I was talking to this billionaire philanthropist, and some people had lined up a direct meeting with this person. I was super excited. I was like, oh, my God, is this it? Is this it? And so we sat down, and this person said, everyone told me, I need to meet you. What are you doing? What do you have to offer? And I was like, here’s the night market, blah, blah. And here’s the $6 price cap. And she said, stop. That’s your problem. It should be a $10 price cap. I was like, no, no. It’s the exact opposite. I’m trying to. And she’s like, no, no. Who in New York City cannot afford $10? And I was like, ask the 7 million New Yorkers for which that’s seriously. It was.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah, no, I know.
John Wang
It was a terrible thing. And so our surrounding neighborhood is not affluent. Right? And so for a family of four, I may be saving them 20 bucks a night out, which is not something to bat an eye at. It falls a lot on deaf ears, because people don’t get it, because most of the people I’m trying to fundraise from, the difference between the dollar doesn’t make, doesn’t register. It can’t possibly. It’s like a penny to them, which no longer is. So the night market doesn’t go bust if I don’t raise the money. At some point, yes, in the next few years, the price cap will go up no matter what. Unless there’s deflation, which seems not likely. So it’s just a matter of, so when I’m pitching people, it’s this weird, pitching the same people for whom that dollar doesn’t matter is tricky, but also it’s hard to pitch this angle. The one thing that people in Queens tell me, and all the institutions, you’ve put Queens on the map in a way that no one else. Queens has the Mets and the US Open, and that’s pretty much it. And you were talking about some of the accolades, which, to me are pretty crazy in 10 years. Last year, Lonely Planet and the Financial Times listed us as a top 10 market in the entire world, which you’re competing with markets with hundreds, if not thousands of years of history. And in 11 years, somehow we’ve broken into this crazy list. And so we’re getting New York City accolades. Again, this is, I’m not trying to pat myself on the back, but trying to get into, how do you sell this thing to someone? We’ve gotten New York City accolades where on the list that only Paris and Marrakesh and Hong Kong have been on this list. All of a sudden, not only New York City, Queens has this sort of thing. So there’s so many angles and then there’s just the other thing people will notice when they come to the night market, I think, is that there’s just this calm joy that radiates over the entire event. And I could speculate all sorts of reasons why that might be and I think affordability is probably a big one. But it’s just the biggest mass of New Yorkers happy. Which is just a weird thing to see in general, right? New Yorkers are always curmudgeonly and bitter and hustling or whatever, but for eight hours a week, they are just in perfect harmony and they’re specifically to, for some to learn from their neighbors and eat food that they haven’t had. Cross cultural bridge. Some of them, they just want to find a place to sit and drink and eat and find whatever. But there’s something I don’t want to call moving, but sort of deeply satisfying about Saturdays at the Queens Night Market. So much so, what baffles me more than all these accolades that we’ve gotten is that probably once a week, maybe on average, someone reaches out either social media or finds my email address, which is easy to guess. John @ whatever. It says full stop. Queens Night Market is the best part about New York City. To me that is just probably inaccurate, but just crazy that someone would say that, right? There’s the Met, there’s the Statue of Liberty. There’s so much amazing shit in New York City that anyone would bother to write me personally and say, you’ve created my favorite thing or my family’s favorite thing. It’s just beyond me. So I’m always trying to get myself out of running the Queens Night Market because it’s taxing and terrible idea and all sorts of things, but it is hard to walk away from something people care so deeply about. The volunteering, right? The idea that someone volunteers, we’re not a museum. We’re not a veterinarian. But people are still asking to volunteer. Super weird to me.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
As the doors open, right, what does the clientele look like?
John Wang
I always say a cross section of New York City, right? And that’s the one thing people I think notice. And I think New York magazine once said, it’s the New Yorkiest of New York festivals, right? It is. We, I mean, it’s been many years since we did a survey, but a very impromptu survey it was. Back then, it was 30% Asian, 30% Latin, 30% Caucasian, 10% Black, which is almost the exact breakdown of New York City. And it was amazing. I’m like, well, if I had to on paper, create an event for New York City, that’s exactly a demographic I would have picked. And so that’s how it happens. And in terms of personal anecdotes or class of anecdotes, there’s often, there’s so many tiny neighborhoods in Queens and New York City, for that matter, that often there are these enclaves where grandparents will never step foot outside these enclaves, right? And so what often, I don’t know how often. I’m probably overestimating by far. But what happens is that these grandkids take, force their grandparents to come to the night market, and they’re like, no, no, don’t want to go. There’s nothing I can eat. And the kid’s like, no, no. I guarantee you’ll find at least something that will remind you of home, whether it’s your neighboring country of origin, or whatever it is. You’ll go and you’ll find something and you’ll be comfortable. And then once they have that, they’re like, oh, this was a good version. This was a terrible version. Whatever. And the grandkids proceed to push the envelope and like, well, now that you tried that, why don’t you try this? Why don’t you try that? Get them outside of the comfort zone. And happens all the time. Overestimating, I’m sure, but happens a lot. And that’s the great, the point, the entire point of the night market. It was that kind of exploration and sort of, and then the grandparents get to mingle with New Yorkers that they generally wouldn’t see, ever.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah, I mean, my own experience, I haven’t been yet. I will be there for sure. But I’ve been to night markets in Marrakesh, in Cambodia, in Hong Kong, in Laos. They’re really fun. And I remember the first one I went to was actually in Marrakesh and I was like, wow, this is just a really good time. Are there opportunities? Kind of back to sponsorship. And by the way, the billionaire who doesn’t understand…
John Wang
The difference between $6 and $10
Jim O’Shaughnessy
That’s fucked up. Come on. I mean, yeah, it’s a rarefied bubble and I get that. But you would think that they could at least think and extrapolate theoretically that for a lot of people that’s a lot of money. I mean, honestly, I think it’s one of the big problems of New York right now is it’s priced out everybody except the rich. And that is not a good thing to happen. And so that’s why I’m enthusiastic about things like the night market. Right. That you put Queens and New York on the map with that. That’s also kind of extraordinary to me. Right. And the other thing I love about it is if you had come in with some kind of, this is the way it’s going to be with some kind of top down, there’s got to be this number of these people, this. Right. It would have not worked. And because you let it evolve and the friendships, all that kind of stuff, I think one thing that people really do crave and one trend we’re seeing is just connection with other human beings. And this is the perfect stage for that to happen. What’s the turnover in vendors? Do you get a lot of new people or a lot of stalwarts who are always there?
John Wang
We try. I mean, it depends on the year. I think it tracks in a way. I’m not clever enough to, nor do I have enough time to think about how it tracks. But last year we actually had the least amount of turnover. I was surprised. I aspire for 50% or more turnover and hopefully these guys, the 50% that turnover that I hope turn over, have found better things to do or bigger profit margins elsewhere. But last year was a weird one. And I think it may be economic uncertainty. More than 70% of our vendors reapplied, which was exceptional. And so we had a really hard time trying to figure out how to create turnover without being an asshole saying, you’re done. And so it really depends on the year. I mean, there are some years where maybe there are a lot of food festivals and they all decide to go to a more profitable one. I don’t know. And the turnover is much more natural and closer to where I would like it to be just to keep things fresh. But last year was a tricky one, so we had to, we do silly things like, okay, well for the ones on the fence, will you be willing to split dates with another returning vendor just so we could create an extra 10 for new ones? And so it really depends. But somewhere, if I, in a vacuum, I’d love for there to be about 50% turnover or so.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
And the intent there being just giving additional opportunities to new people.
John Wang
Yeah. 10 years, 15 years down the road, it won’t happen as a practical matter. But I would love to have a tent for every country of origin represented in New York City. That’s always been the ideal. And that’s why, I mean, again, that’s the only reason we use country flags. Right. Otherwise China has 10 billion cuisines and so does every country, has so many nuances. So it’s such a terrible, I mean, terrible proxy to count diversity or storytelling. But it’s the only one that I can. Otherwise you’re caught in a nonstop trying to figure out the number of regions you’ve represented. So creating spaces for these vendors and countries whose stories haven’t been told or at least featured.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
On the China question, are they serving American Chinese or are they serving real Chinese?
John Wang
So the thing that, this is the nuance that I’ve, the workaround. When I started the night market and even still there’s persistent questions. There are people who like to call, I think I wrote a piece on this for the University of Michigan alumni. Maybe. I think I did. They often use a phrase or adjective. Authentic. Right. And a lot of people who describe New York with the best intention or describe the Queens Night Market with the best intentions always call it authentically New York or authentic vendors or whatever it is. And I’m always like, I would never choose to use the word authentic because to me it means, it only has a definition when you’re talking about inauthentic, right? And inauthentic means some sort of mental state where you’re trying to dupe someone or you’re trying to pass something off as something else, which I’m not a judge of that. I don’t know who could be a real judge of that. And so what I, the reason it got formulated as you have to cook something you grew up with. If you grew up with it, it has a tradition, right? Whether it’s only within your lifetime, within your family, or ideally, or maybe another word, in other ways, it might reflect a tradition passed down from grandparents or great grandparents and that kind of stuff. I don’t know, and I don’t care, as long as it is a tradition in your family and you can extrapolate up or work up the ladder as far as you can. Doesn’t matter to me. But if you grew up eating it, at least I can rest assured that it has some tradition in your family. And the rest, if it happens to reflect a thousand years worth of traditions, awesome. If it doesn’t, so be it. In a case in point there, right? How it worked out in practical matters. This year, we, for better or worse, featured a pizza bagel vendor, right? Very American, obviously Americana. But I grew up eating pizza bagels, right? Has nothing to do with whatever Asian heritage I have or nor much to do with my being born in Texas or any of that stuff. But I did fucking eat pizza bagels up the wazoo. And so did this guy. And so who am I to say that is not important culturally or traditionally? It fits every narrative, every specific curatorial parameter that we have. So I was like, sure, you can do it. We didn’t have that many American, we didn’t hit our quota of American vendors. And so they came. They were a huge success. Now someone might look at it, be like, oh, that’s totally not up your curatorial alley, right? But in terms of the letter of the law, it was exactly the kind of thing we should curate, right? You convinced me that you grew up eating it. Period. Right. And so, but it skirts a lot of tricky questions about authentic and inauthentic. So the reason it came up, your question is we’ve had a fair number of Latin Chinese cuisine. Right? There’s a lot of Chinese cuisine in South America and a lot of these families have grown up eating it. And so I don’t use the word fusion or inauthentic or whatever. If they grew up eating it, it passes muster for me. So we end up with probably some versions of, if a kid grew up eating certain kind of food a certain way, so be it. Right. So it doesn’t quite answer your question, but it’s kind of like whatever anyone grew up eating and has a passion for.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
And then how do you deal with what I have to suspect is a lot of health code red tape, all of that.
John Wang
We fall into a couple of nice exceptions. One, our landlord has a private operating agreement. They were built for the World’s Fair, Hall of Science. So our direct contract is with this museum, who gets to oversee their own thing. If we had to sign a contract with Parks, there’s so, the bureaucratic headache and the costs balloon, it wouldn’t exist. So also, we are public land, but privately operated. So we don’t have to do, we don’t have to seek the same permits that someone on the street does because we’re quasi private property. And so we skirt that one. And then in so doing, the health department has a whole set of codes for pop ups which are, for better or worse, a little bit more lenient in terms of the kind of infrastructure you need. And so we luckily fall into all these more convenient buckets or exceptions of rules. And so, I mean, we still enforce all the same required permits and safety and all that stuff. But it just so happens that they’re a little bit less onerous because of all these circumstances.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah, I mean, right out here, there’s the farmers market. And again, me being me, I would go and just drill these people with questions because I was trying to figure it out, right? Like, how are you… There was the same guy for years and years. And I’m like, how are you making money? Because I’m fascinated by that. Right. And so, walk me through your day. When do you leave upstate New York to get here? And it’s at insane times. But when they walk me through the whole thing, I’m like, okay, you actually are making money, despite all of the particular things going on. Very different for a farmer’s market, though, because I don’t see that as much of a launching pad. You want to start a new restaurant, you want to do that. Whereas your night market seems like the ideal environment if you want to test out a particular food or a particular style, as you mentioned earlier, it’s not going to break you. And so what do you see for the next five years? Just banging along or.
John Wang
I do not know. I generally don’t plan more than a year in advance because I’m constantly thinking, this will be the last year I do it. I’ve been wrong 10 years now in a row. So it’s a little bit of the same. Someone asked me, yes. No, someone asked me two days, three days ago, what would you change about the night market if you could go back in time? And I didn’t expect the question. So I said, I would have had someone else start it. Because I do think it should exist. I think the concept is good, solid. Again, the business model is admittedly the worst thing in the world, but it’s got, so many New Yorkers have come to love it. So many entrepreneurs have used it. Some of them have used it as an important income supplement or exclusive income. But would I think 11 years I’d still be doing it? I didn’t think I’d be doing it more than one year. And that’s also why I’ve been, I think, so transparent about everything about the night market. Right. I remember year two, the Wall Street Journal did a profile and they asked me all these questions about financing and stuff. I was like, oh, here’s how much money I lost, here’s how much money I raised. And blah, blah. And the article came out and was like, this is how much money he lost, this is how much money he raised. And everyone’s like, why the fuck did you tell him that? I was like, was I not supposed to? Oh, my God. I have no idea. So apparently you’re supposed to hide your finances from the Wall Street Journal. But I was like, here it is. And so I’ve been super transparent about the curation. There’s no secret sauce. And that was, goes back to, I want, I needed to do something where I didn’t depend on specialized skills, right? Didn’t depend on coding or specialized knowledge or language skills. So this is what I came up with. And now I remember why I was talking about the honeymoon with the media. Two or three years after we launched or maybe even sooner than that. It got tons of buzz. People loved it, the idea anyways. And so for a time in my life I was constantly fielding requests from different countries and different cities and different states asking me if I would come, try to replicate what I was doing. And I haven’t counted for eight or nine years. But at some point it was 12 or 15 countries. France, Russia, Australia were like, can you come? And I was like, no, it’s on Saturday, I can’t come. But I was like, but I will tell you how to do it for better or worse. If you can’t find an idiotic guy who wants to take on three jobs himself and, because that’s how, that’s the reason the $6 price cap is there, right? Is presumably I’m doing a couple people’s jobs and have internalized as many expenses as possible. But look, I will sit down with anyone and tell them how I’ve done it and be as candid as possible. Anyways, for a while, for a couple of years there were not only night markets popping up left and right because everyone thought that was what made it popular. And then also all these events were trying to impose their own price caps on their own vendors. And all those price caps have since disappeared, right? There was a big thing for a couple of years and everyone was like, oh look at our price cap. And they’ve all let it go. And then I mean the night markets thing still go strong. I mean I think I would guesstimate that there’s since the Queens Night Market been maybe a thousand night markets that have started. Some of them are just fly by night, city says whatever. But my wife, my in-laws have a little shack in France on the coast, the Atlantic coast called Noirmoutier, famous for sea salt. And it was tiny, tiny, a couple thousand people maybe. And they have a night market now and my mother-in-law was like, look what you did. You started a night market in this tiny little seaside town. So anyways, but so basically the point, I think, was transparency. I’ve never turned down meetings and tell people how I did it. And I’m usually probably overly candid in terms of how bad it is. But there’s no secret sauce, and you just have to remain committed to XYZ. So I think, so this all goes back to, how do I envision five years from now? And I honestly don’t and can’t. And people offered to buy it, but I know they would change so much about it. One of them was a sports marketing company. And it would turn into, I don’t know, some sort of expensive corporate thing. And so it’s tricky. I’ve been very, I think, transparent about my struggles with, do I stay in? Do I get out? And I don’t know the answer to that. I’m still always looking for someone to say, I will take the reins from you. So much so, three years ago, I offered to sell it to the park, or actually I offered to give it to the parks department. So you go back to 2014, when I put out the first feelers and stuff about this. It was envisioned under the Unisphere, right? I still think that an iconic spot would bring so much together. It has a space for it, but that is bureaucrat central, right? The most iconic space in Queens is dead center of the Queens flagship park. All sorts of issues. But some of it was corporate, commercializing issues. They were fearful that I was commercializing the parks. So I was like, look, if that’s really your concern, I will sell the entire project to you for a dollar. I will teach you to run it for two years. You actually get to internalize many more costs than I do because you already have the existing stuff anyways. Crickets. Complete crickets. But I’m so, I just use as a case in point that I’m not so beholden to it. I’m happy for it to exist out side of me, right? I don’t think I’m the only one that can run it. I don’t think I have any specialized skills or knowledge about it. I would love to see it exist and I would love to not be the one doing it day to day, to be honest.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
It also does seem to me though, as you mentioned the other places, with the explosion of night markets, I think one of the reasons it’s so incredibly successful is because of the breakdown of New York. Right. I’ve always thought of New York as a collection of neighborhoods really. And you can be walking around and two blocks, everything changes. And so that spirit of New York is somewhat unique around the world. But I think that’s wild that you offered to sell it to them for a dollar and just crickets. But hang on, doesn’t New York realize all of the goodwill that you are building for Queens and the entire city? Right, that there should be a value to that. They’re just being politicians about it.
John Wang
Yeah, I mean, it’s probably, they’re only thinking in their administration. Right. So it’s tricky. And I still think it’s a good idea. And if they ever wanted to broach that topic, I would totally do it. I was like, look, I will spend two years teaching you how to do it. And then you could have the coolest thing. I was trying to think of cool things parks have done. Right. Just not a park connoisseur, but in Hot Springs, Arkansas, the parks has beer made from the hot springs water. Yeah, that’s kind of cool partnership. And there are a lot of things. Hopefully no one does this without cutting me in. But I had this idea. Friend of mine wanted to start a food company where they just use foraged goods. And I was like, you know, the parks department should get behind that and you could forage all your stuff and parks department can’t use certain fertilizers and whatever. You could almost call it organic. And I was like, and they, also crickets. I was like, that’s when I use this case in point with Hot Springs. I was like, look, they do it. They have these cool partnerships. Parks have these cool partnerships that if you weren’t so risk averse. And I heard it out like, yeah, whatever, you could, you know, it’s fine. But none of that.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
So if it comes to pass, right, that somebody either buys it or takes it over. Still New Orleans?
John Wang
No. So I have, I have a kid on the way in two to three weeks.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Congratulations.
John Wang
And one of the things, the one thing I will never live down is I promised myself and my wife, first myself before I ever met my wife, that I would never raise a kid in New York City. And then when I met her, of course we’ll never raise a kid in New York City. And now working on kid two is coming up and we’re still in New York City. And one thing I didn’t expect that has come out of the night market, outside the night market, again, didn’t think it was going to last more than a year, is how all of a sudden it’s like my professional life is very tied to New York City. Not just the night market, but now I sit on the board of NYC Tourism, which is the official marketing arm. I sit on a couple other boards, all volunteer, don’t make any money out of it. But all of a sudden, I don’t get much of a say about where New York City goes, but I’m very involved in a way I never thought I would be. And now all of a sudden I care even more about New York than I did before. And so now, shit, for the 11 years, I had a New York business, but all of a sudden, it’s put me in a place that’s forced me to care even more about it. Being on these, having these different roles that directly impact New York City, either from a tourist perspective or hospitality perspective. And so now I don’t know, I’d still, I still dream about my kids, soon to be plural, playing in a street with no cars, because that was my formative years. I always use, the last time you watched Wayne’s World.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Great movie.
John Wang
So there’s a scene near the beginning where they play hockey.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah, “game on, game off”
John Wang
And then one car stops and they stop for two seconds and they come back. That was my childhood. Not exactly like that. And I liked my childhood. I thought it was good. Skinned my knee enough times, broke enough bones, just about just the right amount. And New York, I was like, oh my God, the New Yorkers are weird. And they’re so eccentric and don’t have a street smart about them. And so I don’t know, hopefully my opinion will change over the course of my kids’ childhoods. But, so, yeah, I thought for sure I’d have long since left.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
But you know, New York gets into your blood. I think it does.
John Wang
No, it’s intoxicating in all sorts of ways, for sure. So now, whereas I was convinced I would never raise a family in New York City. Now I’m trying to figure out would I be okay spending six weeks away, six months away. I don’t know. But I love New York City. But it does make me feel like, again, I’ve never feared for New York City in my life in terms of a city or people or whatever. But I am, the one thing about the night market I always say is, we’ve grown into our relevance every year that goes by, right? The affordability becomes somehow keeps topping the charts in a weird way. But I’ve actually never, my nearly 20 years in New York now, haven’t ever felt it like I feel like it is now. And you probably have a much better perspective on that. But it feels like you can see the divides, the chasms opening up as you walk through New York City on a daily basis. In terms of affordability, the haves and have nots. And that’s kind of frightening to me. Outside of politics, outside of all that stuff, it feels like there is a growing gap between those who can be here and those who can’t. And that is all of a sudden scaring me in a way that I’d never felt that before.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah, it sucks. And you know, it’s so funny because you see what always happens, right? So Manhattan becomes unaffordable, and then all of a sudden Brooklyn becomes unaffordable. And then Queens and one day Staten Island. Yeah, Staten Island will be the last standing. Well, this has been absolutely fascinating, John. I look forward to coming. I’m actually really excited about coming.
John Wang
So excited to have you.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
I mentioned to you before we started to record, my wife is a street photographer of some note. And when I told her about it, she’s like, how fucking cool is that? And that both of us had not seen it. I feel I’m a bit embarrassed.
John Wang
No, no, it’s, in terms of I’m never fearful for how many people come to the night market because there’s probably legit 4 or 5 million New Yorkers who’ve still never heard of it, which is great. In terms of an audience, that’s enough for another decade. In terms of novel.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Well, we have an odd last question for all of our guests, and it is this. We’re going to wave a magic wand and we’re going to make you the emperor of the world. You can’t kill anyone. You can’t put anyone in a re-education camp, but what you can do is we’re going to hand you a magical microphone. And you could say two things into it. That everybody on the planet, whenever their next morning is, going to wake up. And the two things that you said they’re going to think were their ideas, and they’re going to go further. They’re going to say, you know what? Unlike all those other great ideas that I got in the shower when I first woke up, but I never acted on them, I’m actually going to act on these two ideas starting today.
John Wang
The first one I’d probably say is be nice. I don’t know if it’s because I’m kind of a Southerner at heart, but etiquette and manners we talked about earlier is super important to me. And I feel like it’s a dying thing, especially in New York City. And I’m not sure New York City ever had it, but it feels worse these days. And I think I mean that in all sorts of ways. I reluctantly have a car in New York City. And double parking is just a terrible thing. Anyway, I think one is be nice in every aspect of the day. Whether it’s driving or door holding or saying thank you or line cutting. I don’t know. It’s the second one. Huh? Maybe. Can that be both of mine?
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Well, you know, theoretically, we could take be kind and just have basic good manners, right? You can get very far in life. In fact, I went on a rant about people not having manners. Good manners can get you into so many rooms and situations, and it’s just, they’re really basic and, like the kids I was talking about in China, right, all the mainlanders who got really rich, right, send their kids there to learn manners. Because obviously they’re seeing that it’s probably going to get them a lot further. So be kind, be nice and have good manners. I’ll give you a third one, though, if we put those two together.
John Wang
Oh, my God. Now act for three now. Now, if everyone in the world, including the policymakers, woke up and thought, let’s make sure everyone has healthcare. I think that might be a good one. Right.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
There you go. Because you are incepting the entire population. That will include...
John Wang
Exactly.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
John, thank you so much. Fascinating. I love what you’re doing.
John Wang
Thank you very much.