Firelight Chats Ep055 | Oddest One Out w/Ronald Chan

In this final episode of the Firelight Chats 2023 Season, Ronald Chan brewed his way to the Spacelab to chat with Kane & Mocha by the fireside about his life as the oddest one out. Ron shares stories about Canada & his powerful cousin & former guest Angela Feng (Ep045), Club Super Sex & their lovely lunch buffets, studying abroad in Tokyo, classroom hierarchies & other cultural differences, contemplating working as a male host, having to return to Canada, entering management consulting at Deloitte, burning out & feeling empty, almost getting hit by an 18-wheeler, wishing the truck had hit him, and then getting a fateful spammy/scammy email about an unbelievable opportunity in Taiwan that would change the course of his life.

Ron then goes into deep detail about working for Rocket Internet, shifting from Zalora to jumping in as CEO of Foodpanda TW, starting off in a little corner of the Neihu office, building the team, the struggles & successes of scaling the business, getting poached by HappyFresh, what he thinks of various markets - business & otherwise - in southeast Asia, and his latest bubble tea venture. Ron shares stories about the why bubble tea, the building & the interior design, working with mixologists to craft the menu, the importance of sourcing, using quality botanical ingredients, sophisticated techniques & equipment, ice cream & secret menus, and the difficulties as well as opportunities of opening the US branches.

Ronald Chan is a startup founder & operator of some of SEA + Taiwan's largest tech companies, including serving as COO of HappyFresh & CEO/Co-Founder of Foodpanda Taiwan. Ron is a graduate of McGill University, University of British Columbia, and completed a yearlong study exchange program at KEIO University in Tokyo. He is currently working as the CEO & Co-Founder of Odd One Out, a specialty tea & ice cream company with a flagship store in Taipei and several locations throughout southern California.