Everything’s Better in a Dumpling
DEAL ROOM: Brooklyn Dumpling Shop: One Idea, Every Channel
In the Top of the Fold, I argued that a specific, abundant, unmistakably American idea travels. Here’s one wearing a dumpling wrapper (and in full disclosure, it’s a Branded portfolio company).
Brooklyn Dumpling Shop is a Branded portfolio company, and it’s a clean illustration of the thesis I keep coming back to: take one ownable, craveable product, then push it through every channel a modern food brand can reach.
The brand reimagined the dumpling as an American fusion vehicle with its mac ’n’ cheese, bacon cheeseburger, chicken parm, Korean BBQ ribeye offerings. It’s Asian-inspired and unapologetically American at once, which is precisely the lane the World Cup crowd is busy falling in love with.
The company is led by friend of Branded, Jeff Galletly, the Chairman & CEO and a former Restaurant Brands International operator who ran Tim Hortons’ U.S. business and helped scale its Asia-Pacific footprint. That’s the tell for where this is headed: a culinary idea that’s embraced a franchise-and-systems operator built to scale it.
And scale across surfaces is the story. Brooklyn Dumpling Shop runs shops across the U.S. and Canada, sells frozen dumplings in the retail aisle at the likes of Walmart and Costco, and has pushed into foodservice and venue concessions, including licensed spots at Yankee Stadium (with Legends Hospitality) and Madison Square Garden.
Four revenue surfaces, shops, CPG, foodservice, venues, off one product engine. That’s the omni-channel build I always want to see in a CPG-adjacent restaurant brand, b/c each channel ends up marketing the others.
Then there’s the cap table, which doubles as a distribution strategy. The brand is backed by Kevin O’Leary, who features the dumplings on QVC under his Chef Wonderful banner, alongside RSE Ventures’ Stephen Ross and Matt Higgins, the New York Yankees, and Patti LaBelle. In March it added Keith Lee, the food critic with 20-million-plus followers, in what the brand says is his first-ever restaurant investment.
I wrote in the Top of the Fold about earned media you can’t buy; this is a company that has assembled its investor roster to manufacture exactly that. The “Keith Lee Effect” is a distribution channel wearing a hoodie.
That’s the part I keep circling for operators and founders. A signature item that travels isn’t a menu line, it’s a brand engine you can run through retail, foodservice, venues and culture all at once. The dumpling is the wrapper. The build underneath is the point.
To learn more about Brooklyn Dumpling Shop and how to engage with this omni channel company, please contact me.
