Alumni Spotlight: Eric Ji Sun Wu (SFS’17), Founder and CEO of Sobo Foods

Interview by Genesis Ramirez (B’25)

Meet Eric Ji Sun Wu (SFS’17), Founder and CEO of Sobo Foods. Sobo Foods, based in San Francisco, makes unapologetically Asian American comfort food. Their high protein and 100% plant based frozen dumplings are revolutionizing the modern comfort food landscape. Learn more about Eric and his entrepreneurial journey below!

Was there any specific aspect of your time at Georgetown that influenced you to pursue entrepreneurship?

There are two anecdotes that come to mind when I think about how Georgetown has influenced my entrepreneurial career. The first was a class called “The Future of Food” that I had with Professor Mark Giordano, who was one of my professors in the STIA (Science, Technology, and International Affairs) program. This was one of my favorite courses that I ever took at Georgetown. It was the first time that I ever thought critically about food systems. We talked about water policy, land use management, and the impact of industrial animal agriculture (factory farming) on the health of people and the planet. This really opened my eyes to the world of food and food production. 

I grew up in a family that was really obsessed with food, where it is grown, and where it comes from, but I had never put it in the context of what it means for human health and the environment. I ended up writing my senior thesis on the future of food. I wrote about Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods—this was at a time where we had just started to see the rise of plant based meat, and all of the companies tackling industrial animal agriculture. That really fueled a life-long love for food and food sustainability. This paper I wrote was a direct through-line to starting my current company, Sobo Foods. 

On the other hand, Georgetown was also the origin of my first company, and why I began working in startups in the first place. As a senior at Georgetown, I started my first company, Gainful, another consumer packaged goods company. Gainful makes personalized sports nutrition products like protein powder, pre-workout, and hydration. At Georgetown, I was on the club soccer team. I had a lot of friends who were going to the gym and trying all sorts of crazy supplements. All of these supplements were super macho, made for the Arnold Schwarzeneggers of the world. I walked over to the GNC on Wisconsin Ave, and there were floor to ceiling tubs of supplements with names like “Bucked Up” and “Total War”, which I had no interest in putting in my body. So, me and a good friend of mine from high school decided to create a supplement brand that was a little more down-to-earth, a little more gender neutral, and personalized to the individual's needs. That ended up becoming Gainful, and we raised over $20 million dollars from venture capitalists and celebrity athletes. The business is now being run by my co-founder. So, Georgetown inspired me to start my entrepreneurial journey, and then years down the line inspired me to change my entrepreneurial journey to something more closely related to what I studied as an undergrad.

What inspired you to create Sobo Foods, and how does your personal background connect to the company’s mission?

As mentioned earlier, I had this deep academic passion for food sustainability, food systems, and food justice. On a personal level, I am also just obsessed with food. I loved watching silly chef YouTube videos from all around the world. One of my favorite shows was Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown. I really felt like you could tell interesting, human stories about people and places through food. Comfort food is all about transporting you to a place of nostalgia. Your sensory experience makes you feel care and love, and connection with a place and its people. 

One of the strongest impetuses for me in starting Sobo was going down the frozen aisle at the grocery store and seeing all of these amazing brands doing great things, but noticing that they were in categories that weren’t my comfort food. There is so much amazing innovation; everyday there is a new yogurt, pizza, sausage, or burger. These are all categories that deserve to be made healthier for people and better for the planet. 

However, the section of the grocery store that I always gravitated to, the Asian aisle, was pretty devoid of all of this innovation. People, I think, had this idea that Asian American food had to be low quality, cheap, and chock-full of sugar and sodium. Additionally, I felt like a lot of these brands relied on the crutch of cheap factory farmed meat. Based on what I learned at Georgetown, and based on what I saw in my own home where we cooked delicious and easy Asian American meals with whole ingredients and recipes that were plant based before being plant based was cool, I just felt like there was room for a brand to exist that could give people this deep Asian American nostalgia that they were craving, without asking them to compromise on things like health. We are the first and only frozen dumpling that is packed with protein, packed with veggies and fiber, and made 100% vegan. This is really my authentic Asian American story, whereas I think a lot of brands are either playing on tone-deaf tropes about Asian Americans like packaging with pandas and fake Chinese lettering. Or on the other hand, they lean into an authenticity that isn't exactly my lived experience. I wanted to create recipes that are deeply nostalgic for Asian American kids. I grew up in Southern California, so this is what I know.

How do you balance maintaining authentic flavors, while also addressing the need for modern and inclusive alternatives?

At Sobo, we have no interest in being your mother’s or grandmother’s dumpling. My mom doesn’t shop at these premium, all natural grocery stores that Sobo is currently distributed in. Everything that we do at Sobo is inspired by where I first experienced these flavors, which was almost always at my mom’s table. Sobo is inspired by my experience with a single mother who worked all day, but still put amazing, delicious, healthy food on the table for me. She used farm-to-table, grown in her backyard, organic ingredients before any of these buzzwords ever existed. She was just a mom who knew how to cook, loved her son, and wanted to make food that she felt was healthy and nourishing. However, as I said, this isn’t my mom’s dumpling.

While these flavors are inspired by nostalgia and my childhood, they are not direct family recipes. Instead, they are an homage to my family’s story. I think this is the interesting distinction between what Sobo is doing and what a lot of other companies are doing. For us, comfort food is an interpretation of a food memory, as opposed to a directly “authentic” recipe from someone else’s kitchen

What is the most fulfilling or exciting part of your job? What is the hardest part of your job?

Working in food is hard in general. If you want to make a lot of money and not work very hard, I would not recommend going into food. You have to wake up everyday and really love what you do, because if you do it for the money, you are in the wrong line of business. Particularly when it comes to frozen food. Just by the laws of nature, if you leave it out for thirty minutes, on a truck or a grocery store, it will melt. These things just add complexity to the supply chain. It really is a labor of love. 

Now, things that I love about this business. I’m speaking out of both sides of my mouth here, but I love the food business. It is easily understandable, so when I tell people that I have a frozen dumpling company, their eyes light up. It is fun to hear someone start a company that is so approachable and understandable. Immediately, they want to try the product. You probably don’t get the same experience when starting some B2B SaaS tech company. So, that’s really a blessing for me. 

Another thing that I find really heartening and really more gratifying than I would’ve expected is being able to share my family stories and the flavors of my heritage. As a brand, Sobo really is the direct outgrowth of the things that I am passionate about and my value system. It shows up in the sourcing, ingredients, branding, packaging, marketing, and partners that we choose to work with. I have really found a renewed sense of purpose through Sobo. This has been the most gratifying part, and allows us to have a community of founders, entrepreneurs, customers, investors, and retail partners that resonate so deeply with a company that is essentially a love letter to my childhood.

How does Georgetown continue to support you as an alum?

When I was at Georgetown as an undergrad, I had a lot of complaints about how the entrepreneurship ecosystem wasn’t as robust as a lot of the schools that my friends went to. Being from California, I had friends that went to UCLA, USC, Berkeley, and Stanford. These schools that have strong entrepreneurship focuses, just by virtue of the fact that they are in these entrepreneurial hubs in the country. So, I felt like entrepreneurship was a bit of a forgotten point compared to some of the industries that Georgetown students work in.

However, as the years since 2017 have come and gone, I am realizing that the entrepreneurs that Georgetown breeds are really special and specific. I talk to Georgetown entrepreneurs on a weekly basis. Many of these entrepreneurs ended up in food, interestingly enough. I think this is because Georgetown is a place where you explore the nexus of social justice, economics, business, culture, anthropology, government, and science. Oftentimes, for entrepreneurs that care about all of those things, a central focus ends up being food. I can talk about the founders of sweetgreen and the founders of Phil’s Finest being from Georgetown. I am friends with Caroline Cotto (NHS’14) from Renewal Mill. Luke Holden (B’07) from Luke’s Lobster is a Georgetown grad. Every so often, a Georgetown grad will come up on my radar and I realize that they are doing something interesting in food. So, Georgetown might not breed the sheer number of venture backed and entrepreneurial businesses that other schools might. But, what we lack in breadth, we make up for in depth. Entrepreneurs that come from Georgetown are genuinely the type of people who really want to make a change in the world, and not just for a financial bottom line. 

Finally, what is one piece of advice you would give to any Georgetown student who might be interested in entrepreneurship?

Choose something that you love to do. Don’t choose something that you think is the most attractive money making opportunity. If you really want to start a business, you should start one that you understand and relate to. Solve a problem that you personally have experienced, or tell a story to consumers that you have actually lived. That, I think, is what the most powerful and enduring companies are able to do. These companies have founders that wake up every single day and do the work because they love it, and can't imagine doing anything else. If you want to get into entrepreneurship just to make the Forbes list or make a boatload of money, I can tell you now that you are better off in a different line of work. What matters to customers, and is most important for the longevity of your business, is simply caring deeply about bringing something to the world that you think deserves to exist.

Closing Notes

You can find and follow us @sobofoods on Instagram and TikTok, where we post a lot of fun dumpling content. You can also go to our website, sobofoods.com, and hit our store locator to find the location closest to you where you can get Sobo dumplings. Stay tuned because we will be launching a lot of new retailers this summer, as well as restaurants!