Mastering the High Art of Ramen

When Brandon Ting, founder and CEO of Kizuki Ramen and Izakaya, a growing international chain of ramen restaurants, first arrived at Bellevue College, he was placed into English Level 2 for non-English speakers. The subject had been his worst in Taiwan. “They felt sorry for me,” said Ting. “When I arrived, I couldn’t even spell, ‘student,’ but I really wanted to learn!”  

The English Language Institute at BC helped foster a love of learning in Ting he’d not experienced in the past. “The program made me enjoy learning and studying,” he said. “School wasn’t painful, but meaningful!” 

Through an incredible amount of determination and hard work, Ting graduated from Bellevue College with high grades and was admitted to the University of Washington Foster School of Business, one of the top-ranked business schools in the country. “Getting into the Foster School was very challenging, but BC prepared me very well–the required writing exam wasn’t as scary as I originally thought it would be because of all the help I received from the BC writing lab and their tutors.” 

Post graduation from UW, Ting secured a position with a local supermarket. With a bit more free time at his disposal, Ting began exploring the local food scene. A classmate from Bellevue College recommended that he travel up to Vancouver to try ramen. He did and fell in love with the food genre. Later another Bellevue College classmate Ting visited in Shanghai recommended that Brandon try a new restaurant chain: ramen.  

“I am a big fan of ramen and I have a high standard of what it should be, so I continued to drive to Vancouver to get my fix,” said Ting. “I wanted an authentic shop here and heard others saying the same thing.”   

This got his wheels turning and so Ting, along with some classmates from UW Foster, decided to explore the idea of a ramen startup in 2010. He spent all of his spare time studying restaurants with similar clientele, estimating sales, trying to discern costs, and evaluating service. He compiled over 200 restaurants in Excel spreadsheets.  

The business component came relatively easily; the difficult part was the high art of ramen. Complexly flavored, the perfect bowl of ramen combines clear broth with the right combination of noodles, meat, seafood, and vegetables. A Japanese cult favorite movie Tanpopo, describes how difficult it is to develop the aromatic stock which contains up to 50 ingredients and is simmered for hours. There are tens of thousands of ramen shops in Japan but they want to keep the secrets of ramen in Japan. 

Ting was determined to serve only authentic Japanese ramen so he traveled to Tokyo and contacted numerous ramen chains to inquire if they would be willing to partner with him. Only one chain replied. Next Ting had to work on the red tape to bring in the ingredients of the broth, some of which the Food and Drug Administration had never heard of. 

If that wasn’t enough to keep Ting up at nights, he thought long and hard about the debt he would have assumed to get his startup off the ground. He calculated that if his venture failed, it would take him fifteen years of work to repay the debt. “If I failed, people wouldn’t trust me to lend money again, so I continued to think of ways to better the restaurant experience for both the customer’s experience and my own security,” he said. “But I felt like the Seattle market was ready for this.”  

Ting and his partners opened their first restaurant in Bellevue in 2012, working 90 hour weeks to ensure that it was flawless. He slept five hours per night, too motivated and energized to sleep. The result? Long lines formed at the restaurant almost immediately. It was a winning formula.  

One year after opening their first restaurant, they opened the second. By 2014, there were four locations and by 2015, there were eight. Kizuki Ramen and Izakaya is now up to 13 locations in four U.S. states and locations in Taiwan and Australia–and more are in the works!  

Ting continues to insist on the full Japanese experience, flying in a designer from Japan to create the atmosphere of a Japanese ramen shop with open kitchen and caring customer service. Even with 700 employees, he has continued to support his alma mater Bellevue College by hiring current students as servers and alumni as managers. Just recently Kizuki Ramen and Izakaya made the exponential leap to the next level by hiring top management from Starbucks and Tesla for operations and company growth.  

“I believe our restaurant can serve many markets in the U.S.,” he said. “People email us from all over the country, asking us to open a location in their cities, and really our goal is to go nationwide. A good bowl of ramen is appreciated all over.”