Female Disruptors: Alice Cherng and Belinda Wei of Dear Bella Creamery On The Three Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Maintain a healthy margin and keep costs low. Tell your story. For the first few years of our business, we focused on highlighting our products and didn’t share much about us as the owners. Over time, we found that people wanted to know what made us unique, so we started sharing our stories and started creating ice cream flavors inspired by our stories. This has created a stronger brand loyalty than ever before.
As a part of our series about women who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Alice Cherng.
Alice Cherng and Belinda Wei are the Taiwanese American co-founders of Dear Bella Creamery, a premium all-natural plant-based creamery in Los Angeles. The best friends, business partners, and longtime vegans are holding the vegan ice cream industry to a new standard by committing to using only fresh and high-quality ingredients, void of artificial colors, sweeteners, preservatives, and hydrogenated oil throughout their expansive array of indulgent frozen treats. With plans for expansion and national shipping on the horizon, Alice and Belinda are female disrupters in the culinary world.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
We are two best friends that bonded over our mutual love for vegan ice cream. We opened Dear Bella in 2017 to create our dream ice cream shop, one full of creamy, incredible frozen treats that we remember from our childhoods, but could never find in other stores. Our ice creams are made with the most premium and natural ingredients like oat milk and unrefined cane sugar. We make all of our cookies, brownies, cakes, sauces, and waffle cones from scratch. We truly believe that we have the most remarkable plant-based ice cream on the planet.
Alice: At the age of 8, I immigrated from Taiwan to LA with my parents and brother. I chose a secure path by studying and working as an accountant, but after a few years of working, I felt unfulfilled. So in 2011, I decided to follow my passion and enter into the restaurant industry by working as a line cook at a vegan restaurant. That’s where I met Belinda. Both being Taiwanese and long-time vegans, our friendship forged over many vegan meals. We would spend most of our time talking about what we would add to the vegan world, and one day, we finally decided to just walk the talk. And Dear Bella was born.
Belinda: My passion for food started when I was a little girl because I saw how it would bring my family together when we would all go out together to get ice cream at our local ice cream shop. That was just the beginning of my journey with food and then proceeded to study at Le Cordon Bleu to become a classically trained chef. During my time working with different restaurants, I started to become fascinated with the plant based movement and decided to try it for health reasons. Reducing dairy and eventually removing it completely was life changing for me, but I had limited options when it came to ice cream, and I wanted to change that. That is how Dear Bella came to be! I hope you enjoy it as much as I do and make everlasting memories with us.
Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?
What makes our product stand out from the rest is that it’s all plant-based, gluten-free, all natural, and made from scratch. Not only do we have classic flavors, but we also create unique, one-of-a-kind flavors inspired by our cultures and upbringing,
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
The first year that we were open, we vended at Coachella, one of the largest music festivals in the country. This experience included a string of funny mistakes that we still laugh about to this day. Here is one of the more memorable funny moments:
We arrived early the first day to set up tents for our staff on the campground. It was particularly windy that day, so we anchored the tents into the ground. We left the campground to go set up our booth at the festival. When we got back 8 hours later, we could not find our tents anywhere. We were convinced that someone stole them, but later realized that they were blown away by the wind. We had to quickly scramble to buy tents and set them up before our staff arrived. We will never forget struggling to try to pitch 3 tents in the dark with no help and little time. We did make it work, so our staff had a place to sleep!
We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?
There have been numerous people that have helped us along our entrepreneurial journey. One of the most impactful supporters is Amelia, owner of Sweet Ritual, which is another vegan ice cream shop in Austin, TX. Since she ran her business 7 years prior to us opening, she was an invaluable resource for any issues that we encountered while opening our shop. She was always extremely generous with her time and knowledge. We owe a lot of our success to her. Over the years, we have also relied heavily on a Facebook group consisting of hundreds of ice cream shop owners. We’ve been able to get a lot of our questions answered from other members of that community.
In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’? Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?
Disruption is a positive thing when it creates opportunities and space for those that have been underserved or unseen. For example, opening an ice cream shop that does not use a single drop of dairy is disruptive. It disrupts the notion that ice cream is only enjoyable when it is made with dairy or that ice cream is not available to those that either cannot or chooses not to consume dairy.
Disruption is a not so positive thing when it decreases human interaction and connection. For example, although the availability and efficiency of delivery services have been helpful during the pandemic, it has also significantly disincentivized people from visiting brick and mortar stores. They are missing the full experience of visiting a store that includes seeing the variety of products, smelling the fresh food, and interacting with staff.
Can you share 3 of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.
- Maintain a healthy margin and keep costs low.
- Tell your story. For the first few years of our business, we focused on highlighting our products and didn’t share much about us as the owners. Over time, we found that people wanted to know what made us unique, so we started sharing our stories and started creating ice cream flavors inspired by our stories. This has created a stronger brand loyalty than ever before.
- Engage with your customers. We make an effort to respond to every review, DM, and email. It is important to us that our community knows that we listen and that we care.
We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?
Our ultimate goal is to be a national plant-based ice cream chain, so we are actively working on opening more stores.
In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges faced by ‘women disruptors’ that aren’t typically faced by their male counterparts?
In our opinion, the biggest challenge of being a ‘women disruptor’ is trying to build something meaningful, while raising a family. Both things take an enormous amount of time and focus. The challenge of balancing both is sometimes insurmountable, but necessary, in order to leave a legacy.
Do you have a book/podcast/talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us?
Alice — One of my favorite podcasts is How I Built This, a podcast about entrepreneurs and how they built their businesses. I’ve listened to hundreds of these entrepreneurial stories, and my biggest takeaway is to create something that helps people and be persistent. That mantra has helped me jump over many hurdles in my business.
Belinda — Good Food with Evan Kleiman is a podcast that I love getting lost in. She speaks on the overall essence of food culture and it is incredibly inspiring to hear the stories of how food connects us all in so many different ways.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
We would love to inspire a movement of which young girls and women are empowered to be great entrepreneurs or leaders. We would love to see them feel unstoppable to realize their own purposes and build their communities.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Associate yourself with likeminded, motivated people in the same industry, whether it’s a peer or a role model. Entrepreneurship is a nonstop obstacle course. Make sure you find some people to share their experiences with you and some that will even go through the course with you.
How can our readers follow you online?
Instagram @dearbellacreamery
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
Female Disruptors: Alice Cherng and Belinda Wei of Dear Bella Creamery On The Three Things You Need… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.