A handmade small-batch food supplier local to Cincinnati is making its way to shelves in the Dayton region. The products being offered locally are part of the brand’s ongoing growth.
Yee Mama, a Cincinnati-based food producer that specializes in wontons and signature sauces, has recently expanded to offering their products at Dorothy Lane Market. As a customer and fan of Dorothy Lane Market, Yee Mama Owner Chiuyee “Dora” Cheng knew she wanted to bring her products to the marketplace because of her respect for how they build and grow their business locally by supporting small, local businesses and providing jobs for the community.
“You can tell they are thoughtful about who they work with and care deeply about the quality of their products, so seeing Yee Mama products on their shelves is really special for me,” Cheng said.
Yee Mama currently has eight wonton flavors and three signature sauces. Dorothy Lane will sell three of Yee Mama’s best-selling wonton flavors and the entire line of sauces. Wonton flavors include Chicken and Basil wontons, Shrimp and Pork wontons and Chicken and Shiitake wontons, and the three signature sauces offered are Homestyle Chili Oil, Garlic Sweet Soy and Scallion Sweet Soy. This is Cheng's first venture in offering her products in the Miami Valley, with plans to expand those offerings across the Dayton region.
The business was started as a direct-to-consumer online business, and has since expanded to wholesale with the sale of products in specialty grocery stores. When Cheng first started selling direct-to-consumer, each dozen of wontons came with a small container of chili oil or garlic/scallion sweet soy. Customers loved the hand-crafted sauces so much that constant requests were coming in to purchase the sauces and chili oil in large quantities. Since this, Yee Mama has acquired a cannery license to produce and bottle their sauces and chili oil for sale.
For Cheng, Yee Mama started as a passion project. Cheng grew up in Hong Kong and moved to the U.S. when she was 17, and cooking was always a passion of hers. With many of the dumplings on the market being machine made, she found they lacked the same taste as hand-made dumplings. She knew she could turn her passion into a business because of the positive reception her homemade dumplings had received from anyone who tried them, and had planned on doing pop-ups in collaboration with bars and restaurants – until the pandemic hit.
Still determined to launch her product, Cheng decided to launch a frozen dumpling shop concept. She created the online shop, produced her products in an incubator kitchen, and offered curbside pickup and delivery. Yee Mama took off immediately, with products constantly being sold out in the first six months of operation.
“I knew right then I can turn this into something bigger,” Cheng said.
The Pork and Shrimp wonton is a traditional Cantonese recipe, which Cheng studied many versions of and traveled back to Hong Kong to do research and development. After many rounds of recipe testing, she came up with the current version. It was important for her to get the flavor right because of how iconic it is to Hong Kong.
For the other flavors, she uses ingredients that are commonly used in Cantonese home cooking and other Asian cuisines, such as shiitake, wood ear mushroom, basil and baby bok choy.
The authentic wonton flavors and signature sauces are just one way Yee Mama is unique; with the product hand-crafted in small batches and simple ingredients working to create a well-balanced, layered flavor, Cheng feels it is important that the ingredients are treated with care to provide a consistent, high quality product. All team members are trained to wrap wontons, and it can take an average of three months for an individual to perfect their wonton-making skill.
Cheng and her team are currently working on getting Yee Mama products on shelves in more specialty grocery stores in Ohio and the Tri-State area, and there are plans to ship Yee Mama products direct-to-consumer nation-wide. Yee Mama currently has three employees and makes all their products in the Findlay Kitchen located at 1719 Elm St. in Cincinnati.
