Juggling Around the Kitchen with the Noodle Hut Gals

What do you do for lunch every week? The options are: purchase a much too expensive meal on campus, pack a lunch just to have it go soggy, or make the trek back home for something that is probably not much more than just OK. Well, a new business on campus might have just solved the problem, Noodle Hut Gals!

Noodle Hut Gals is a small business that makes delicious Asian noodles for Queen’s students. We sat down with the co-founders of the Noodle Hut Gals, Kristin and Lorelei, over a hot bowl of their heavenly noodles to learn more about the inspiration behind it all. Oh, and let us tell you, they sure prepare noodles that make you drool!

P.S. They’re serving this Friday, October 19th!

Q: Can you tell us more about yourselves as the Noodle Hut Gals?

Kristin: Lorelei has the biggest passion for noodles. When she was in Singapore, she had noodles pretty much every single day, usually more than once a day! She ended up creating a cute video of all the noods she had (unfortunately this is top secret).

For me, I have always loved cooking. Specifically, I had a love for Italian pastas and a couple of great Asian noodle dishes I loved to make. Since it was just the two of us living together, she said to me, “You know, why don’t we sell noodles because people love them, and we would probably make bomb-ass friends, right?” So, that’s where we started, and we just kept developing the idea over the summer. When we got back to school in September, we just made it happen.

Lorelei: In Singapore, there would be these big food courts and noodle dishes that would be $3.00, so I would keep eating them and I thought, “Why don’t we just bring this to Canada!” Obviously, the costs are more expensive with the ingredients here, so we couldn't possibly offer it for $3.00.

Q: So, let’s cut to the chase - how much do you charge?

Lorelei: $5.00 for noodles and vegetables, and add your protein for only $2.00 more! This covers all our costs, but it really depends on how we value our labour. We’ve joked about hiring frosh reps to do grocery runs and wash the dishes, because it can be quite hectic.

Kristin: Each time you come, you get your picture taken and we keep a tally. When you reach 8, you get a prize.

Leaderboard

Q: How many times a week do the Noodle Hut Gals host guests? How do you guys manage to balance this with schoolwork?

Kristin: We run it one day a week. It usually rotates between Wednesday and Friday depending on if one of us is away and we don’t want to do it ourselves, or if we have an exam or something. Having no class on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday are a great advantage for this. Overall, I think the total workload for running Noodle Hut Gals is 3 hours a week. We have to plan what noodle dish we are going to make and find the time to go grocery shopping, and work around our class schedule and extracurricular activities. It’s all time management and that’s why we joked about hiring a frosh rep.

Q: What are the most effective ways you get the word out about the Noodle Hut Gals?

Lorelei: I think it’s a mixture of the Instagram account and Facebook group. Both are private because we put our address on it and we don’t want to advertise it to everyone. Obviously, it’s really nice when we have a lot of people coming but we don’t want the whole campus all at once. Only so many people can fit in this room.

Kristin: Mostly word of mouth. We tell people to come, and other people talk with their friends, and then those people bring their friends. Houses will just come all together. Yesterday we had 3 houses come at the same time.

When we first started, we did a Friday at lunch and there were about 10 customers; they were all our friends. The next week, we had 35 people and Lorelei lit a pot on fire because it was so hectic.

Q: How have you managed the planning process so far? What are your steps moving forward if you do grow as a company?

Lorelei: Right now, we poll and ask how many people are coming in the Facebook group. This way we have an estimate of how ingredients much to buy. So far, it never has gone above 30-35 people. As we continue to do it week by week – we just finished our 6th week – we start learning more things and trying to improve our operations.

Kristin: We are planning to bring in other types of noodles. So far we just do Asian but if we bring in Italian noodles we might bring in an Italian family feature where we package the noodles and you can bring it home.

Kristin: We run a business where people can come and bring their own containers and they can take the noodles to go. This helps alleviate the traffic and will ensure that we can serve more customers in a sitting in the future

Noodle Hut Gals

Q: What skills have you learned from running the Noodle Hut Gals?

Lorelei: I cook regularly but this is more about cooking for a larger quantity and having to be more efficient. If people are coming, we are literally dancing around each other to make the noodles. Now, when I go to restaurants, I think about the operations behind each facility and look at the process flow.

Kristin: I’ve learned a lot of marketing skills in order to make people more aware of the business. A lot of people say they will come but there’s a difference between saying they’re interested and actually coming.

Lorelei: Also, stress management is a huge skill. When there’s a lot of people in the house, it gets hot and stressful and we have to find a way to remain calm while operating.

Q: favourite aspect of running Noodle Hut Gals?

Kristin: I think my favourite part is the community aspect. As previously mentioned, running Noodle Hut Gals creates a community in my home. I get to meet a lot of new people that I wouldn't have otherwise met.

Lorelei: I agree, and also having autonomy over how things are run. For example, in an internship, you don’t really do a lot of value-added tasks or do things on your own but this is our baby.

Q: Any advice for people who want to start a business?

Kristin: Do it, you have nothing to lose. Worst case no one shows up and you shut down. But a learning experience will be resultant.

Lorelei: Haters are gonna hate. The most important part is to understand which comments are hateful and which are ones you can learn from and know how you can improve moving forward.

Q: Is there anything else you want our readers to know about the Noodle Hut Gals?

Both: Come check us out!

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