Women Entrepreneurs Share Their Journeys at Wright State Panel

On Thursday, March 13, Wright State University hosted a panel featuring four female business owners in the food and business industry. Organized by the Raj Soin College of Business, the Women’s Center, and the Asian and Native American Center—with support from the Entrepreneurship Club and ReyRey Café—the event provided a platform for these entrepreneurs to share their unique experiences, challenges, and successes.

Nicole Cornett: Billie Gold Bubble Tea

Nicole Cornett is the owner of the food truck Billie Gold Bubble Tea, and she is passionate about her business and her entrepreneurial lifestyle. She shared a lot about her journey, starting with how she first opened her business.

"We started as a food truck, like six years ago. We also now have a brick-and-mortar in the Belmont area. And how I got started was I worked in a windowless room for like, five years, and I was like, I'm not gonna do this anymore. I'm gonna get a new life, and I'm gonna spend my time outside. And I thought of a food truck, and was off to the races," Cornett said. 

Being passionate and wanting her business badly enough to see it to fruition has also led Cornett to have a positive mindset about things as she navigates life and manages Billie Gold Bubble Tea.

"I always say one foot in front of the other, you know, you just have to do it. And yeah, you're gonna doubt yourself," Cornett said. "Would you rather find out the hard way and just wish that you had done it instead of just doing it?"

While she expressed that she has faced some challenges due to being a woman in a male-dominated field, she also expressed some of its upsides.

"Okay, I was just gonna say the one thing that I really love being about a woman in a male-dominated industry. And I didn't even come to this on my own, but somebody else said it. They just said, don't forget all the little girls that are looking up to you, and I love that," Cornett said.

Cornett shared that it is because of this, as well as the customers' love of her products, that keeps her going in the industry.

"What really makes it worthwhile is, for sure, the people that come to the food truck just to see how excited people are, like, 'I love bubble tea' and I'm like, 'me too, how do you think I ended up with this bus?' That is definitely what keeps me going," Cornett said.

Billie Gold Bubble Tea's brick-and-mortar location is located at 732 Watervliet Ave, Dayton, OH, and the food truck can be found using social media to follow their schedule.

Catherine Roberts: Lumpia Queen

Lumpia Queen is a food company that owns multiple food trucks and currently has two physical locations. It is owned by Catherine Roberts, who has had a passion for making and sharing the delicious food that is lumpia. She shared how her business began, and her goals for the future.

"I started out with catering one item on the menu, which was lumpia. Basically, I would take plates of lumpia to a potluck, or my husband's job on base. But from there, people start wanting more of this. You know, of the spring rolls, which lumpia is a Filipino spring roll, by the way, a lot of people still don't know, so I've been trying to introduce it to the masses, and hopefully, Lumpia Queen [will] become a household name," Roberts said.

"My first couple of events I did, I partnered with a brewery because they don't have a restaurant. You know, of course, they drink and they need some food there. So we parked outside the building," Roberts said, then went on to describe how one night, there was a big rainstorm, but a line of people still waited outside to try her lumpia.

She went on to express the way that she determined what her business would be and how it would look. Roberts advised students to do the same when they are looking to create their own businesses.

"Think about what you're really good at, what you're passionate about, and just start something. I'm sure a lot of you guys know you have a skill set, a God-given gift that's like, okay, think at least two or three things, and then just choose one and commit to it, and just commit to your commitment," Roberts said.

"When I started Lumpia Queen, it pretty much took a life of its own, just like when you build it, they'll come [and] it's just gonna take a life of its own. But just think of the three things that you think you're good at and you just started, and then you'll never know where it's going to take you."

Lumpia Queen has been very successful, with a few months dedicated to food truck sales having matched Roberts' husband's income, which had been a benchmark the couple had set to determine how well the company was doing. However, before she was able to buy her first food truck, Roberts had minimal funding for her business but shared that she was determined to get there, anyway.

"I think when you're thinking about the money, you're kind of holding yourself back. Just do it, get it done. Like, it took me about a year to finally get a food truck. So little by little, I would sell from my house, you know, it just didn't save up the money. And of course, the money you make will go towards the supplies. So you don't, you're not gonna probably make that much in the beginning, and it's gonna be different for everybody," Roberts said.

While she might not have made much in the beginning, things picked up more quickly once Lumpia Queen was able to hit the road, and Roberts has been creating new goals for growth each year.

"You want to set a goal year after year, like, I we made this much first year, or we have this one business. You want to look at it as a growth every year. Like, what are we going to do? You don't want to do the same thing the year prior, then you'll be stagnant," Roberts said.

So far, Lumpia Queen has done a great job of expanding. Lumpia Queen has a brick-and-mortar location at 1100 W Third St, Dayton, OH, as well as a location on Wright Patterson Air Force Base. Their food truck schedule can also be found online through social media.

Mary Crumley-Effinger: Texas Roadhouse

Texas Roadhouse is a large corporation that allows people to work up into bigger positions with time, as well as individuals to own certain restaurants. Mary Crumley-Effinger rose from the bottom to the very top of this company and sat on the panel to share her experience as a restaurant owner.

"My journey started there when I was 17 in high school. It was my first job at the hostess stand, and I moved my way up through the business during high school and during my time in college. And in college, I was a psychology major, and I was like waiting for my real job, and the longer I worked at Texas Roadhouse, the more I realized that this could be my real job and my career," Crumley-Effinger said.

"And I moved up from serving to bartending, then I became an hourly manager, and then a salary manager and worked all the different positions. And then two years ago, I bought in as the Richmond, Indiana location Managing Partner, and so doing all the fun and exciting things that owning a restaurant has to offer." 

Crumley-Effinger had to do a lot of hard work to get her business off the ground, as any entrepreneur does. When asked about how she funded opening it, she acknowledged that having a corporation behind her was helpful.

"When I was at first a host, I was like, this is just my job, but then knowing that we are there for them and that I'm there for them, and I care about them, and a critical role of mine is to know everybody's first and last name, which doesn't sound like that much, but there are 175 of them," Crumley-Effinger said.

"The self-doubt never leaves you, I would say, but just kind of deciding, like I have to make this decision in this move, and if I fail, at least I tried, because otherwise, I'll always want to know what happened," Crumley-Effinger said.

She also shared how she navigates being in a male-dominated field. 

"For me, like we said before, it's a male-dominated field, so making sure you find those allies and the people to look up to whether they're in your business or a business like yours. It doesn't necessarily have to be the same restaurant business. Someone that you can ask to support you in your endeavors," Crumley-Effinger said. 

"In my region, there's 52 stores, and seven of them are women[-owned], and so just networking and reaching out to those two. So even though, if there's only seven of us, we're seven strong and knowing that they're supporting you."

Crumley-Effinger owns the Texas Roadhouse location at 3799 National Road East Richmond, IN, and prides herself on caring for her staff.

Angie Hsu: MAZU

MAZU is a global street food restaurant located in Yellow Springs, owned and operated by Angie Hsu and her staff. Hsu shared that she began her cooking journey when she and her partner lived in Tel Aviv, Israel and that she could not find any good Asian food. She began to make her own, then started cooking for those around her more and dreaming of opening a restaurant. Eventually, they moved back to the United States, and she set aside her dream for a little while.

"I worked in nonprofits in Columbus and had no intention of opening a restaurant. I also had this kind of thought in my head that, like I have young kids, I have babies, now is not the time to open a restaurant, but somebody we knew in Yellow Springs was closing her restaurant. She didn't know that I had had this history. She actually just knew me and my [spouse as] young people who are energetic. So she sent us a text and said, 'Do you want to do you want to buy my restaurant?' We literally laughed, and we're like, 'That's so silly.' And then I couldn't sleep that night, or for like, a week," Hsu said.

Needless to say, Hsu ended up accepting the offer, and she and her two business partners began to create plans for their restaurant, MAZU.

"Starting it was really hard. Like, the imposter syndrome was very intense for me, and I also had very high expectations of what I what I envisioned, and had, like, zero proof that I could manifest it. And I think just to, like, keep on going with that example, since we've opened, we've been open two years. I think the food speaks for itself," Hsu said.

Part of what made starting the restaurant difficult, according to Hsu, was considering the financial components of opening a business.

"For us, there was always this mindset of, how do we make our opening costs before we're making any money? Before the money starts coming in, all we're doing is putting money out. How do you take that, take down that number as much as possible, and then we built our schedule and our kitchen like just the entire structure. So that for the first year, the three of us were working as many shifts as possible," Hsu said.

Working as many shifts as possible helped them avoid having to pay staff before they were able to afford it. In the early days and now that MAZU has a staff behind it, things can never operate perfectly all of the time, however, Hsu keeps a positive attitude about this.

"Even if there's one day where everything goes wrong and it's a mess and you run out of food and people are [angry], you get a bad review, it's like, the next day you get to do it again. And not all careers, you know, allow that opportunity, right?" Hsu said.

Hsu had previously worked in the food industry and found the kitchen spaces to be overly aggressive. When deciding to open MAZU, she knew that she did not want to create an uncomfortable space like that.

"I experienced sexism of like, it's all about how strong you are and how tough you are, and how much you yell, and I don't want to work in that environment. So that's just not the environment we have that are at our workplace. And a lot of women will be like, 'wow, this is new to me, that I don't have to match them in that culture, in that energy,'" Hsu said.

Hsu shared that the welcoming space she is fostering at MAZU does not only extend to staff, but to the general public as well.

"We really wanted to be like a neighborhood community space, so for events, for activism, for art [and] for discussion, and that means making it a safe space for everyone. So, especially in our current political climate, you know what?" Hsu went on to describe a group of queer teenagers who were some of MAZU's first regulars.

They shared that they loved the restaurant for its food and the fact that the walls held posters supporting their identities.

"Yeah, we're selling food like, that's the basics. The goal is to make people happy with what they eat. But those groups, that group of kids, they were talking about how it was so meaningful to them to have a space where they felt safe and they could be themselves," Hsu said.

MAZU is located at 229 Xenia Ave, Yellow Springs, OH, which is only a twenty-minute drive from WSU's campus.

Overall takeaways

From this panel and everyday life, it is clear that women can do anything men can do, including own and operate a successful business. Their stories and anecdotes were inspiring to all the people in the audience hoping to start a business one day, especially women. To sweeten the pot, they all brought free food samples and coupons for future customers.

All four of these entrepreneurs are passionate about their work and love what they do, which is clear from the way they talk about their businesses and companies. Students must support businesses whose values align with their own, especially small or up-and-coming local businesses. Where people spend their money matters, and supporting women-owned companies is also important, especially during Women's History Month.

The restaurants and food trucks all have allergy-inclusive options, meaning there is almost no reason why students cannot find at least one business on this list to visit and try.