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Like many others who stayed home during the Covid-19 pandemic, Eyan Chan picked up a new hobby: making sauces that reminded her of home.
“I was missing home-cooked food: Shanghai food, Hong Kong food, Taiwanese food ... That’s when I started making my sauces,” said Chan, who is 34 and lives in Amsterdam, a city in the Netherlands.
“I was making my mum’s recipes. She used to make so many chilli oils and XO sauces; I was making all that at home.”
She documented her sauce-making journey on Instagram, quickly attracting attention from people interested in purchasing her creations.
“People would line up in front of my house with their face mask on, knocking on the door, asking, ‘Can I buy a jar?’ And that’s how the business started. It was really casual,” she recalled.
After the lockdowns, the person who ran the Chinese supermarket where she bought her ingredients approached her.
“The owner came up to me [asking] ‘What are you doing? Why are you always coming back every week to buy so much chilli?’ I started telling him my story, and he said, ‘Can I start selling it here?’ That’s the first store I got into.”
Over the next year, other small supermarkets and delis began carrying her products. Chan decided to turn her hobby into a full-fledged business, naming it Chilli Chan’s. Nearly four years later, her crispy chilli oil and dried knife-cut noodles are available in more than 600 stores across Europe.
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Calculated risk
Chan was born in Hong Kong and moved to Australia when she was five. Each year, her family rotated between celebrating Lunar New Year in Hong Kong, where her father is from, and Taiwan, where her mother is from. After attending university in Sydney, she briefly lived in the US before moving to Shanghai, which deepened her love for Chinese cuisine.
She met her husband in Shanghai, and the couple moved to his native Germany for three years before relocating to the Netherlands just before the pandemic began. She worked in project leadership and marketing roles at Booking.com and Adidas before quitting the corporate world to run Chilli Chan’s full-time in 2024.
“I was really scaling it slowly ... I think I got into a chain with 30 stores before I quit my job,” she said. “It was a calculated risk.”
Chan appreciates the time she spent in corporate jobs before starting her business.
“It really taught me how to do this business – marketing, sales, social media ... Without these skills, I wouldn’t be where I am,” Chan said.
February marked a significant milestone for Chan when she struck a deal with Albert Heijn, the largest supermarket chain in the Netherlands, to launch Chilli Chan’s in its stores.
Not all smooth sailing
Despite her recent success, Chan described a common challenge: the lengthy process of educating consumers. In places like the Netherlands, “everyone thinks Asian is just one thing,” she said, adding that you might hear someone say, “I’m going to go eat Asian food.”
“I’m like: there’s so many different types. What type are you talking about?” she said. “I wouldn’t say I’m going to eat European food.”
Chan educates people about her culture through dumpling-making workshops. “I actually went to Taiwan to learn how to make soup dumplings. Then, I practised with friends at home,” she explained.
While she was nervous about holding her first workshop, not only did all 10 spots sell out quickly, but there was also a waiting list. Now, she holds weekly workshops for up to 20 people.
Chan reminded budding entrepreneurs about the importance of focus.
“You have to be a really strong character to be able to stay put,” she said. “There’s a lot of times that I’m like, oh my God, why am I doing this? Should I quit? Should I go back to corporate? But you [need] this fire in you to keep going.”
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