 Asian restaurants make up a way higher percentage in America given the Asian population. So I guess the question is, in the future, will just every restaurant be kind of Asian? Yeah, this study just came out. It says 12% of all restaurants in America are of Asian cuisine. Andrew, Asians only make up 6.6% of people in America. So that means that we're heavily represented from a cuisine perspective, but probably also working in that industry. Yeah, guys, we have some startling numbers we're going to share with you. Certain Asian groups are super, super overrepresented in the restaurant owning field, and then there's also ones that are underrepresented. We're going to talk about that. We're going to break down each of the main Asian cuisines, too, and where we see it going in the future. So please hit that like button. Check out other episodes of the Hot Pop Boys as we are bringing you the stats today. Yeah. I mean, Asians are overrepresented in restaurants, Andrew, but we know there are still some fields that Asians are underrepresented in whether that's media, music, entertainment, sports, company leadership, politics, the fine arts, creative fields, anything related to coolness in American youth culture. Right? We're probably under 7% in those fields. I'm not saying we're not making headway though. We're increasing, but Andrew, in medicine, Asians make up 21% of all medical professionals. That's a 3X. Shout out. Silicon Valley, Andrew. 57% of all Silicon Valley workers are Asian. That's an 8X overrepresentation. So are we nerds or what? Nail salons, hair shops, massage, esthetician. That's personal care, Andrew. 11% of the American industry. That's a 1.6X. And of course, food, 12% of all restaurants, almost a 2X. Guys, listen, Asians and Latinos, both alike, have amazing food, and it's actually very diverse. Latino is not just Mexican food, by the way, even though Mexican food is amazing. But I'm just saying, guys, these are two groups of people who have great cuisine that everybody likes and they like to work. So of course, there's going to be tons of restaurants. And it sort of begs the question, Andrew. If LA and New York are already like 30% to 40% combined between Latino restaurants and Asian restaurants, if the Latino population increases and the Asian population increases in America, will every restaurant in America just be Asian or Latino? All right, let's bust out some stats real quick, guys. 71% of all Asian restaurants in the US serve either Chinese or Japanese or Thai food, okay? So Chinese food is the most prevalent, obviously, with the most amount of restaurants, to no surprise, 39%. But coming in a close second, 28% by Japanese. And let me tell you this, guys, Japanese people only make up 7% of the American pop, of the Asian population of America. Right, so that means a lot of people own Japanese restaurants, Andrew. They might not be Japanese. Yeah, exactly. And I've actually been to a couple Burmese or Thai-owned sushi spots in like San Antonio, Texas. A couple other notable ones. Thai restaurants make up 11% of the Asian restaurants. You might be like, oh, that's not that many. I guess there's not that many Thai people. But actually, Thai people only make a 1% of the Asian population. Well, that means that Thai food is 10x represented. Obviously, some of the owners of Thai restaurants might be Lao people as well. So we're gonna get into every cuisine, break it down real quick, give you some stats and talk about where we see it going in the future. But today's sponsor, Andrew, is our brand new chili oil, Smala. Yes, this is our actual-owned chili oil we've been working on for over a year, guys. If you guys want to hear more, follow Smala Sauce and also fill out this Google form at this link down below so that you guys can sign up and get updates because it is about to drop very soon towards the end of June. So I'm very excited about it. It's very good. Get Smala and put it on everything. It's really good. Like I said, man, there's nothing like it on the market. Anyway, back to the video, Andrew. Chinese people come in at 24% of the Asian American population, but they make up 39% of the restaurants. That's a 1.625x. So, yeah, this makes sense because I guess Chinese food, you can make it very cheap, which means you can open up a lot of them and you can kind of open up a restaurant with just one walk if you want. I mean, it's not surprising because everybody you can almost ever have talked to in your entire life that lives nearby a city has their favorite-owned Chinese restaurant. Now, it might be serving orange chicken. It might be just serving beef and broccoli, but they have their favorites. You know what I'm saying? So, of course, obviously, there's a whole bunch of Chinatown. So, each Chinatown has anywhere from probably 20 to 100, 200 restaurants in them. So, I guess I'm not surprised. And I do think Chinese food is going to continue and stay relevant because, obviously, there's always Chinese people making it and people still always like the traditional ones. But, yeah, what do you think are the future of, you know, the sub-genres? Because there's so many sub-genres of, like, American Chinese food. Is that going to continue? Are people going to give that up and move towards authentic styles and provincial styles? I'm pretty sure orange chicken, David, and the pork fried rice is going to be around for a while. But also, this might include, you know, like Taiwanese food also could count as Chinese in the umbrella of the- Singaporean food. Chinese Malaysian food. You know, Hong Kong food. I'm not sure where Singaporean food is getting placed in this case. If it is getting placed under the umbrella of Chinese food, then for sure, absolutely, Chinese is going to be by far the largest. I can see right now that Chinese food just doesn't want to be as cheap as it used to be, though. You used to be able to get full off Chinese food for, like, five, six, seven, eight dollars in whatever town you grew up in. I definitely think the newer generation doesn't want to cook it for five dollars. I mean, think about it, guys. Every single town or city you have ever been to probably has a Chinese restaurant. They might be serving peanut butter dumplings or something that's super localized and tuned to- Bourbon chicken now in Louisiana. They could be serving all- Guys, if you go to the south and you go to these random Chinese restaurants, you'll see some funky stuff on the menu. I remember when I had- First, I had strawberry or watermelon beef. Yeah. And that was not like a from a China recipe. That was from, like, the Americans, so. Kind of good, though. Kind of good. It was good. It was good. Moving on to Japanese, Andrew. They make up 7% of the Asian American population, but 28% of restaurants. Obviously, Andrew, people like the high margins. Yeah. Honestly, a lot of people who are not Japanese open up Japanese restaurants. Obviously, a lot of Thai people do. Even Fujinese, Taiwanese people. Korean people. Koreans open up a lot of teriyaki spots, which I think fall underneath the umbrella of Japanese restaurants. I guess the biggest question is if everybody's cooking Japanese food in middle America, right? I think in the main cities, people sort of demand like a Japanese chef or a Japanese, like, face on it. But, like, if- If other people are representing Japanese food to middle America, can they maintain the branding? You know what I mean? To stay on point. Because, you know, Japan is so known for being, like, the clean and the service and everything. It's all relative, man. If it's the cleanest and fanciest and most Japanese restaurant compared to every other restaurant in town, then it's Japanese, man. Yo, they're usually got some neon panels looking like those movies from the early 90s with, like, Wesley Snipes. But, you know, at the end of the day, stuff like omakase are such, like, in a way, I guess you would say, the pinnacle of Asian cuisine. You know how they're so expensive? It's like $300 a person. Yeah, the experience is so amazing. And you're getting these little tiny pieces of sushi, like nigiri and, like, sashimi. And, yeah, I think people are gonna keep opening up Japanese restaurants. I think people love Japanese food. Yeah. I think they love it. It's not too flavorful, not too spicy, clean, romantic. Girls love it. The dates, perfect for dates. Oh, my goodness. Moving on to Thai food, Andrew. This is just gigantic, bro. 10X representation. 1% of Asians are Thai. 11% of restaurants are Thai. And you know what is interesting about Thai food, David, that I noticed? I noticed a lot of Indian people eat at Thai restaurants, even more than other Asian cuisines that I've noticed. For sure. And I don't see that many Indian people at Japanese spots, because I don't think, I don't know, I don't think Indians eat raw fish that much. I don't think it's in their culture. Of course, Indian people, they come to tune it. But, yeah, from India, I don't know if they're eating raw fish. No, but you're right. Thai itself, and Thailand is one of the most unique Asian countries, because traditionally, it has always been part of the Indian sphere, but it has also actually been part of the Sinosphere. So, yes, it has curry, but it also has a lot of fried rice and noodle dishes. You can eat it with a chopstick. You can eat it with your hands. You can eat it with a fork, a spoon. I mean, I think Thai food, bro, and I'm looking at these videos on Instagram from Bangkok Foodie. He's up on the fried egg. Dude, from Bangkok Foodie, and I'm just constantly seeing new Thai dishes that I've never seen before. Almost every other day, I see a new street food that I'm like, yo, what is that? I went to Thailand. I didn't have anything close to that. And so, I think Thai food has a long way to go, bro. First of all, Pad Thai, Pad Siu. That's almost like your fried rice, your chaomain, chaomain, right? But it's like, I said chaomain because that's like how the Americans like to say it. But like, yeah, your low mean, like the basics are always going to be around, man. Yeah, I mean, I think for the interesting future of Thai food will be, will it just sort of stay the Bangkok style like Pad Siu, Pad Thai, Pad Ki Mau, you know, Tom Yum and things like that? Or do you think it's going to move into the regional styles? Like, you know how like South Thailand tastes, you know, a certain way and then North Thailand it tastes a little Burmese, Esan. Yeah, here's a hot take guys. I actually think the dishes that are essentially more cooked because I, here's the thing. Papaya salad, I had some really good papaya salads but it can get really funky and I just think that that funk is always going to push certain people away but any cooked dishes from Thai food is going to always hit, man. Whether it's from the Esan region, it's going to be from Chiang Mai, it's going to be from Bangkok, Southern Thailand, it's going to hit. Dude, you can't say enough about Thai food right now. If you're thinking about opening up a restaurant right now and you just want to make money and then you could cook the food the right way, open up a Thai restaurant. Yeah. Moving on to India and Andrew. Indians make up 21% of all Asians. However, just 7% of all restaurants that is a 0.3X, basically less than the population. Yes, Indians are underrepresented in the restaurant sphere. By the way, this is global, guys. You might be thinking, I don't know, on my block, there's like five Indian spots because I live in like SF or Seattle. Right. No, this is, yeah, national. This is all parts of America. Do you have to understand? I would say in the booties of America, you might find a Chinese restaurant. You might find a spot serving Japanese food. We got Wyoming Chinese food. It's a special Wyoming style. Yeah, but you probably, you might not find an Indian restaurant because also, you know, Chinatowns have Asian cuisine in them, but usually the Asian cuisines are from the Sinosphere, which are like Vietnamese, Chinese, some Thai, some Malaysian, Singaporean, stuff like that. Do you think it's because people in middle America can't take the spices of Indian food? Or do you think it's also probably because not very many Indian people want to move to North Dakota or Idaho or et cetera, et cetera? Yeah. Yeah. Also, I think most of the Indian restaurants, so a lot of them we grew up with. Well, you know what? There are Indian-owned restaurants, but they're not necessarily serving Indian food, so I don't think they fall under the statistic. Like a pizza spot that's owned by Indians, I know quite a few. You come up back in Seattle, there's a ton of Punjabi pizzas. Also, a lot of Indians, let's be honest, they also own a lot of subways and subways will not count as Indian food. Yeah. Although made by a South Asian person. Right, right, right. I mean, they might own hotels in North Dakota or Montana, but they're not, I mean, yeah, the Motel 6s. Right, but unless at the bottom of the restaurant, they don't have like the Taj Mahal palace restaurant. People really love garlic naan and butter chicken though. Do you think that people will kind of like move beyond that? Or do you think that that's kind of like, you know, I'll put that at the beginner level. And I don't know if all Americans have stepped into intermediate, let alone advanced, right? Yeah. I think, yeah. I think garlic naan has a ways to go to evolve and more diffusion. Like there's this one called Tacos Mahal in New York that serves tacos on naan. Moving on to Vietnamese food, Andrew. Vietnamese make up 10% of the Asian American population, but 7% of the restaurants, that is a 0.7x. Were you surprised by this? Yeah, so viets are a little bit underrepresented, but I guess it doesn't fully surprise me because you're right. Vietnamese again are not necessarily the type of people to go into the boonies and open up a full restaurant where there are no other Vietnamese people. Phu is very, very much for Asians. So you'll find them in Chinatowns. Obviously there's a lot of Chinese Vietnamese. A lot of all types of Asians love Phu. Exactly. But you're right. In Montana, I don't know if they got that much of a hankering for that dishwater soup. Yeah, but they're going like some orange chicken or some cashew chicken for sure. For sure, because I would say that cashew chicken or orange chicken or general sauce, it's like a fried chicken. Yeah, you know, I love boonies a lot and so I'd like to see boonies reach a different level in America and even get more mainstream. You know what I mean? I think they deserve it. Obviously, it's French influence. It is a sandwich. Makes a lot of sense. In middle America, I'm going to more bet on boonies than even Phu. But would you agree for a certain demographic in America? I'm not talking about the coastlines and all these people who is all cultured and stuff. You know what I have noticed? At a lot of new sandwich spots that are not Asian, they will have a boonme flavored sandwich. Right, with some pickled daikons and some pickled carrots. Yeah, with some daikon's carrots and a little bit of hoisin and it will kind of taste like a boonme or a pho. Yeah, I see that with kimchi aioli as well, especially in Asheville, North Carolina. Shout out to Korean food coming up next, Andrew. Koreans make up 9% of all Asians in America, 6% of restaurants. That's a 0.6. Yes, a little bit underrepresented, but I also think the Koreans own a lot of restaurants that do not serve Korean food. A lot of Koreans own diners, you know what I mean? They'll earn cafes, they serve coffee, so these will not fall under the Korean umbrella. Chinese love cooking Chinese food. I will tell you this, Chinese do not run that many restaurants that do not serve Chinese food. But Koreans, Vietnamese and other people will. Do you think it's also because Koreans do not have a fast food style? There's no such thing as the Panda Express of Korean food that is easily accessible for a blue-collar person or somebody who's, they're not exposed to gochujang and fermented flavors, they might not be open to that. Yeah, I mean, things like, I guess teriyaki restaurants can appeal to other people, but like a flame broiler, I don't even, or a Waba grill, I don't know if that falls underneath Korean food umbrella. You know what I see, a lot of people try, and I think they would like it in Middle America, but I don't know if any Koreans want to move to Middle America to open these spots up. It's Korean fried chicken. Yeah, I totally could see them choosing that over something traditional on hundreds of years old like a sundubu tofu soup. Do you think there's anything holding Korean food back from being even larger? Because everybody loves that. Everybody that's had KBBQ loves KBBQ, but apparently obviously opening up a KBBQ restaurant is very costly and it's expensive. And then often it's a high ticket item. You got to drop at least like 30 bucks. Right. And you know, it's a great thing to have in America because America has amazingly high quality beef that's like quite affordable. I'd say this, I see a lot of Asians really love Korean food, but outside folks like, you know, like we said, you know, older from a different era in America, I think a lot of them may never even have had it. Right, right. Even some of the gochujang or the kimchi flavors just not. Yeah, it's hard for them. It's a, they're on track. But Asians man, Asians really like it because I think we're accustomed to the flavor profile. Moving on to Filipino Andrew, 20% of Asian Americans are Filipino. Certainly help it out on that healthcare statistic, right? With the nurses, but only 1% of Asian American restaurants are Filipino. That's a 0.05X. That means one 20th representation. Yes, yes, yes. I think that this is the largest drop off. Now again, I do think Filipinos are working and have other jobs as we know. Like if you look at how many, the percentage that Filipinos make up in nursing or the medical field, I guarantee you they're way overrepresented than any other group. Right, right. But yeah, I think Filipino food, we made a whole video about why Filipino food is maybe not as popular as it could be. I'll leave a link down below. But I think the main thing is that they haven't done an express concept chain yet. Yeah. Yeah, and I do think the, there's about six or seven items that super right off the top of my head can go super commercial. But yeah, there's only about six. Lumpia. Lumpia, a chicken dobo. But then how do you make like a chicken and dobo sandwich? Or how do you make it like in a fast food sense? Like you said, like a rice bowl spot. Like a fried chicken style. Yeah, I will say this. I think a lot of like Asian fusion bowl spots. Now, I don't know where the Asian fusion bowl spots fall. What umbrella and what category they'll fall under. Right, they might just categorize under not because they'll have a flavor from every single city. They got the Tokyo Bowl, the Manila Bowl, the Soul Bowl, the Shanghai Bowl. Exactly, exactly. But to your point, Andrew, the last thing we add on the list was Cambodians. And the thing is, of course, there are Cambodian restaurants, but most Cambodians are known for owning donut shops. Obviously that's, it's not going to fall underneath like Cambodian cuisine representation, even though the ownership is Cambodian. Right, right, right. So yeah, these are pretty much the main Asian groups that have restaurants in America. Of course, there's Indonesian, but I don't think that that makes up a huge amount. But I also, not sure if it falls under a different category, but it's probably your own. Right, what if it's from Borneo Kalamantan in their Chinese Indo? I don't know, is that? Well, well, actually, yeah. So the largest six, yeah. So 19% of Asian restaurants are actually other Asian unspecified. Okay, so that could be Indonesian. Obviously you have Mongolian, Burmese, Pakistani, Filipino, Korean right here, as you can see from the graph. Let's get into our takeaways, Andrew. Asians make up 6.6 of the current American population. 12% of restaurants, that's almost a 2X, right? So that means if Asians get to 15% of the American population, will it continue to be 2X? And 30% of all restaurants in America will be Asian? I think, actually, this is a hot take, bro. I think 25% of restaurants in America will have some type of Asian influence. Okay, what does that mean, though? No, like a dish that has a clearly Asian... Are we talking about like a Mandarin salad? Yeah, I even think just like burger spots, anything that is a little bit more free, like if it's not strictly like a French burger spot. You know what I mean, like if it's like an American, American food will, and essentially nowadays you can say has Asian cuisine as part of it. Well, I would say, for example, a lot of coffee shops have a matcha on the menu, and some of the newer school ones have started to have a Vietnamese cafe Dumon type style, chicory one. Like Dog House is a chain that serves a lot of hot dogs and burgers, and they have like Asian flair to it. Right, you can get a teriyaki one, you can get a kimchi one, you can get a Thai one with that basil on it. Exactly, so I think Asian influence is going to be everywhere, just like I think Latino influence is everywhere. Everybody has like a, you know, a carne asada something, or like a pollo something. I mean, you see it a lot, especially reflected on like, for example, just the Jack in the Box menu. Yeah, yeah. Because Jack in the Box is one of the only chains based out of California. And why do you think Asians love running restaurants so much? Because a lot of Asians, they'll just be there seven days a week, man. Like, if they have to, to hold it down, they'll do it. I think, because they've seen a lot of Asians be successful at it, I think that it is in our culture, we have a rich food culture, you know, with all the different... The chefs are respected. Yeah, chefs are fairly respected, and yeah, it's something that immigrants can do. So I guess you just keep wanting Asian immigrants to come over so they can cook like really good, affordable food. Yeah, I'd be interested to see where all these cuisines go, guys. Let us know what you think in the comment section below of the Asian overrepresentation in restaurants, F&B, Asians being underrepresented in other fields, and specifically Andrew, which Asians were over and underrepresented. You gotta support real small businesses, businesses of all sizes. I might need to mobile after this. This was a video about why every restaurant in the future will be kind of Asian. Until next time, everybody, we out! Peace!