Melissa and I went back to Koreatown for our second round of interviews, hoping for the business owners of any storefronts to let us ask questions without coming back another day. After our first trip there, we realized that going around dinner time to ask a manager or employee of a storefront a plethora of questions was not appropriate. After all, they were busiest then. So I went by train to K-Town around four in the evening and waited at the popular food gallery for Melissa. We also decided to take a different approach to going about saying our reason for being there, simply stating we wanted to ask a few questions (not a ten to twenty minute interview). Thankfully, this approach worked.
Walking past storefronts, I noticed a restaurant with a green and orange logo right next to the food gallery called BCD Tofu House. Being my vegan self, my eyes widened at the name and I knew we had to interview this place for my own sake. I heard my stomach growl and five minutes later Melissa showed up. Ironically, she suggested we go to BCD Tofu House because it was not very crowded at all.
Entering BCD tofu was like going through a huge dining hall on a cruise ship. The place was enormous. They even had a staircase to more tables above. The walls, tables and chairs had a modern taste to it with a mud brown and beige filling the vicinity. It had a high end vibe to it and yet a homey vibe. The doors’ handles were shaped and textured like tree branches and the lights were a yellowish bright color. Customers were sitting every few tables apart, eating and talking in quiet tones, Korean music bouncing off the walls. 
We asked the young hostess at the front if we could get answers to a few questions we had, and she agreed. Surprisingly, she was really cool with answering our questions while guiding each new customer to a table. The hostess/cashier Iris was in fact a student working part time, even though her hours were more like what a full time job requires. She attained the job four months ago.
We did happen to stumble upon another franchise. The original BCD Tofu House opened up in the 1990s in California, but once it became popular the business owners expanded to New Jersey and New York City. The nine locations even had their own tofu making factory, so all the tofu was organic and homemade.
Curiously, we wondered why a restaurant with tofu as the star in particular became so successful, so we asked Iris. “They hear about tofu soup through their own means and maybe it got popular with K-Pop culture.” Her response wasn’t at all news to us, considering the many other storefronts on Korea Way said the same thing. K-pop has influenced Western culture and many Americans were interested in Korean culture as a result. K-pop has not only helped shape Korea in a positive way to the Western hemisphere, but it also helped Korean businesses make money.
Another interesting fact about BCD Tofu House were the kinds of customers they attracted. Strangely, their majority demographic was Chinese people, coming in for about 60% of the business’s customers. Korean people took up about 30% of the demographic and the rest were other ethnic groups. “We are on yelp, so they come in for the first time and a lot of them happen to be Chinese,” Iris explains.
Feeling famished, we then proceeded to ask Iris about the menu. She explained that there were seven kinds of tofu soup that the restaurant made, using different kinds of meat, fish and mushrooms. They even adjusted the spiciness level to each and every individual’s liking. I then looked at Melissa as the interview came to a close and asked her if we can eat there. I told the lady we would come back later that day, but we never did. It turned out that BCD Tofu House was also really successful at charging customers at ridiculously expensive prices. Each soup was at least $20. Maybe one day though, Melissa and I will return with loads of cash in our wallets.
