let’s Welcome Hasan to KCC!
September 18, 2024
It’s March 17th, 2019
My brother and I have just signed a lease to open what will become America’s first chai cafe. We give each other a customary fist bump but the nervous energy between us is palpable. Our landlord’s office decor matches the city outside: cold, barren and unforgiving. What did we just get ourselves into? The address of our new spot is 199 East 3rd Street, a mere 120-square foot shoebox in New York City’s East Village.
There’s a well-known statistic from the National Restaurant Association that claims 80% of restaurants don’t survive their first years in business. Survival. Now, there’s a concept we’re all too familiar with.
As children of immigrants, survival is not just a concept — it’s ingrained in us, as familiar as the lines on our palms.
It’s the inescapable, constant hum in the background of our entire existence. It’s all our parents know, and therefore, it’s all they can teach. Survival was their theme song, the drumbeat of their excruciatingly difficult journey, uprooting from the places and people they loved to land in the uncertain haze of the American dream. We weren’t taught to thrive. We weren’t encouraged to dream. We were simply taught to survive.
But what if we took it upon ourselves to go “beyond our wildest dreams”?
What if we had the luxury to explore that? What would that even look like?
For Ayan and I, building Kolkata Chai over the past 5 years has been an exploration of that very idea. To challenge ourselves to think beyond survival and embracing a limitless existence. Today, we’re excited to share the next phase of that.
We’re incredibly proud to announce THAT
Hasan Minhaj, the two-time Peabody Award-Winning comedian, actor and champion of immigrant stories, is joining Kolkata Chai Co as an investor and business partner.
Hasan is a masterful storyteller with the uncanny ability of bringing niche narratives to the mainstream. He’s also never been afraid to evolve, excelling at everything from comedy and acting, from nighttime television hosting and podcasting. His values align with those of our company both at a professional and philosophical level. On top of all that, he’s a high character human being who has done exactly what he says he will since the day we met.
We’ve spent the past nine months with Hasan
and his team outlining our collective vision for Kolkata Chai. No, he isn’t getting some perfunctory “C-Level” title, because he’s coming on as a true business partner. Someone who will be hands on in amplifying the brand, lending his creative insights and building the first household name for chai in the West.
To everyone who has followed our journey since the early days, just know that this moment feels as surreal to us as it does for you. Did the two brothers who opened that tiny chai cafe really just team up with one of the biggest names in Hollywood? As the Notorious B.I.G. once said, “It was all a dream.”
But this dream is distinctly different from the fog that the pioneers of our parent’s generation found themselves in nearly 40 years ago. This is no longer about “Who will survive in America?” This is about reimagining the idea of that question all together.
Please welcome Hasan Minhaj, Prashanth Venkataramanujam and the 186K team to the Kolkata Chai family!
-ANI AND AYAN
