“Kimbap is our soul food as Koreans, and seeing students from around the world enjoying our food feels amazing,” said David Yun ’24, who opened bop! — a Korean food truck on College Avenue in Collegetown — with Andy Jae ’24 on Oct. 18.
The college friends turned entrepreneurs told The Sun that bop! is unlike other local Korean eateries. Its menu is noticeably small, featuring just four different varieties of kimbap — a classic Korean dish with ingredients rolled in dry seaweed sheets. The owners said they invited two chefs from Korea to help them prepare gourmet dishes to sell at $8.99 and $10.99, working to fit a college student’s budget.
“We really wanted to make it good and affordable,” Jae said. “So we tried a bunch of different ingredients, and we found the right combinations.”
Reflecting on their undergraduate experience as international students from South Korea, Yun and Jae take pride in providing an affordable food option using ingredients sourced from Korea. Especially after struggling to find inexpensive Korean food during their time at Cornell, they resolved to start an affordable and authentic eatery for other Cornell students.
The idea of opening the food truck began as nothing more than “a tableside joke” between the two friends, who first met as first-year dorm-room neighbors.
“While we ate [from local Korean restaurants], we always complained about how there’s no authentic Korean food in Ithaca and how everything was so expensive,” Yun said.
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Yun and Jae fell out of contact for the next three years, only to reconnect before their graduation last May, talking about their goals for the future over drinks.
“We were both drunk enough to go back to the idea from our freshman year — starting a restaurant together,” Yun said.
The more they discussed the idea, the less far-fetched it became.
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“It was like a dream come true moment for us,” Jae said of the success bop! has seen since its grand opening on Oct.18.
Through a follow-and-repost for a free roll event on social media, bop! attracted around 1000 students in its first week. Having prepared ingredients for only 500 servings, Yun and Jae had to make frequent grocery runs throughout their open hours, with signs reading, “We’re sold out we’ll be back in an hour” displayed on their truck.
Despite not having an academic background in business or hospitality majors — Yun studied public policy and management and Jae studied information science — their shared goal to bring cheap, authentic Korean food to Ithaca fueled the success of their food truck.
To Yun and Jae, bop!’s success in Collegetown demonstrated that their non-traditional paths could uniquely contribute to their kimbap venture.
“It means a lot for both David and I to be back in Ithaca, where our livelihood started and to spread the Korean culture and food,” Jae said. “As alums of Cornell, I want people to not just think about us as a food truck business but more of a venture a Cornellian can take.”
Ashley Lee is a Sun Contributor and can be reached at [email protected].