Nurturing businesses and people: Business Matters

HONOLULU (KHON2) — Although he looks like an island boy, Tony Wong Cam and his family immigrated to the islands from Peru. But since he was only one at the time he considers himself a local boy.

“We grew up my parents did farming” said Tony Wong Cam, owner of YiFang Fruit Tea Hawaii.  “For the majority of our lives growing up my parents had a farm in Waianae, I went to school at Hanalani in Mililani.”

Like most members of his family, Tony worked on the farm. But being an entrepreneur was always in his blood. And though he said the mainland was calling after he graduated from the University of Hawaii, he decided to stay and get his masters from the University of Hawaii’s Shidler College of Business.

“That was probably the best decision I could’ve ever made. It gave me the skills and the resources and the mentorship to be successful and what I’m doing today,” said Cam.

Mentorship and entrepreneurism are two things Tony and his family understand very well. Skills that were helped in part by their relationship with Eddie Flores from L&L restaurants.

“Eddie Flores is an uncle to me. Him and his partner welcomed us and brought us in to help with the early expansion of L&L. After that my parents transition into farming and growing up I never thought about owning an L&L but the opportunity presented itself and 2018 I got a call to take a look at one of the stores after managing it for about a week I decided to purchase the Waimanalo L&L. And that’s where the entrepreneur ship journey really started with franchising and the food business.”

Today at the age of 29, Tony not only owns the L&L restaurant in Waimanalo but he has now two boba tea shops including a brand new store at Fort Street Mall that just celebrated it’s grand opening last week. A level of success he said was actually helped in part by the pandemic.

“COVID presented a lot of these business opportunities. I had time so I worked on a plan how to bring a successful boba tea to the state of Hawaii,” said Cam.

Now with three businesses to operate, he said he’s finding his passion, going from mentee to mentor.

Cam explained, “At L&L I had one of the youngest kitchen staff so to see them learning and develop something I’m super proud to see a young kid and I thought the next step was the boba shop because I could teach some of these young kids the soft skills they don’t normally learn these days.”

He continued, “during the pandemic a lot of these kids didn’t have the soft skills that they had before. So part of a serving great high-quality tea is extremely high quality individuals to make a difference in Hawaii one day.”

And that’s where the says while others are struggling to hire employees, he’s succeeding. Because he’s not hiring people to work. He’s hiring people who want to learn, and follow in his footsteps. 

“I guess it’s a perspective I have always had. We want to hire the right people and give them the value proposition and not just working here we want to build skills we want to help you Network we want to help you reach your goals whether it’s with our company we want to give kids and opportunity to better themselves each and every day I make those mistakes they’re scared of making. Young people are so scared of making mistakes these days growing up I made a lot of mistakes growing up I made a lot of mistakes people ask what’s the secret to success. It’s learning from those mistakes and to make a list being able to make those mistakes and being comfortable with them,” concluded Cam.