Growing up in Hong Kong and Singapore, Sophia Cheng delighted in snacks from across Asia, which were often made with ingredients like seaweed and dried seafood.
But when she moved to the United States to attend Bowdoin College in Maine and then moved to New York in 2015 to work in management consulting, her snacks became more Americanized.
“I’m just one of those people who loves junk food,” she said. “I love chips and candy.”
She found that even snacks marketed as “healthy” were still ultraprocessed. “I so often felt like I was getting catfished by my food,” Ms. Cheng said.
So, in 2022 she created Oddball, a line of fruit jelly snacks that swaps out gelatin for agar and carob bean. “In Asia, I’ve seen jelly as a really fun and great vehicle for enjoying fruit in a different way,” she said.
Ms. Cheng, 31, started Oddball in her kitchen with the help of her husband, Tanner Thexton, 30, who works in sales at Accenture. “We hand-ironed the lids on with a clothing iron, and we lugged around a big white cooler everywhere from New York to L.A.,” she said. She started selling Oddball at farmers’ markets around town, including the Brooklyn Museum Market and the Uptown Night Market, and now they’re sold at Pop Up Grocer and online.
The couple’s Kips Bay apartment in Manhattan set the backdrop for her startup. During the coronavirus pandemic, the couple snagged a move-in special for a two-bedroom apartment overlooking the East River.
SQUEEZE THE DAY We wake up pretty early, and I drink a glass of Hong Kong-style iced lemon tea. Tanner makes a batch for me each week. I drink it because I am not a big caffeine person, and it’s very nostalgic because my mom drinks several glasses a day. Tanner drinks coffee, and we both have a supplement concoction. Then he makes us bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches on sourdough.
LET’S GET PHYSICAL Tanner’s very fitness-focused because he was a college football player, so we like to play on the half court at Vanderbilt Tennis in Grand Central Station. Grand Central’s special to us because we got married there, and the courts are a hidden gem (but now they’ve gotten popular).
SNACK TIME I know Grand Central’s in a touristy spot, but it’s our neighborhood. So after tennis, we go to Katagiri Japanese Grocery. It’s like a Japanese bodega with high-quality ramen and sushi. It also has a spam musubi bar so we usually grab a couple. For me, trying snacks is a blend of finding inspiration for my company, and also treasure hunting for those small moments of indulgences throughout the week.
TACOS FOR TWO Afterward, we stop at Los Tacos — a beef taco for me, pork for him. I love no-frills places with high-quality ingredients. Los Tacos is just your traditional street taco with great ingredients, and I’m out in five minutes.
A TASTE OF HOME We drop off our stuff and then bus to Chinatown. I would say I’m bicultural at this point, and Chinatown reminds me of home. My mother tongue is Cantonese, and I have this constant anxiety about losing my ability to speak my mother tongue, and my children not being able to speak it, and going to Chinatown allows me to practice. Our first stop is Noodle Village, which I think is the best Cantonese you can get in New York. We order the crab and pork soup dumplings and a lot of other dishes you can’t get other places. Then we visit Na Tart for egg tarts and Malaysia Beef Jerky.
We go to Mango Mango for dessert. I obviously get a lot of inspiration from here because my first Oddball flavor was mango-coconut, and mango is just one of the best fruit bases out there. After a few more stops, we end our tour at Heytea, another place I draw inspiration from because they do one thing really well.
HAVE A NOTION? I’m an entrepreneur, so there’s always a fire to put out, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed. So every Sunday, I sit with my Notion and do life admin and work admin. I put my goals down for the month and the week. When I do this on a Sunday, it helps me to not feel overwhelmed, and on Monday I can dive right in.
FASHION FORWARD Every Sunday, I pick out my outfits for the week. Fashion’s always been an important part of my life (my mom is very fashionable), and it’s a way for me to express who I am. I don’t have time to put outfits together during the week, so I put together a capsule wardrobe each month, and then pick outfits from that each week so I don’t have to think about it.
TEAM WORK My husband is pretty much my co-founder. Even though I’ve raised money for Oddball, I still have that bootstrap mentality. Every Sunday, I have a list of people I need to send jellies to, whether it’s journalists, V.I.P.s or investors, and Tanner helps me pack them up.
FANCY FRIED CHICKEN Coqodaq is my favorite restaurant in New York, and it’s the only restaurant I’ll line up for at 4:45 p.m. despite the cold weather. I think Simon Kim nailed the highbrow-lowbrow blend with his interpretation of Korean fried chicken. We order the fried chicken bucket, then we get a scoop of ice cream from Caffè Panna even though I’m lactose intolerant. But I love their olive oil ice cream.
HIT REWIND When we get home, I FaceTime with family and friends. I get really bad Sunday scaries, so I like to unwind with a Channing Tatum movie. It’s usually “21 Jump Street” or “22 Jump Street.” The sequel is my comfort movie. I’ve seen it like 20 times.
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