April 17, 2017

Meet Sai Kyaw of Yoma Myanmar in Allston and Brighton

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Sai Kyaw.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Sai. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
Yoma Myanmar Restaurant started in February of 2007, and we were and currently are still the only Burmese restaurant in all of New England to this day. Our sole mission was to spread Myanmar’s culture through food since Myanmar itself was little known to the masses. Due to the military junta in our country completely shutting us off from the rest of the world, we were rarely heard of and occasionally met with confused looks when speaking of our home country, which nestled right between China, India, and Thailand. Our restaurant quickly grew into a success, met with a high appraisal from professors and students from Harvard and MIT, to doctors working night shifts and foodies all around the neighborhood. Myanmar cuisine was unique, and the forgotten hidden gem of Southeast Asian cooking, fusing tastes from cultures of neighboring countries. However, the Tea Salad was special and exclusive to Myanmar cuisine and boomed unlike any other item on the menu. Burmese people are accustomed to consuming tea in the form as a pickled dressing in a salad as a midday snack or as a meal on its own, but not many in the world eat tea, they just drink it. Tea Salad’s distinct palate made it widely popular, and so we used its authenticity to Myanmar cuisine and its gaining popularity to mass produce ready to eat tea salad and establish a company. On my trip to Myanmar in 2012, I started working on gathering assets to make my dream of creating Yoma Myanmar Tea Company into a reality, and today we sell our products in Myanmar as well as nationwide in various Asian supermarkets and retailers. We are the only legally importing Myanmar tea product currently, and we are proud to represent our country ethically as well as spreading our culture and food while we are at it.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Personally, being one of the leaders in the student revolution for overthrowing the tyrannical rule in Myanmar in 1988, my life was constantly bombarded with extreme obstacles and challenges which shaped me to the person I am today. However, when it came to my company, there were challenges since the start, in even establishing our restaurant in the beginning, to the difficulties of starting a company since the entrepreneur field was all new to me. Things took time to kick off when it came to the company, and getting our name out there wasn’t the easiest. In the end, things eventually came together, and all is well now.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Yoma Myanmar story. Tell us more about the business.
We are known for our tea salad in our restaurant, which is also the key player in our company’s products. We specialize in Myanmar foods and products, and we are greatly proud of representing Myanmar in the Boston area, and representing Boston in the international scale when talking of our headquarters and base of our company. We are ethical, legal, and we use all natural ingredients in our dishes at the restaurant, to all the products we produce, something that most Myanmar food exporters don’t really do.

Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
I believe that if one works hard and works well, good will come your way. Luck hasn’t been there for me in my life, however, through working hard and believing in myself, I went from a political refugee in the U.S, to a company founder CEO today. As a child, nothing was handed to me, and I believe in working towards the betterment of yourself and your community. These ethics and morals are what drove me to where my life and business is today.

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