Farmers Market Manager Hal Shubin doesn’t remember how he first came across Mei Mei when he and his wife had dinner at its former Boston location, but it was good enough the first time around that he returned for more.
“I like food, and that sort of is the theme that runs through everything in my life,” he said. “I must have heard about it somewhere. The people at the counter were friendly, the food was good, everything was great.”
So when he read about the restaurant’s struggle to stay open during COVID, he offered a helping hand. He reached out — in part to inquire about a group meal that was no longer on the website, but also to invite the business to the Belmont Farmers Market.
“If you were bringing your food here, it’s great for everyone, not just me,” he told Irene Li at a recent farmers market.
Mei Mei, which means “little sister” in Mandarin, began as a food truck business in 2012 with three siblings: Irene, Andy, and Margaret. After being named Boston’s Best Meals on Wheels, the family opened a restaurant in November 2013, serving casual, counter-style lunch and dinner, according to its website. In 2018, Li’s older siblings stepped into an advisory role, and she brought on a new leadership team to manage operations.
“During COVID, we pivoted to this packaged brand,” Li explained, referring to the frozen dumplings available for retail sale. “We weren’t able to do business-as-usual … We had to figure out how we were going to serve our community in different ways.”
While there is still some food service at the factory in South Boston, in 2020 her operations team, Alyssa Lee and Annie Campbell, helped transform the business into a dumpling factory, cafe and classroom. Li’s favorite part of the business is vending at different farmers markets.
“Hal had this idea we could reach our customers through the farmers market, and he was so right,” she recalled. “The Belmont Farmers’ Market people are really our people … Our first day here, we actually had to send the team back to the restaurant to restock. That’s how excited people were. During COVID, that was a really good feeling –– to sell out twice. The rest is history.”
In addition to farmers markets statewide, Mei Mei also sells through institutions and food service partners, including the Spirited Gourmet in Belmont.
“Because of our success at the farmers markets during COVID, we were able to invest in a dumpling-forming machine that does a lot of that manual work,” Li said. “We still finish every single dumpling by hand, but that’s what allows us to produce 8,000 to 10,000 dumplings in a single day.”
And for whom is the business’ machine named?
“We did name the dumpling machine Hal — not as a reference to the Space Odyssey, but to the wonderful Hal Shubin who really inspired us to take this leap and evolve our business to the next chapter,” Li said.
Shubin, however, said he merely sees what he did as an invitation.
“We opened the door, we invited you here,” he said. “If your product wasn’t wonderful, it wouldn’t work. It’s wonderful to see that progress and to think we had anything to do with it, but it’s the thousand people that come in every week.”
Li said if it hadn’t been for Shubin’s invitation, Mei Mei likely would have been sold to new ownership.
“Coming to farmers markets every week, having people be happy to see you … I think that really buoyed us and helped us keep going even though we weren’t really sure what was going to happen next,” she said.
Mei Mei sells at the market every other week, according to Shubin. The Belmont Farmers’ Market runs Thursdays from 2 to 6:30 p.m. in the Claflin Lot. The final month of the market, October, will see reduced hours, from 2 to 6 p.m.
