Known for taking nostalgic American foods and making them hip and sexy, the 39-year-old entrepreneur has proved a force to be reckoned with since he launched Cookie DPT in 2018.
Besides opening hip cookie-dedicated cafes and counters in the most enviable locations in Hong Kong, he has also brought the city a range of fun concepts that appeal to foodies and Gen-Zers alike. Popular haunts include Rollie, a Venice Beach skater park-inspired sushi joint specialising in Instagrammable open-faced hand rolls, and Carbs, which offers deep-dish-style square pizza that Fang fondly remembers from his formative years in New York. Then there’s Carbon, an 8,000 sq ft space that is part restaurant, part venue and part nightclub.
It’s an impressive achievement, especially for someone who has spent most of his career in the fashion industry. “Fashion and food don’t usually go together, but I take a lot of inspiration from fashion and streetwear, especially brands that that have changed the shape of retail like Supreme,” he says. “They’ve been able to create demand and continue collaborating with brands unrelated to fashion or streetwear, which for me is so inspiring. They have proven that this model works and I hope I can bring some of that to the world of F&B and cookies.”Hong Kong’s 10 richest billionaires of 2023, revealed
Wil Fang’s humble origins
Ironically, Fang decided from a very young age that a career in F&B was not for him. He spent most of his youth in New Hampshire where he waited on tables and worked behind the scenes at his parents’ businesses, which included a chain of Chinese restaurants and American-style Japanese steakhouses.
At university he studied engineering and business management, but when an opportunity to apply for an internship at Ralph Lauren in New York presented itself, he jumped at the chance. Although he didn’t get in initially, Fang – who had been crowned “Most Fashionable” at high school – managed to snag a place after another intern dropped out at the last minute.
After graduation he joined the iconic American brand full time, working in the newly set-up global business development department for over 10 years until Apple came calling. His first foray as an entrepreneur came in 2016 when he returned to his native Taiwan to open DPT, a multi-brand lifestyle shop selling edgy fashion brands like Maison Kitsuné and Thom Browne. It also boasted a cool cafe which sold coffee and, you guessed it, cookies.
“Taiwan has great coffee but we couldn’t figure out what to do with the food. I am a kid from a small American town where you don’t eat cake just on birthdays, you eat it on Thursdays,” says Fang. “Cookies are the ultimate comfort food so we put a chocolate chip cookie on the menu. It was a recipe I had been playing with at home for 10 years at that point and I had no idea it was going to do well.”
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The grand Hong Kong debut
While the fashion business folded after a year and a half, Fang was able to salvage the cafe and the cookies, which were becoming increasingly popular. Soon he was hauling them back to friends in Hong Kong, which inspired him to launch a separate concept in the city in 2018.
“There was no vision, I’m not going to lie. But I knew I wanted to brand the cookies so that someone in fashion would want to buy them and it wouldn’t feel weird. I wanted people to feel that they were buying something luxury without being bougie, so our packaging was very clean and minimal. Not everybody loves our cookie – it’s quite dense and big – but that didn’t matter. People don’t necessarily buy it cause it’s the best – I wanted them to buy into the brand,” he says.
Naturally Fang’s background in fashion marketing played a pivotal role in transforming Cookie DPT into more than just another home-grown baking business. At the time, there was a space in the market that was ripe for reinvention – the only other competitors back then were Mrs Field’s Cookies and Homie Cookies – so he started out online, selling via Instagram alongside occasional pop-ups at food festivals around town.
A turning point came when he was offered a space to open a pop-up at The Landmark mall in Hong Kong (he was introduced to the powers-that-be by his fashion friends at Hypebeast), where they sold out in an hour.
Despite Covid-19, business continued to flourish, although he was met with a different challenge in the form of fresh competition eager to cash in on the cookie craze that had taken over the city. This inspired Fang to follow in footsteps of Supreme and other streetwear labels, and Cookie DPT began to do weekly drops of limited-edition flavours alongside cool collaborations with other popular food outlets and streetwear platforms such as Sneaker Surge.
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“When there’s competition you take it in your stride, try to focus and stay the course. It’s frustrating but also flattering. Cookie DPT showed tremendous growth during Covid but we had to see if we could push the envelope and continue riding the momentum without stagnating the brand. We continued pushing weekly flavours, doing quarterly collaborations and even opened a flagship. We were all in,” says Fang.
A passion for lifestyle brands
While Cookie DPT is his main baby, Fang has thrown his energy into other projects. The latest, Renation, is a lifestyle fitness studio offering a 360 degree wellness experience that includes a space to spin or train, a juice bar to recharge, and services ranging from stretching and physiotherapy to sports massages all under one roof.
“The connecting thread between everything I do is that each was born out of a personal need or something that I enjoy in my daily life. I am not trying to build an empire like Black Sheep or Maximal. All my businesses are based around foods I craved or food from places I’d visit when I travel. We open things that mean a lot to me or my team,” he says.
Fang is optimistic about the opportunities that lie ahead. In April, the brand celebrated its fifth anniversary and also announced a collaboration with Shake Shack, although he says the next months will be critical in deciding which of his brands will thrive. He also hopes to rekindle his passion for fashion – he was a consultant before opening DPT – although he says his focus will be on his F&B businesses.
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“Fashion has to be something you live and breathe, and at least for the interim, I need to work at what we’ve already established,” he says. “My goal is to continue bridging the gap between fashion and everything else in the world. I don’t want people to think we are just a cookie brand. I want to make sure all my brands continue to push the envelope a little. I hope our customers can appreciate that we are bringing concepts to Hong Kong that they haven’t seen or in a way no one else is doing. That to me is success.”
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