Panda Express co-founder credits relentless work ethic, not balance, for success
Andrew Cherng, co-founder of Panda Express, said he never experienced burnout even while working 12-hour days, calling it simply life. He and his wife Peggy turned a single restaurant into a nearly $7 billion chain over five decades. Cherng, now 78, emphasized that hard work, not work-life balance, drove his success.
Cherng's path to success began with humble origins: born in China, he fled with his family to Taiwan and later Japan before arriving in the U.S. to study mathematics at Baker University in Kansas, where he met his future wife and business partner, Peggy. The couple earned master's degrees from the University of Missouri, and Cherng spent his holidays waiting tables in New York restaurants while his father worked as a chef without owning his own business.
The Cherngs financed their first restaurant, Panda Inn, with $60,000 from family savings and a Small Business Administration loan in 1973. His parents, brother, and sister all worked without pay while the family shared a two-bedroom apartment in San Gabriel. The first Panda Express opened in 1983 in Glendale, and the chain expanded from five to nine locations in a single year by 1985. Today, the company operates over 2,600 locations with 55,000 employees, never accepting outside investors.
This story may reinforce generational tensions in workplace culture, as Cherng's ethos directly contrasts with Gen Z's stated preference for work-life balance. Young workers could feel pressure to emulate this model or question whether such sacrifice is necessary for success. Employers may use such narratives to justify demanding schedules, though the Cherngs' outcome—a $6.6 billion fortune—remains an extreme outlier that most workers will never replicate, potentially shaping expectations about what hard work realistically delivers.