Noona's Ice Cream
a Korean big sister's guide to work, life, and finding your identity
If you’ve ever been to a sushi restaurant, you’ve probably had Asian-inspired ice cream flavors like matcha and black sesame. But what about ube latte with Vietnamese coffee or strawberry yuzu dreamsicle? What about pandan coconut crunch? I recently chatted with Hannah Bae, founder of Noona’s Ice Cream, to learn more about the inspiration behind her uniquely Asian American ice cream brand, and how the development of these flavors helped her connect with her own Korean heritage.
Unlike many children of immigrants whose love for food developed in the kitchens of their mothers and grandmothers, Hannah’s love for food blossomed from less delicious origins. “I’m passionate about food now because of the lack of good food we had growing up,” she explained. In fact, Hannah learned how to cook in response to not wanting to eat her parents’ cooking.
Her mother was a good cook, but both of her parents were so busy with work and raising Hannah and her two brothers that they usually resorted to quick meals like fried luncheon meat or hot dogs on rice. Hannah recalled her mom giving her an ultimatum at the age of ten, “You either eat with us or you starve.” She said she would rather starve. In reality, she taught herself how to cook and began to make dinner for herself, which eventually turned into making dinner for her whole family.
In addition to cooking, Hannah has also been baking her whole life. She inherited her sweet tooth from her father, who helped foster her love for baked goods when he brought home Betty Crocker cake mix. Her mother was horrible at measuring out ingredients and following instructions, so it fell to Hannah to make sweet treats for family gatherings. She didn’t know it at the time, but these early experiences in the kitchen planted the seeds for starting her own food business one day.
In 2013, Hannah found herself at a crossroads in her life. Questions like What am I doing? What is my career? Where am I going? kept circulating through her brain. She knew that her day job managing operations at a small electrical contracting company wasn’t her end game. As a matter of fact, she took the job to pay the bills while opening up brain space to daydream and plan her next move.
Around this time, she started making ice cream in order to break up the monotony of her daily routine. She shared her creations with her roommates and neighbors who were always excited about the flavors she concocted, and quickly realized how much her new hobby was brightening her life.
One day, one of her roommates who ran a food business himself told her, “You should focus on this and start a business. I think you have something on your hands.” It really stuck with her. “If he didn’t say that, I don’t know if I would’ve started Noona’s,” Hannah retrospected.
When it came to choosing a name for her business, Hannah wanted to pick something that was strong and meaningful. At the time, she was struggling to figure out what being Korean American meant to her, and she wanted to commemorate that struggle with a name that would make her family proud. She settled on noona, which means “big sister” in Korean. Starting a business could be an isolating journey, but waking up to “noona” every day helped her feel less alone.
While brainstorming her venture, Hannah drew inspiration from the multitude of small food brands that were popping up. Lots of makers were foregoing the traditional brick and mortar route, opting instead to share commercial kitchens and sell their goods at farmers markets. When Hannah launched Noona’s Ice cream in the summer of 2016, she followed in their footsteps, frequenting outdoor markets in the summer and indoor markets like the Brooklyn Flea in colder weather.
She met fellow food makers, as well as other artists such as jewelry makers and ceramicists — people who were putting something out into the world. It was energizing to connect with different people in the same “moment” as her and trying to move in the same direction in their respective creative endeavors.
In July of that first summer, Noona’s signature Toasted Rice ice cream was awarded best flavor at the annual Hester Street Fair Ice Cream Social. After the win, Noona’s landed on the radars of industry people, and Hannah began receiving inquiries from specialty stores and small restaurants. Danji (temporarily closed), the Korean tapas joint by acclaimed chef Hooni Kim, was one of her first accounts.
The rush of interest following the best flavor win opened Hannah’s eyes to the opportunities in wholesale, and she decided to go all in down that path. For the first few years, she churned the ice cream herself, starting out in a commercial kitchen in East Harlem. That went on for a while until she was kicked out from the kitchen for making wholesale products (wholesale is under the purview of the FDA, while commercial kitchens are overseen by the Department of Health).
Her community was immensely helpful in problem solving, and suggested that she borrow the facilities of other ice cream stores while they were closed. Hannah began working out of an ice cream shop in Cobble Hill, developing a nocturnal routine: she arrived at the shop when it closed at 5 pm, made ice cream into the wee hours of the morning – it wasn’t uncommon for her to go home at 2 am – and left the fresh batch in the shop’s freezers to harden. However, the shop required their freezer space in the mornings, so she would schlep back there at 5 am to transport the cooled pints to a small storage facility, thus concluding her overnight shift.
This one-woman routine went on for several years until the volume grew to the point where Hannah could bring on a manufacturer to implement her recipes. She attributes the early success of Noona’s to the the quality of the product and its wildly creative flavors, both of which were inspired by her childhood.
Growing up, Hannah felt detached from her Korean identity. She didn’t spend much time around many Korean people and could barely speak the language. The most powerful connection she felt to her heritage was through food. When it came to honoring that heritage, she knew that she would have to strike a balance. She asked herself, “How do I show my family that I care, and at the same time be who I am?”
From her day job, she learned about the logistical side of running a business from incorporation to accounting. She felt confident that she could operate her own small business one day. Eventually, her boss gave her an ultimatum, which led to Hannah quitting her job in the winter of 2016 to focus on growing her nascent brand.
Many first-generation immigrants like Hannah’s parents strived for stability so that their children could aim for loftier goals like self-actualization. But the realization of the American dream is not without conflict. Hannah knew that she had to carve her own path towards fulfillment, and her parents, despite their best intentions, didn’t always understand her decisions. On the cultural and generational struggle, she shared, “Asian parents want you to have a better life, but they don’t know what that life looks like. So when it happens, they try to put what they know back on you, because they don’t know another way.”
The Asian-inspired ice cream flavors she developed reflect her personal journey of understanding what it means to be Korean-American. Through toasted rice, black sesame, gochujang snickerdoodle, Hannah was redefining this part of her identity and sharing with the world: “I’m Korean, I’m American, and I’m a little different.”
Through Noona’s, Hannah is also intent on shifting American food culture to prioritize health and sustainability. Her older brother’s leukemia diagnosis was a formative experience that caused her family to start caring about the food they were putting in their bodies. Hannah became obsessed with using the best possible ingredients in her own cooking.
All of this translated into her business. With Noona’s, she places immense care in the ingredients she uses, preferring to source locally and organically when it makes sense to do so. She always opts to use real foods, so that when you’re eating matcha or taro flavored ice cream, you’re really tasting matcha and taro, rather than more cost-efficient artificial flavoring. Her rule of thumb is, “I don’t want to make something that I wouldn’t eat myself.”
Through her choice of ingredients, Hannah also hopes to reform national food systems, where profit-seeking corporations still largely dominate. That’s why she sources her ingredients directly from smaller local makers. The dairy she uses is hormone-free and comes from the Hudson Valley, the eggs are pasture raised. For Hannah, it’s important that Noona’s contribute to the shift in food culture across the country that she wishes to see.
Although Noona’s has achieved great success as a wholesale business, Hannah decided to pivot to opening a shop, because she believes that some of her flavors need to be communicated more directly. People have embraced Noona’s in ice cream aisles throughout the country, but some of the more novel flavors like gochujang snickerdoodle still make people go, “Huh?” These flavors require people to warm up to them, and a shop is the most effective channel to allow people to sample flavors before committing to a pint.
Despite Hannah’s deep background in wholesale, the process of opening a brick and mortar location felt like starting a new business in many ways. Lots of things have come up that she didn’t anticipate, adding to the timeline of the project. For example, she had to do a rebrand for the shop when she discovered that she couldn’t scale up her existing designs: the strong, bold colors that she had been using to make labels pop on grocery shelves were too loud for an entire wall in a small shop.
The new brand was inspired by three of her favorite books from childhood – Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, and The Little Prince – all fantastical stories with elements of whimsy. I noted how the figure in the new ice cream labels resembles Alice falling down the rabbit hole, and Hannah shared that whereas she used to think that the figure was falling into the abyss, with the opening of the shop, she now sees it as more of a portal.
Ultimately, Hannah sees her business as a continuation of her family’s journey of creating something from nothing: her parents came from nothing, moved to the States, had Hannah and her brothers, and started a brand new life. She concluded our call with a dose of big-sisterly advice. “I think life is what you make of it and what you create.” And while Hannah’s story is incredibly inspiring, she doesn’t see it as so different from everyone else who is trying to find their place in the world.
Thank you so much to Hannah for taking the time to share her beautiful story with me 🫶🏼 Make sure to stay up to date with Noona’s Ice Cream (Instagram | website) as they open their ice cream and bakeshop in the East Village next week!