For Juno Chung, running Koa Pancake House didn’t just happen on a whim, it was his destiny.

“I always refer to like The Matrix, you know the one where Keanu Reeves is the chosen one,” said Chung, “I was chosen to be the person who was going to take over the company”

The youngest of three, with two older sisters who wanted nothing to do with the family business, Chung grew up helping around the kitchen and front of house. After graduating from Chaminade University with a degree in business, Chung was eager to implement the strategies he had learned and quickly began working full time for the family business.

However, Chung’s desire to update his parent’s 30-year-old business structure became a major point of contention. Both immigrants who did not have the opportunity to attend college, Chung’s parents had built their business through hard work rather than academic strategy. Chung’s father even nicknamed him “Obama” due to the amount of change he hoped to bring to the business.

“A lot of immigrant families, they know how to just work hard and that’s all they do is they put their heads down and they work. And that’s what my parents did,” said Chung, “I’m not saying it’s right or wrong it’s just one way to do things.”

After three or four years of clashing approaches, a particularly bad argument compelled Chung to strike out on his own in New York City where he started a fashion and lifestyle company. However, he quickly realized that the obstacles he faced as a newcomer attempting to start a brand with no business contacts were nothing compared to the difficulties his parents must have faced when starting Koa Pancake House.

“It got me to thinking who am I to complain about my situation when my parents came to America and didn’t even speak the language, didn’t have money, didn’t have anything?” Said Chung, “I have all these other things that my parents didn’t have when they were first starting their business. It just made me appreciate everything that my parents have done.”

In 2013, due to a rising concern for his parents’ health, Juno returned to Hawaii in an attempt to help reduce their stress. It was then that he agreed to fulfill his destiny- with certain conditions. If he was going to be in charge of Koa Pancake House he was going to have to be able to implement the changes that his parents had been so apprehensive about. On September 10th, 2014 his parents announced their retirement to the company and Chung has been running the empire ever since.
“One thing that I really want to do with the business is create careers and not just jobs,” said Chung, “We were a very flat organization and believe it or not. It was me and my parents on top and just 100 employees. The more we expand we can have area managers, district managers, we can go on the mainland, we can have someone that is in charge of Hawaii.”

For the most part Chung’s innovative changes have been very successful, but the opening of an unsuccessful sister restaurant, Koa Cafe, became a valuable lesson for Chung. Unsure of why the restaurant was failing to make enough sales, Chung felt paralyzed to making decisions for fear they might result in additional losses. Finally, a piece of advice from his father helped to change his perspective.

“He related business to school. In college you have to pay for the cost of tuition, business is the same thing: if you make a mistake, that is the tuition that you pay to learn that lesson,” said Chung, “sometimes in business you pay a little bit and you learn a lesson and sometimes you pay a lot and learn a lesson. But as long as you learn from it you’re not going to make that same mistake again. So rather than me thinking about all the money I’ve lost, I just looked at it like that was a Harvard MBA tuition just for this one lesson.”

Now rather than feeling alone in his role as owner, Chung has embraced the freedom the position offers to explore new ways to evolve the brand. He thinks about the business 24/7, and with the creation of new menu specials for the first time in 30 years and the elimination of styrofoam, Chung hopes the Koa Pancake House brand won’t be viewed by customers as stagnant.

“I’m constantly working to try and make this business better,” said Chung, “I hope people do realize that we are evolving”.