Peggy Cherng Co-chair, co-CEO, Panda Restaurant Group (220px-Peggy_Cherng-wikepedia.jpg)
Women and Adversity: Peggy Cherng
Co-chair and Co-Chief Executive Officer
Panda Restaurant Group
May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month
Peggy Cherng is the impetus behind Panda Express, referred to as the McDonald’s of Chinese food. It is part of Panda Restaurant Group and has more than 2,300 restaurants in the U.S. and 12 countries. She is co-chair and co-CEO with her husband, Andrew, who opened Panda Inn with his father in 1973 in Pasadena, California.
A decade later, Cherng had quit her full-time job with Comtal where she worked on early facial and voice recognition projects. She was hostess at the restaurant nights and weekends while taking care of the couple’s three daughters during the day. On New Year’s Day in 1983 the UCLA football coach Terry Donahue came to the restaurant with his family, and they loved the food. The Donahues were building a mall in Glendale and suggested the Cherngs open a restaurant there, and by the end of the year they did. Through the 1980s, the Cherngs opened restaurants at new malls throughout the country. They did it because of Peggy’s engineering education and analytical mind. She used computers to track inventory, re-order ingredients, track customer feedback and streamline the operations. Panda Express is not franchised except for a few locations.
Bio
- Born Peggy Tsiang in 1948 or 1949 in Burma, now Myanmar
- Grew up in Hong Kong
- 1966 – graduated from Clementi Secondary School
- 1966 – in U.S. at Baker University, Baldwin City, Kansas
- 1967 – transferred to Oregon State University
- 1970 – bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics
- 1971 – master’s degree in computer science from University of Missouri
- 1974 – Ph.D. in electrical engineering from University of Missouri
- 1975 – married Andrew Cherng
Career
- 1975-77 – engineering specialist at McDonnell Douglas
- 1977-82 – technical engineer and software department manager at Comtal Corporation, a subsidiary of 3M
- 1982 – operations manager of Panda Restaurant Group
- 1983 – first Panda Express opened
- 1997-2003 – president and CEO of Panda Restaurant Group
- 2004-present – Co-chair and co-CEO of Panda Restaurant Group
Philanthropy
- 2011 – Cherngs donated $2.5 million to support the Collins College of Hospitality Management, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
- 2017 – Cherngs donated $30 million to medical engineering department of California Institute of Technology
- 2017 – Cherngs donated $1.5 million to Honor College at University of Missouri
- 2023 – Cherngs donated $100 million to City of Hope to advance cancer care that integrates Eastern and Western healing methods.
Personal life
- 1966 – met Andrew Cherng at Baker University
- 1975 – the couple married
- Three daughters
- 2018 – Cherng Family Trust bought former Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Las Vegas, renamed it Waldorf Astoria
- 2019 – Cherngs live in Henderson, Neveda
More information
www.pandarg.com/about-us/leadership.html
math.oregonstate.edu/impact/2023/07/how-peggy-cherng-used-her-analytical-know-how-to-help-build-a-restaurant-empire
www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-how-did-i-get-here/peggy-cherng.html
My ebooks are available at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com:
Honoring 23 Black Women, Recognizing 23 Notable Mothers, Saluting 23 Faithful Suffragists
