Yee Mama
Dora Cheng, Founder & Chef of Yee Mama
Yee Mama was brought to life by Dora Cheng, who, while on a pursuit for flavors of home, founded a business centered around high quality handmade frozen wontons and small batch sauces. She launched her business officially in August of 2020, but had been refining her wonton recipe for several years before the idea to start a business entered her brain.
She was born and raised in Hong Kong, and made her way to The States as a teenager. Dora began making dumplings when she was in college simply because she was searching for specific flavors, textures, and quality that she was raised on, and was unable to track down exactly what she was looking for. “It is kind of hard to find good Cantonese food. You can find really good Sichuan or different types of regional Chinese, but not really Cantonese,” she says. So she decided to create the food she craved, beginning with Hong Kong’s iconic dumplings.
She started sharing her creations on social media, and more and more people asked her where they could find the dumplings she was always posting. “Then I realized, ‘OK, maybe this is a business opportunity,’” she says. “I love creating stuff from scratch, and I’ve always wanted to start a business. Maybe this is a good opportunity to try something different.”
Yee Mama employee folding wontons at the flagship Findlay Market location.
She landed on the name Yee Mama as an homage to her mother and aunt. In Cantonese, ‘yee ma’ means aunt, and ‘mama’ means mom. Both of Dora’s parents worked full-time, so she spent a lot of time with her aunt, who cooked her delicious meals and cared for her as she was growing up. “I have a child, so I feel this in my bones. You want to provide a child that handmade experience. I feel like that’s what we’re doing here, inspired by my aunt and my mom. At Yee Mama, we are here for you, to make food with care and intention,” Dora says.
Once she decided to pursue this as a business venture, Dora envisioned pop ups as the concept she’d be chasing. But then COVID hit, and she decided to make frozen dumplings the core of Yee Mama.
Frozen wontons have been a staple in Cantonese culture for decades. Dora speaks of families handmaking huge batches of wontons and freezing them so they can still enjoy a homemade meal even when they’re too busy and tired to cook. “Basically, I want to do the same thing for people, just at a larger scale,” she says. “When I think about what excites me most about this, it’s sharing the food I make at a larger scale while still maintaining quality.”
Yee Mama team cutting the ribbon at their grand opening in 2025.
In order to start producing her wontons in large quantities and selling them to local grocers, Yee Mama joined Findlay Kitchen in 2020. There, Dora could work out of a licensed space, utilizing commercial equipment and upping her batches to work more efficiently. “The Kitchen allows anyone that has an idea to test the concept at a really low cost without much risk. You don't have to sign this five year lease or buy all this equipment,” Dora says.
Eventually, Dora was able to move her business into a pod kitchen at Findlay Kitchen, where she and her small team made thousands of wontons over the past several years. Pod kitchens are offered to Members with a multi-year lease. It’s a space of their own within the community of Findlay Kitchen, where they can move in and grow their business until they are ready to level up their production in a larger space elsewhere.
For Yee Mama, elsewhere was inside historic Findlay Market. Dora grew out of her pod kitchen and into a stall on the east side of the Market House in 2025, where she and her team have scaled up production, curated a selection of grocery items, and started selling made-to-order wontons for the very first time.
Employees waving behind the counter at Yee Mama inside historic Findlay Market.
“When we were just producing and selling to retailers and doing less pop ups, we weren't really able to connect with people and see their reactions when they tasted our wontons,” Dora says. “But now we get to see that every day. And that is really special.”
Besides the fun of having handmade wontons as a lunch option, a cooler full of delicious drinks, and a selection of elevated pantry staples, Yee Mama brings an experiential element to their flagship retail location. Six days a week you can catch their team hand-folding wonton after wonton behind glass. You can grab lunch and a few groceries for home while enjoying the pleasure of witnessing experts at work.
Looking ahead to the next phase of Yee Mama, Dora has goals to launch her brand nationally. She completed an accelerator course through SKU, a program designed for businesses looking to grow their consumer packaged goods into new and different markets.
“I think we will always be in Findlay Market with our flagship store, but I really want more people to enjoy our products. I want to make it easier for them to buy Yee Mama,” Dora says. “We are in some amazing local retailers, but I want to go beyond that.”
Published June 2026