Tom Tong is an entrepreneur, and founder of Ganqishi (甘其食) and Tom's BaoBao restaurants. Early life Tong is a native of Wenling (温岭), a seaside town in Zhejiang Province, China. This town and the surrounding region is rich in culinary and artisanal traditions that persist into the 21st century. Tong's family moved to Shanghai when he was nine. As a child, Tong was often given bao as a treat from his grandfather as a reward for good behavior on trips to the market. Education Tong attended Tongji University in Shanghai, He studied locomotive engineering. While Tong was a student, he opened and managed five companies, including a hair salon, shoe store and an Internet café. Career Research in Hangzhou Tong spent four years in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China doing market research by analyzing the eating habits of the local population and studying the successes and failures of other restaurants. Tong focused on finding out what the local population desired in their food and how he could bring it to them consistently and on a large scale, pursuing a reversal of the trend of cheap, unhealthy street food. Tong's goal was to engineer a successful bao making system that would include a privately owned commissary, vertical integration of ingredients, and a dedicated training center for his staff. This plan eventually included large installations in Shanghai and Hangzhou, as well as the assumption by Ganqishi ( 甘其食) Ganqishi Tom Tong founded Ganqishi at the conclusion of his initial research in Hangzhou. Tong's founding of Ganqishi was in opposition to what he believed bao had become in modern China: cheap street food, made by machine and frozen before being served. Tong saw an opportunity to elevate the status of a food that was close to his heart, and revive the art of bao making on a larger scale than it had ever been done before. The first 'Ganqishi' bao restaurant was opened in 2009 in Hangzhou, and today there are around 200 in Hangzhou, Shanghai, and Suzhou. Tom has expanded into Shanghai, reinvented the layouts of his stores twice. In all, Ganqishi customers in China eat over a quarter million bao a day. First Generation The first series of Ganqishi stores. This generation focused on sidewalk service from within small store spaces. As of 2015, these stores were all updated to Second Generation standards or shuttered to avoid dilution of the brand. Second