“It is just like spicy sauerkraut!” is how Joyce Park Williams, owner of Kimchee Girl, explains her authentic Korean kimchee to potential and unfamiliar customers. Kimchee Girl is a small business located in Mechanicsburg, PA that focuses on providing the local community with the type of traditional kimchee that can’t be found in the grocery store. Approaching its one-year anniversary, Kimchee Girl has seen rapid growth and an outpouring of community support. However, Williams’ success story really begins with the story of family.
Farmers in Seoul, Korea looking for a better life for their family, Williams’ parents sold their wedding rings to move their four children to the United States. Her father was the first to arrive, joining an already growing number of extended family who had settled in New Cumberland by chance. Williams was the last of the Park children and was born into the house that they often shared with others. This is where her earliest memories of making kimchee began. “It truly is a labor of love,” Williams says. She recalls Saturday mornings where the entire family headed outside to harvest cabbage from the earth, wash it with the yard hose, and form an assembly line of the various tasks required to make hundreds of pounds of kimchee. The entire operation was run by the tiny but commanding matriarch of the family, Williams’ mother, whose friends would then come flocking for a taste of home.
“Most people have a loyal attachment to how their mothers cook a cultural recipe, or their great aunt’s meatloaf, but my mom truly made the best kimchee,” proclaims Williams. In 2013, she lost her mother to cancer, and in 2016, Williams fought her own battle against breast cancer. In her mother’s absence, Williams learned to make the family kimchee recipe from her father. “Every family does it differently,” she explains. “The difference in taste goes all the way back to how you grow your cabbage. I knew I had ours right when one of my siblings told me it tasted just like mom’s.”
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Growing up in a food-focused culture has assured that Williams loves to cook. However, lockdown gave her the time to get creative. Her stand became the most popular attraction at a neighborhood yard sale. While cooking up non-stop Korean dishes paired with kimchee for the lines that formed, it dawned on both Williams and her husband Kevin, that there might be a regional demand for an authentic alternative to the kimchee found in local stores and restaurants.
Kimchee Girl officially began selling in May of 2021. “Despite being made in a commercial kitchen, the process is still just as backbreaking,” says Williams. Her efforts, however, have not gone unnoticed. “The community has been overwhelmingly receptive,” said Kevin Williams. He helps on the weekends by drawing in crowds at pop-up locations where the bright pink Kimchee Girl tent serves up Korean BBQ. “We’ve made loyal customers out of older women who have never tasted kimchee before and Koreans who grew up on their own family recipe,” Kevin Williams says with a proud smile.
Kimchee Girl’s products are vegan, gluten free, and contain four times the number of probiotics in yogurt, making them great for gut health. Williams locally sources as many of the ingredients as possible, and every ingredient on the label from ginger to garlic is recognizable. The three staple products are Napa Cabbage Kimchee, Cubed Radish Kimchee, and Cucumber Kimchee. The Napa Cabbage is the staple, with an irresistible blend of flavors. The Cubed Radish heats things up with spice and crunch, whereas the Cucumber balances out the flavor with its coolness. Each bite tastes simple and familiar yet exciting and complex in their fusion of common flavors.
Williams imagines a world where kimchee is a condiment used as ubiquitously as mustard or ketchup, but she understands that many people don’t know how to pair it with everyday foods. Kimchee grilled cheese and pork carnitas with kimchee are just two of the recipes that she regularly shares on her website. For an even simpler approach, she recommends having it with eggs in the morning or Kevin’s favorite, piling it on top of a hot dog to mimic the beloved Pennsylvania Dutch pork and sauerkraut.
As an ode to Williams’ mother, a portion of every sale from Kimchee Girl goes toward helping families impacted by cancer. “Everything I do is to keep her memory alive and share her incredible food with people,” she says. Kimchee Girl products can be purchased online for shipping or pick-up, at local shops including Cornerstone Coffeehouse in Camp Hill, Healthy You Café in Enola, and of course at her pop-ups around the region including locations like Athleta at the Susquehanna Shoppes in Harrisburg. After a successful first year in business, Williams is gearing up to meet the demand for her products. She’s just getting started, and she knows if you try her kimchee, you’ll want to stick around too.
Kimchee Girl
5 E Allen St, Mechanicsburg, PA 17055
717-500-1663
