Mama O’s started the way most good food stories do, with a craving.

Mama O’s began in 2007 with a simple mission: to recreate kimchi as good as Keedim Oh’s mother. Growing up, Kheedim enjoyed his mother’s homemade kimchi, but after leaving home, he was disappointed by the store-bought versions he found. Determined to make it himself, he called his mother for guidance. “I asked my mom how to do it, and one thing led to another,” he recalls.

What started as a personal project quickly turned into something bigger. After sharing his homemade kimchi with friends and a local butcher, word spread. “My butcher told me to bring some by, and then he wanted to start carrying it. I just kept going from there.”

Kheedim hustled to get Mama O’s off the ground—doing demos, cold-calling stores, and selling at street fairs. In the early days, he bounced between commercial kitchens in Brooklyn, but kimchi’s fermentation process required more time than those spaces allowed. By 2012, he knew he had to go all in or walk away. He chose to go all in, buying a small deli in Ridgewood, Queens and turned a 10×13-foot stockroom into a permanent, licensed kitchen. In the front, he ran the deli; in the back, he sold kimchi out of a milk cooler.

“Eighteen years later, here we are.”

As demand soared, Mama O’s landed a large account with Whole Foods. “We were doing the salad bars for all their tristate locations, but the volume was intense. Our wholesale business kept expanding, and we needed a much bigger space.” Mama O’s moved into a larger facility at the old Pfizer building in Brooklyn and in 2022, they took another major leap, securing a 5,700-square-foot facility with new equipment to scale production.

Kheedim’s wife, Amy, officially joined the company, bringing her background in the food industry to strengthen operations. Together, they expanded beyond retail into restaurant and foodservice, collaborating with distributors, brokers, and buyers across the country. “Now, we have multiple distributors and customers, and we’re focused on growing strategically.”

“From our family kitchen to yours.”

While pitching on Shark Tank in 2022, Kheedim shared that he started the company with “$50 and a skateboard.” That same energy and humor still fuels Mama O’s today. What began as a one-man operation has evolved into a full-fledged brand, bringing authentic, high-quality kimchi to grocery stores, restaurants, and kitchens nationwide.

Today, Mama O’s offers kimchi in multiple flavors, spice levels, and even kimchi paste and hot sauce. With Amy helping to steer the ship, they’re on a mission to bring real-deal, homemade kimchi to even more people. And if history is any indication, they’ll make it happen.