Jessica Woo, Tiktok’s resident ‘Bento Box Queen’ recently released a brand new cookbook called ‘Let’s Make Some Lunch’ detailing the recipes and techniques she uses in her popular online videos. Her content mainly focuses on the lunches she makes daily for her three daughters, most of which are Bento Box lunches, a common type of lunch set up in Asian cultures. Woo’s Tiktok account, @sulheejessica, which she started a few years ago, currently has 5.6 million followers.
Woo’s passion for cooking started once she started living on her own, and realized she needed to learn how to cook for herself.
“When I was a single mom, I had to cook for my kids,” Woo said. “I think I started cooking because I had to. And also because I loved eating!”
She began by trying all kinds of new techniques and food types from all around the world, making items she enjoyed at restaurants at home.
“I just like making things pretty,” she said, speaking about her all-around creativity. “Everything that I do is art-based. I like painting and decorating…any kind of thing I can make or do artistically.”
This artistic and creative nature bled easily into her cooking, as she loves making her food visually pleasing.
“I love fancy restaurants…I love looking at plating and stuff like that,” she said. “I also wanted to show [my family] that, oh, I made you this lunch. I made it cute and pretty, ’cause I love them.”
Woo’s cooking found its way to Tiktok through her love of recording and film.
“I record and take pictures of everything,” she explained. “I grew up with my dad filming me all the time with the big old cameras, and my grandpa and my dad both taught me how to develop film when I was eight.”
She also worked for a time for a wedding photography company that only took film pictures as an assistant, setting her up perfectly to make content online.
“That background helped me want to take pictures and remember everything…[which] translated into social media.”
Woo attended university for marketing and advertising public relations, achieving a degree in journalism and media studies. Her studies taught her a myriad of skills that have been indispensable to her, such as writing copy, advertising, and public relations.
Tiktok took her videos of cooking and creativity to the next level, blowing it up as multiple of her videos went viral.
“From there, my marketing background helped me push myself into making more videos, to make it into something that I do for work.”
“It just grew fast,” she said. “I made three videos a day for like a year.”
Soon after, she began doing affiliate marketing with Amazon and signed with a marketing agency to continue her content work and grow it into a career.
Woo discussed what caused her to focus her content on her children’s lunches.
“In the beginning, I was just kind of doing whatever was fun on Tiktok, random stuff. My sister was the one to ask, why don’t you film the girls’ lunches? It’s super cute.”
Woo was at first skeptical of the idea, thinking nothing much would come of it.
“I filmed the lunch. And then, it went viral, and it kept going [up] every day,” she said. “From then on, I was like, well, I’m gonna keep making videos because people are on my page, they’re looking for my videos.”
Her following would constantly ask for recipes in the comments of her videos, which gave her the idea to publish a cookbook of her own.
“I think the biggest thing [when writing] is making people want to help you in making a cookbook,” she explained. “You have to convince people of your ideas, and why they should produce this book.”
“The biggest part in the beginning is putting all your ideas in a way where you can share it, where they understand, and they can kind of see your vision.”
From there, Woo poured everything she had into writing the cookbook, preferring to spearhead the process herself rather than hire recipe developers, as the work was so personal to her and her family.
“I wanted to put in a lot of personal stories and pictures, and [make it] like a scrapbook,” Woo said. She added mainly new recipes not previously featured on her social media, since it would add to the appeal of the cookbook.
Once she had decided which recipes to include and had thoroughly tested them, she hired a photographer to do a photoshoot of her and the food items to use in the book.
“Afterwards, it is the marketing part,” she said. “So that’s where I’m at now, where you know you get the word out…sharing this thing that I made that I love.”
Another aspect of her content is sharing with her followers more about her cultural traditions surrounding food, mainly through making Bento Box-style lunches, which she quickly became known for.
Woo emphasized the importance of acceptance of others, and helping people “[be] open to trying new things…and be accepting of other people’s cultures.”
She included a wide range of foods in her cookbook, separating the recipes into Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner sections, including an additional Around the World section.
“People can try many different things that they’ve never even heard of, or, you know, they don’t have to, but at least it’s there to look at and learn about,” Woo said.
“I think that’s like just the biggest part is just being as accepting of others, regardless if it’s food or clothes, or whatever it is, and then being open to new things, everyone should try new things because you never know.”
A hallmark of Woo’s appeal is the ease and speed with which her recipes can be made, making her cookbook a must-have for busy parents and students looking for ways to make fulfilling meals fast.
“There’s a lot of stuff in my cookbook that you can make pretty quick,” Woo said. “The thing is, I think is just being comfortable with cooking. If you make my recipe, I hope you make it more than once. So then you can be more efficient, but also you can make it…the way you like it.”
“The more you cook, the more you’ll get comfortable,” Woo explained, “and then the more you’ll know what your [favorite] flavors are. It’ll get easier, faster. It’s not as intimidating as it seems.”
