FAMMá was never meant to be another food company.

It is the culmination of a lifetime shaped by family, food, tradition, and the belief that nourished women have the power to strengthen generations.

Founder and Food As Medicine Chef Lando's story began before she was born. While her mother was pregnant, her parents escaped Vietnam by fishing boat in search of safety. She was born in a refugee camp in Thailand before her family immigrated to San Diego, California when she was just six months old.

They settled on a small farm, where her family raised animals and grew Asian vegetables, herbs, and fruit for local markets throughout Southern California. Surrounded by fields, orchards, and an endless rhythm of planting, harvesting, cooking, and sharing meals, food was never simply something to eat. It was how the family cared for one another and their community.

Chef Lando often says she doesn't remember learning how to cook or hold a knife because cooking has always been part of who she is. It wasn't a hobby or a career choice... it was simply life.

Her father's deep knowledge of Chinese herbs, medicinal plants, seasonal produce, and traditional healing foods was inherited from generations before him, passed down through the family's ancestral wisdom. Her mother, guided by the teachings of her own mother, aunties, and the women in her family, transformed those ingredients into nourishing meals for family, friends, and neighbors. Together, they taught Chef Lando that every root, berry, leaf, mushroom, and fruit has a purpose, every season brings different needs, and food is one of the oldest expressions of love and care.

One of her earliest memories is helping her mother prepare special herbal soups for women who had just given birth. They would visit the neighborhood Chinese apothecary to select herbs before spending hours simmering nourishing broths destined for cousins, friends, and new mothers in the community. As a little girl, she washed herbs, packed ingredients, stirred giant stockpots, and helped deliver meals.

There was nothing unusual about it.

Supporting a woman after childbirth was simply what families did. New mothers were surrounded with nourishing soups, restorative herbs, warm meals, and the time to heal. It was a tradition woven into everyday life, as familiar as gathering for holidays or celebrating birthdays.

Years later, Chef Lando experienced a moment she would never forget.

Just two days after one of her closest American friends endured a 40-hour labor, an emergency C-section, and gave birth to a nearly 11-pound baby, her phone rang. Her friend had been invited out to lunch.

She was stunned.

How could someone recovering from major surgery be expected to leave the house just days after giving birth? In the culture she grew up in, a new mother would have been surrounded by family, nourishing foods, herbal soups, and intentional rest for weeks. It was then she realized that while postpartum care certainly exists in the United States, many families receive little practical support or guidance on nourishing a mother's recovery.

Not long afterward, her own mother was diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer.

Searching for every possible way to support her mother's health, Chef Lando immersed herself in nutrition, Traditional Chinese Medicine, gut health, and the science of nutrient-dense foods. While food is not a cure for disease, she witnessed how thoughtfully prepared meals helped support strength, comfort, resilience, and quality of life during one of life's most difficult seasons.

Those experiences also revealed a larger problem.

Despite incredible advances in modern medicine, nutrition is often treated as an afterthought. Gut health, mineral replenishment, restorative foods, and postpartum recovery rarely receive the attention they deserve, even though they influence how we recover, age, and thrive.

FAMMá was created to help change that.

Inspired by ancestral Asian culinary traditions, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and modern nutrition science, FAMMá creates soups, congees, botanical tisanes, and pantry staples that honor generations of wisdom while fitting into modern life.

Because when a woman is nourished, she is stronger. And when women are stronger, families, communities, and future generations flourish.