Welcome to Creators on the Rise, where we find and profile breakout creators who are in the midst of extraordinary growth. You can check out previous installments here.
When Wootak Kim was 22, he picked up a bartending job. He wasn’t looking to get into the industry, or even make it a long-term thing. He just needed a little cash to help pay for his next semester of college.
But then something happened.
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He fell in love with making “drinkable art.”
“I’ve always loved art and creative things,” he says, but “Life for me was very up and down.” He’d gotten into trouble as a kid, and had spent some time in juvenile detention centers and boarding schools. Now, looking back, “I’m very grateful for those experiences,” he says. Back then, though, it put him in a tough place, and he never found an outlet for all that creativity.
That is, until he got behind the bar.
“Once I started doing mixology, I realized like, wow, this not only tickles my social needs, it tickles my creative needs. It makes me money. I have a job doing this,” he says. “I put myself into it full force. I started creating my own menus for bars around six months in and around the same time I started BarChemistry, which at the time was a bar consulting business.”
Through BarChemistry, Kim would consult for bars on Instagram, and began building a following there. He later decided he wanted to shift into ecommerce, selling his own mixology products, so when he launched that line in 2020, he got on TikTok, too.
Now, three years later, Kim has nearly 2 million followers on TikTok, and is not only running BarChemistry, but a second business, SuperBonsai, for holistic remedies (the first of which, a hangover helper, just released). He’s also a co-founder and host of the podcast Under the Influence. He’s built himself an entirely new career from the spark that one job lit in him, and while he has a lot more diverse business responsibilities now than he did when he was 22, he doesn’t plan to stop shaking and stirring anytime soon.
Check out our chat with him below.
@barchemistry if i added up all of the time i wasted hungover, and added it to something like ‘the gym’ i’d be three times my current size 😔 start saving your mornings asap! #cocktails #bartender #bartending #mixology #barchemistry #hangover #hangovercure ♬ original sound – BarChemistry
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Tubefilter: Very excited to get to talk to you!
Wootak Kim: Really appreciate that. Me too.
Tubefilter: The point of these is to give people who already know you more insight into you behind the camera, but also to introduce new people to you. Just imagine somebody’s watching this or reading this and they’ve never seen you before. Give me a little bit of intro about you, where you’re from, and you growing up.
Wootak Kim: Got it. My name is Wootak Kim, first and foremost. I’m a Korean-American immigrant. My family moved here when I was about four years old and we moved to California in the Bay Area where I grew up till about 12. Then I moved to New Jersey, Fort Lee, right outside of New York City, and spent most of my life there until I moved back to California, LA, about a year and a half ago. That’s where I currently live.
Life for me was very up and down. I grew up obviously very traditionally Asian. I very much didn’t like a lot of the stereotypes that came with that. I acted out in many ways, in trauma responses, bullying responses that led me to a lot of juvenile delinquent behavior. I spent some time in the legal system, in juvie and criminal boarding schools, also the juvenile psych wards. I think all of those experiences really gave me the empathy and perspective on life I needed to make good content and to be authentically myself, even online and in the faces of hate comments and whatever. I’m very grateful for those experiences.
Around 22, I became a bartender. I started bartending to put myself through college. Almost right away is where I realized like, wow, I’ve always loved art and creative things, but I was in the pursuit of just trying to get through life and school. I never really continued a hobby after high school where I enjoyed painting. Once I started doing mixology, I realized like, wow, this not only tickles my social needs, it tickles my creative needs. It makes me money. I have a job doing this. I put myself into it full force. I started creating my own menus for bars around six months in and around the same time I started BarChemistry, which at the time was a bar consulting business. I would do bartending content on Instagram. Around the time that I decided to switch to e-commerce, which was creating my own product line of bar tools is when I hopped on TikTok in March, 2020.
Tubefilter: Good timing.
Wootak Kim: That is about when I blew up. It took me about a month and a half posting three videos every day. Then I saw explosive growth. In about a month I had 100,000 followers and in less than a year I hit a million.
Tubefilter: Did you originally view socials as mostly an advertising tool?
Wootak Kim: That was originally why I hopped on, yes. Even with making content to promote my business, I’d say for the first six months, I never made an ad. I just made content that I enjoyed and that I felt was valuable. Cocktail recipes that I also entertained in. Obviously, if I’m visually making a cocktail, I’m using my own tools and my tools are very aesthetically pleasing. I would get comments all the time of people being like, “Where are your tools from,” blah, blah, blah. All I would do is just write “link in bio.” At the time, my videos were going so crazy that just the “link in bio” comments and just me using my tools did very well to move my business forward.
Tubefilter: What makes mixology such an art for you? Why is that such a creative artistic pursuit?
Wootak Kim: For me, it’s like drinkable art. I feel like in a similar way to chefs and especially really culinary experts that not only want the food to taste good, but for it to look good, for the whole experience and all five of your senses to be something pleasurable. I find the same way with higher-level mixology where I’m not just thinking about how can I make this drink taste good. It’s how can I make it thematic? How can I make it look good? How can I affect your smell and your feel as you also drink this cocktail? That was something that it requires a lot of thinking on how the person is going to enjoy your end product. Similar to an artist, a musician, or a sculptor, painter might think that way.
Tubefilter: What is your current balance of things? This is full-time now, your business has grown a lot in three years. How have things changed?
Wootak Kim: Actually, I would say that I’ve evolved and changed quite a lot as a person. I think everyone does in three, four years, right? I grew up very poor. Having now a successful business and being able to secure brand deals with my manager, Byron, shout out Byron and all these things, it’s like it’s brought me to an area of life where I meet people that are doing things I never thought even possible before. Everyone I knew, it was all just get a job, work, retire at 50, you’d be lucky to retire at 50. To be honest, my mom was working seven days a week for most of my life, 12-hour days. She raised us alone.
Basically, once I started to have success in business and social media, I started to meet people who were geniuses at what they did. Then that opened up many new doors for me. Something I’ve also always been in is health and wellness. I still do BarChemistry as in the ecommerce line, but I have now partners over there that help me run everything. Then I’ve started a new company called SuperBonsai, which is a holistic health and wellness company. I noticed me being East Asian, a lot of my medicines were very natural and herb-based, plant-based, etcetera. Western medicine wasn’t really like that. There was a lot of pharmaceuticals, a lot of chemicals.
I realized within just culture, it was becoming more popular to seek holistic remedies, which I always grew up with. Then me being in the alcohol space, I came across holistic remedies for hangovers. At first, I didn’t believe it. Then after doing research, I realized Asians have used this for thousands of years. It’s nothing new. The West is just catching on. Everyone is coming out with formulas. I started working with a team of doctors and my two partners that I have right now for SuperBonsai, and we launched a hangover product in August. That’s been absolutely moving. I learned a lot from doing BarChemistry. I’m applying all of that here.
It’s very fulfilling because I think that I wanted to evolve as a person, of course. I still love and have all this knowledge of alcohol and cocktails. I feel like this is something that blends both my passions for health and wellness, plus the alcohol industry into one. I’ve had to do both. Oh, and also, I forgot the podcast, but started a podcast about a year and a half ago. That was the reason I moved to LA actually, was for the podcast.
Tubefilter: Oh really?
Wootak Kim: Yes.
Tubefilter: Why LA? Is it just easier there?
Wootak Kim: I met this guy named Jeremy, who’s the CEO and founder of Nectar Hard Seltzer, which I became an investor in very early with the very first dollars I made from BarChemistry. He wanted to start this podcast because that’s just how he saw to market his drink. He saw me as a magnetic host. We decided to join up on that venture. Then they were just flying me out from New York back and forth to LA, obviously very costly. I always wanted to move to LA, to begin with, after visiting a couple of times. I saw enough growth on the podcast that I just was like, “You know what? Let me pack up all my things.” I moved after about six months of doing the back-and-forth thing.
As soon as I moved here, we were able to shoot more consistently. This is where I met my other two co-hosts. Once we brought on those two co-hosts is when the podcast really saw explosive growth. I’d say the move was the right choice.
Tubefilter: Yes, definitely. That’s a big commitment, though.
Wootak Kim: Yes.
Tubefilter: Did you end up finishing college, or did you go full-time into this?
Wootak Kim: I did not ever finish college. I was I think a sophomore in credits, but it was my third year. I had to take semesters off to make money to pay for college. I was a DACA status, but they didn’t have that when I first started college. I wasn’t able to take out financial aid or loans or anything. It was a very costly expenditure on my mom’s credit cards, also me, stopping school to work and make money and all that.
Tubefilter: Clearly it’s worked out for you to go this direction.
Wootak Kim: Very much so. Thank you.
Tubefilter: You do longer-form and mid-length on YouTube as well as short-form. What’s your preference? I’m curious about your mix there.
Wootak Kim: I would say that it’s definitely a bit mid-length because I don’t do the quick, choppy TikToks. I call it edutainment where I have to educate but also entertain. That was part of my reasoning for being so confident in that I could do content was, when I watched other mixology and bartending content, it was either way too pretentious and difficult to follow for the average person or it was the complete other way where it was just all like gross, sugary party drinks that no one’s really making. No one’s filling a bathtub full of Everclear and 65 different types of juice. Then no one is going to sous vide an infusion for 12 hours and knows the names of all these intricate French liqueurs and whatnot.
I was like, there has to be a happy medium. I loved it right away. There’s tons of people that love going to cocktail bars and watching bartenders. Just like no one’s figured out a way to be the little in-between of fun and educational for this. That’s what I set out to be. I make fun of myself in healthy ways. Quite often I’d make satirical, pretentious jokes, but overall I want the person to be entertained and I want them to learn something each video. That requires about 90 seconds. Then logistically I don’t want to go over 90 seconds because that way I can post it on Instagram and TikTok, which are my two biggest platforms.
Then I allow it to go up on shorts regardless, even if it gets cut off early, which has actually been growing my YouTube quite a bit. Then I’ll post the full thing, which is about 90 seconds on YouTube itself. Then shorts now has this feature where you can link the short to the related long-form video. I’ve been doing that just to see how that works to see if vertical video is going to work on YouTube.
Tubefilter: You’ve got what, 2 million on TikTok now? I feel like a lot of people I talked to who started on TikTok and do really well on TikTok have trouble coming over to YouTube Shorts and nobody really knows why. I’m curious about your experiences there.
Wootak Kim: Oh, it was like that for me for quite a while, actually. Videos, I would do 5 million views on TikTok, nothing on Shorts. It was frustrating me for sure. At a certain point, I didn’t even post on Shorts, but for me, I really believe that no one really fails, they just quit. I was like, there’s no way that a video will do well on both Instagram and TikTok, then YouTube Shorts just won’t hit. I’m like, there’s something wrong. I’m not doing something correctly. Then I watched like seven YouTube videos on how to crack Shorts and this one creator really inspired me. Her name was Jenny Hoyos.
Tubefilter: Oh! I just talked to her, actually.
Wootak Kim: Really? Oh, she’s a genius.
Tubefilter: She’s very smart.
Wootak Kim: Yes, and she’s like a kid low-key. She’s not even 20 yet, right? I think she’s like 18. She’s going to do crazy things in life. When I was watching that, I was like, “Wow, you’re going to be so successful.” She broke down how she formulates every YouTube Short. She does not make a YouTube Short unless it fits these criteria. While I had that internally in the back of my mind, there was things I tried to fit into every video, I was like, I’m actually not this formulaic with my videos, even though I understand that to an extent and that’s why I do certain things. Then I started being super formulaic, where I was like, what’s the visual component of the first three seconds? What’s the audio component of the first three seconds? Would I stop scrolling to hear this right now? I’m like, if it’s not eye-catching enough, I don’t make it.
Then also, she’s like, I tie in personal story to every video. I was like, hmm, I do that quite often naturally, just from the way my videos are, but I don’t make sure it’s in every video. Then I went back and audited some of my videos and the ones that flopped, I was like, wow. It’s just a very plain intro. I didn’t really do a good job of tying in an exciting personal story. I’m like, this is where I should start to– Then I started building my best videos, the factors they had, wrote them down. It definitely was personal story. The hook was really good. I started to be really specific about that. Then my shorts also started moving. My TikTok and Instagrams have been doing very well.
Tubefilter: I feel like formulaic as a concept gets a bad rap, but it really does work. It gives you a coherent voice as a creator. I feel like people avoid it because they’re like, Oh, it’s formulaic and it’s cheating, it’s boring. It’s like, no, that’s not what it’s like. No.
Wootak Kim: Absolutely. I always say it’s like content has to be a mix of art and science. If you don’t understand the algorithm and what people are looking for, then you’re going to fail. If you’re too focused on that and you think everyone’s a robot and you’re not trying to be creative or innovative enough, then you’ll also fail.
Tubefilter: I noticed you did some long-form a few years ago on YouTube. You do the podcast now, obviously, which is like the longest of long-form. Do you aim to do any longer-form videos or do you feel like you’re comfortable in this mid-length?
Wootak Kim: I like the mid-length. For me, being the founder and CEO of two businesses makes it very difficult because long-form is such a heavy lift of content. With the way I shoot BarChemistry right now, I’m able to shoot seven to nine videos in one shoot, which takes all day versus that might be half of a YouTube video if I shot a long form. For me right now, at least on the BarChemistry end, I want to stick to short-form. Something I’ve been very interested in, though, I’ve also started this on my personal brand, is health trend videos.
I make videos about health, taking that same edutainment model I learned doing in BarChemistry, and I replicate it across health trends where I try health trends on myself for however long I feel like I need to and share the results with my audience, record the proof, all of that. They were very popular. I did 7 million views on a gua sha video, 4 million on one about Wim Hof breathing, and all these things. Those are things that I feel like could use the attention of a long-form video and that I would enjoy doing enough to put in that effort and that it would not only be something I enjoy doing but also benefit everything else that I’m doing as well and be a positive message for everyone.
Tubefilter: I see. I feel like the mid-length, especially for edutainment, that length seems to really work.
Wootak Kim: Totally agree. No one wants to hear you talk about vermouth for 14 minutes. I could tell you in 90 seconds.
Tubefilter: Hey, there’s some freaks out there. It’s interesting, for sure.
Wootak Kim: I agree that there’s definitely people out there that will enjoy that. I guess I’m trying to make the best allocation for my time possible because it’s just, I’m becoming super busy.
Tubefilter: Yes, clearly. Are you the only one working on BarChemistry the company?
Wootak Kim: Now I have two partners that help me with the business. I’ve systemized everything, but that happened very recently, about six months ago. Up until six months ago, I was doing everything completely alone. I had help editing and filming, but other than that, just all the operations and stuff was me. Now that I have partners, being in the content is as much as I do, and I meet with my partners once every week. SuperBonsai, I have partners over there as well where they handle a lot of the business stuff. I still have to lead the vision and the marketing, which is very tough, of course. Then I have to star in content for four channels now. Five channels, sorry. I have five channels.
Tubefilter: Okay. Wait. What are the five channels?
Wootak Kim: BarChemistry, then I have my personal brand, which is just my personal page that I post health content to. Sometimes I’ll post a vlog or a behind-the-scenes or I do TikTok trends. Then I make content for Under the Influence, which is my podcast. We also do non-podcast content. We do traveling vlogs, challenges, and all those things. I also lead the creative vision on all that content as well. Then I have SuperBonsai, which is we make like– The name SuperBonsai, it’s very video gamey, comic book-y. The feeling we want to impart in our content is that these natural compounds can feel like superpowers. We name all our products after superpowers where our content feels very video gamey and like NPC-style, very uncanny valley of us playing these video game characters. Those four. Then also I make drinking content across all these other auxiliary accounts as well for SuperBonsai.
Tubefilter: You’re not busy at all.
Wootak Kim: Not even a little bit.
Tubefilter: That’s wild. What does the average week look like in terms of allocating your time?
Wootak Kim: It’s a lot of meetings nowadays. Monday, I try to put all my meetings as best as possible. Monday, I also do a 36-hour fast once a week. I stop eating Sunday dinnertime and then I’ll eat again Tuesday lunch or morning. Today is my first time I’m going to eat since Sunday. Then Monday, I have every single meeting from 11:00 AM till 9:00 PM. Then Tuesdays, I’ll usually film. It’s usually a BarChemistry film day. Wednesday, I’ll usually film for my personal channel. Then Thursdays is either I’m just reviewing content all day or I’ll have some social plans at night or just more meetings. Then Friday is podcast day.
I’ll have a meeting in the morning and then I’ll shoot. Luckily, I shoot the podcast in my own living room. My co-hosts come over and that’s also an all-day endeavor because we’ll have to usually shoot some type of promotional TikToks. We’ll shoot the podcast. We’ll shoot some exclusive content and that’ll take up four or five hours. Probably eat with them after. It’s also Friday night. I enjoy having a social life. Sometimes I like to go out. Saturday, it’s more of admin stuff. Probably by then, a lot of the videos are ready for review. Lots of reviewing, lots of following up on my team and my editors, and all that just to see where videos are.
Then Sunday is I try to rest and relax, but usually, there has to be some form of admin work or I have to schedule a photoshoot. It’s a lot of last-minute things, too, because of the nature of there’s three startup-ish businesses where everyone’s trying to do the most they can at all times. Lots of things come up, but that’s usually how it goes.
Tubefilter: I am glad that you mentioned something, though, because people in the thick of things tend to be like, “Oh, I never sleep or I never go out. I never see my family.” It’s nice that you’re like, “Hey, I know I’ve got to have a social life. I need to go out. I need to get the hell out of here.”
Wootak Kim: I tried that when I first started BarChemistry. Gary Vee is the reason why I even know about TikTok. I was watching a lot of him. While I still love and have respect for him, and I actually don’t think he pushes the toxic way of hustle culture, but there’s definitely a toxic hustle culture. I was trying to live that where I was like, don’t go out, don’t have friends, who needs that when I can work, blah, blah, blah. I did that for so long, like months and months and months. It’s definitely depressing. I definitely don’t agree with enjoying too many fruits of your labor if you’re not where you want to be yet. To enjoy none of it is like, I’m only this age forever. I’m only going to be doing these types of things to have fun forever. I definitely want to enjoy my youth while I can, but still focusing on building the future as the main goal.
Tubefilter: You just released your first product with your holistic company. What are you working toward now across all of your companies, all of your goals for the next year or so? What are you looking to do?
Wootak Kim: I think that they all tie together. I was very lucky where I was building tunnel vision. Then I slowly saw what the end goal could look like. I feel like my body and my actions have just gravitated that way. I have all these channels now. I feel like I’ve become very good at making short-form content, mid-form content, even long-form content. Our YouTube videos are starting to get a lot better as I study that too for Under the Influence. All the brands tie back to SuperBonsai very well, especially our first product being a hangover recovery supplement.
Something I’ve noticed is obviously content sells, but also content backed by a product that is your own and that you believe in is, I think, the best way for a creator to exist rather than selling out your platform for whatever brand deal can come because you need to pay your bills, too. I’m not against creators taking brand deals, of course. I’m a creator that takes brand deals. Often times you’ll have to take a brand deal that you don’t necessarily care about the product or the company or align with their values simply because of bills. Everyone’s got to pay bills.
For me, if I have my own business that everything I do is something I believe in because it is me, then I can 100% stay true to myself, and I want all my content channels to point back to my own businesses rather than having to sell ad space always. Obviously, I’ll still do that because I still need to pay bills, but down the line, that’s how I envision it.
Tubefilter: Perfect. What has been your favorite part of this whole being online experience? This whole content experience?
Wootak Kim: Definitely the fact that I feel like I’ve made a difference in people’s lives. When I wasn’t a creator, and I would hear creators saying that all the time, it would be creators I looked up to that would make really impactful content. When I was making funny bartending videos, I would get those types of comments, and I’m like, “Wow.” Even with stuff like this, people really feel motivated, or they feel that I inspire them.
Then with the podcast, though, it was really when I felt like I started to have a genuine purpose in affecting other people, where I would share my story and the trauma that I’ve been through and how I defeated it or how I came from low-income family, immigrant, DACA, all these things to here, and there’s a lot of people that feel that these are such humongous roadblocks to them and their life. Seeing somebody come from a similar situation, doing the things they may want to do, and sharing that information to them definitely really affects them. People come out to our in-person events and they’re trembling at meeting me.
I’m like, “Dude, the fact that you’re so moved and you have all these things to say about how I’ve helped you, that really puts perspective to me and feels like I’m doing the right thing and I’m where I’m supposed to be.”
Tubefilter: Okay, last question. Make me a drink.
Wootak Kim: Okay. What do you enjoy drinking, first of all, spirit-wise?
Tubefilter: Okay, so, I don’t usually drink. [laughs]
Wootak Kim: [laughs] That’s good information, actually.
Tubefilter: I’m 30 years old. I got drunk for the first time this Thanksgiving because my partner’s dad bought very expensive vodka for us. So I have enjoyed vodka. I like tequila. I have enjoyed sangrias in the past, margaritas, very basic. My default, if somebody were to ask me to order at a bar I don’t know, I would ask for a vodka cranberry.
Wootak Kim: Wow. You enjoy fruity drinks. I’m sure you don’t like the taste of alcohol too much. I remember you saying that you liked the muscat grape flavor?
Tubefilter: I do.
Wootak Kim: I would definitely make you a fruity– It’s called “spirit subtle,” where you’re trying to mask the taste of the alcohol rather than let it shine.
Tubefilter: I like the taste of soju.
Wootak Kim: You like soju? Yes. Perfect. Boom. Let’s do a little bit of tequila. I would do one ounce of tequila. Then just to give it a little bit of strength because you want your cocktail to work and not have to drink nine of them for it to work. I also feel like because you don’t drink, we don’t need too much. Then we’ll do another ounce of green grape soju simply because you like the flavors. Maybe I would muddle some muscat grapes with a little bit of lemon juice. I would do some kind of sweetener, so maybe like a vanilla syrup, just to add a little bit of that vanilla creamy flavor to round out the fruitiness.
I would muddle the grapes, shake it up with some ice, strain it out into a collins glass, and then I would top it with either– Actually, let me also add Yakult in there. Have you had Yakult?
Tubefilter: Yes! I love Yakult.
Wootak Kim: Delicious, goes really well with fruity stuff and soju as well. Toss that in there. Shake that up. Strain it into a tall glass. Add some club soda to give it some carbonation, ice, garnish that with a muscat grape, and all you.
Tubefilter: That sounds delicious. Thank you very much.
Wootak Kim: It would be very delicious. I might make that.
Tubefilter: You should. I feel like now I have to make it too. All that’s very easily available where I live.
Wootak Kim: Yes. Now you have that recipe.
Tubefilter: Yes. Thank you very much. Delicious. I don’t know how people survive without Yakult. It’s very good.
Wootak Kim: It’s so good. I’m glad it’s become super popular in the States.
Tubefilter: Okay, actual last question. Anything else you want people to know about you?
Wootak Kim: I think I’ve covered the most important points. I immigrated to this country. It’s given me a lot of opportunity for sure. I think that I was in a situation where it was very easy to feel like it was impossible to get out of. I think keeping the right input going into my mind, like reading books, listening to people who are motivational rather than doomful, I don’t know, like negative. Having a lot of positive input and constantly educating myself definitely gave me the tools in my arsenal that allowed me to change my life into the way that I wanted it to go.
