Business 4 min read By Bethany Hadley
Panda Express co-founder Andrew Cherng says 12-hour days never caused burnout: «That’s life»
Panda Express co-founder Andrew Cherng, 78, says he never experienced burnout despite years of 12-hour workdays, crediting his relentless work ethic for building a nearly $7 billion restaurant chain with his wife Peggy.
Andrew Cherng, the 78-year-old co-founder and co-CEO of Panda Express, has dismissed the modern preoccupation with work-life balance, saying he never suffered burnout even after years of working 12-hour days. Asked recently by NBC News how he avoided burnout while building the largest Asian-American restaurant chain in the United States, Cherng replied that relentless work was simply part of life.
«It was hard when I had no business, there was no income,» he said. «But even then, I wasn’t burned out because, you just work, go to work, and [if] you have a like a 12-hour day, you go home, you sleep well—I mean that’s life.» That mindset, he said, helped him and his wife, Peggy, turn a single family-run restaurant into a global chain generating nearly $7 billion in annual revenue over five decades. The couple’s combined net worth is estimated at $6.6 billion.
Cherng’s comments come as younger workers, particularly Gen Z, increasingly rank time away from work above pay in some surveys. Yet he and other prominent founders argue that an all-consuming approach to work has been essential to their success. Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang has said he works from the moment he wakes up until he goes to sleep, seven days a week, a commitment that helped turn the company into one of the world’s most valuable, with a market capitalisation above $5.5 trillion. Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post, has similarly said that people with engaging jobs cannot simply shut their laptops at 5 p.m., while musician Will.i.am has told Fortune that aspiring entrepreneurs should pursue «dream-reality balance» rather than work-life balance.
Cherng’s own journey began in Yangzhou, China, where he was born in 1948. His family fled to Taiwan when he was five and later moved to Japan. He eventually came to the United States to study mathematics at Baker University in Kansas, where he met Peggy, a Burmese-born student who would become his wife and business partner. The couple later earned master’s degrees from the University of Missouri. Andrew recalled working in restaurants during holidays in New York, an experience that shaped his ambition. «My father was a chef but hadn’t owned his own business. I didn’t like that. In my heart of hearts, I knew I wanted to be in business,» he told Fortune in 2013.
After a year working for his cousin in California for $800 a month, Cherng decided to strike out on his own with his parents. The family pooled $60,000 from savings and a Small Business Administration loan to open Panda Inn in Pasadena in 1973. «The whole family—my parents, a brother and sister—all worked at the restaurant for free,» he recalled. «We lived in a two-bedroom apartment in San Gabriel and didn’t have any money. Peggy would come to visit, and we got married in 1975.»
The first Panda Express opened in a Glendale shopping mall in 1983, and the concept expanded rapidly. In 1985, the chain grew from five locations to nine in a single year. Today, Panda Express operates more than 2,600 locations worldwide and employs over 55,000 people. In 2025 alone, the chain served 148 million pounds of its signature orange chicken. Notably, the Cherngs built the empire without ever taking money from outside investors.
