Rank #612
Peggy Cherng
Net worth $6.5B
Fast food · United States
- Born
- Dec 18, 1947
- Age
- 78
- Source
- Fast food
- Residence
- Las Vegas, Nevada
- Citizenship
- United States
- Marital status
- Married
- Children
- 3
- Education
- Bachelor of Arts/Science, Oregon State University; Master of Science, University of Missouri; Ph.D, University of Missouri
Net worth over time
Biography
- Peggy Cherng is cofounder and co-CEO of Panda Express, the $6.2 billion (est. sales) Chinese fast-food chain with some 2,500 locations.
- Born in Myanmar, Cherng got a Ph.D. in electrical engineering in the U.S., then went to work for 3M and McDonnell Douglas, where she helped design battlefield simulators for the U.S. Navy.
- She left her engineering career to help her husband, Andrew Cherng, open Panda Express' first location in a Glendale, California, shopping mall in 1983.
- She implemented the company's sales and analytics software, earlier than many other restaurants, helping make Panda Express the dominant player among Asian limited-service chains in America.
- In 2018, the Cherngs invested in a group that bought the Mandarin Oriental hotel, now the Waldorf Astoria, in Las Vegas for $214 million.
- The Cherngs' Panda Restaurant Group is also the sole U.S. franchisee of Japanese cheesecake chain Uncle Tetsu and runs all the Raising Cane's in Hawaii and Alaska.
- For her 1974 doctoral thesis, Cherng developed a computer program that used an algorithm to scan digitized chest X-rays for signs of congenital heart disease.
Financial assets
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