Andrew and Peggy Cherng

Birthname

Andrew and Peggy Cherng

Profession

CEO

Net worth

$4,300,000,000

Source of Wealth

Panda Restaurant Group

Nationality

Americans

Marital Status

married

Andrew & Peggy Cherng are the co-CEO's of Panda Express and they have an accumulated net worth of $4.3 billion as of June 2016 according to Forbes. They are ranked 239th in the “Forbes 400” list and 736th in the World Billionaires list.

The Cherng couple earned their estimated net worth of $2 billion as the co-founder of the chain of casual Chinese food restaurants. Andrew immigrated to the United States from China in 1966 with little money. Along with his father who was trained as a master chef in Japan, they opened a sit down Chinese restaurant called Panda Inn in 1973 located in Pasadena, California.

Ten years after, Andrew Cherng launched the first Panda Express, a fast casual restaurant in the Glendale Galleria, the second largest mall in Los Angeles. His wife, Peggy, who has a Ph.D. in computer science, left a software development career at 3M and McDonnell Douglas in order to help him run the business. She served as the CEO from 1998 to 2004 but currently, they both share the title.

Panda Express, with $1.6 billion sales in 2011, operates 1,500 restaurants with five franchises in Mexico and 40 licensees. The couple also has a Dry Cleaning partnership with Procter & Gamble called Tide Dry Cleaners. Its first location is in a suburb in Las Vegas.