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Motor Trend
05-05-2025
- Automotive
- Motor Trend
How Mercedes CMO Melody Lee Is Selling an Idea, Not a Car
Join MotorTrend in our celebration of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Each week, you'll hear from the incredible people who have left their mark on the automotive industry. Building cars is an old business, and right behind that is the business of selling them. Melody Lee doesn't sell cars, per se. Because as Mercedes-Benz North America's straight-talking chief marketing officer, tasked with changing intangibles like brand perception and awareness, she's pushing for the more abstract. Obviously, the end goal of any for-profit company is to make the profit arrow go up and to the right, and that's perhaps even more true for well-established companies. After all, it's how they've managed to stay in business for a long time, and Mercedes' history can be traced back nearly 140 years. But Lee has the luxury (and challenge) of working beyond simply convincing you to buy the latest E-Class. Leave the relentless selling of cars to the startups. It's her job to preserve what's come before her—and to influence today's brand and products so they'll be around for 140 years more. Taking a Seat at the Table You've probably seen some of what Lee does even if you don't know it. She and her team are responsible for developing commercial social media, establishing dealership marketing, organizing consumer and branded events, and expanding Mercedes' overall digital experience. Throughout all that, Lee has made sure to position her company alongside multicultural leaders to make creative decisions. See All 7 Photos Mercedes-Benz's The Table event, held in NYC at the end of 2024. After Lee's team came up with the idea, Mercedes has held an event called The Table where a curated list of guests participate in an evening of cultural experiences and discussion. The inaugural event took place in Los Angeles and featured Black artists and creators such as Alicia Keys, Andra Day, and Ayoni. A more recent one in New York City (at which MotorTrend was in attendance) hosted Asian American actors such as John Cho and BD Wong, with Lee acting as the evening's emcee. The menu was designed and catered by a local Asian American restaurateur. All the products and fragrances used were Asian heritage-inspired and from an AAPI-owned brand. No one was expected to sign the paperwork on a new Benz by the evening's end. So, what was the point? See All 7 Photos Lee acting as emcee at The Table. 'It's good business sense,' Lee told MotorTrend in a recent interview. She broke it down further. 'One hundred percent of growth in automotive is going to come from multicultural segments. Our traditional segments and audiences are shrinking because the entire makeup of the United States is changing. All our growth is coming from the Black, Hispanic, and Asian American communities. That's where the opportunity is.' But it goes beyond simply pandering to the next target demographic. 'There's a lot multicultural marketing for the sake of saying you do it, being performative, checking a box, or trying to be 'responsible,'' Lee said. 'But for me, it's, 'If we're going to get our growth for multicultural segments, how are we going to tackle that? How are we going to go after it? What are everyone's ideas for doing that?'' See All 7 Photos Lee, pictured with actor John Cho, at The Table. In addition to supporting the local small business owners with Mercedes' checkbook, Lee wants to provide an authentic experience that focuses on these communities in a way that Mercedes might not have before, and to start a conversation with these audiences that comes from a place where they might not be used to being engaged by the brand. Even if it means just starting to build the relationship by inviting people to something like The Table. 'If I got you to think a little bit differently about Mercedes-Benz,' Lee said, 'that's a great first step.' Risks, Challenges, and Achievements Mercedes isn't Lee's first foray into the luxury automotive segment. From 2012 to 2017, she was the director of brand marketing at Cadillac, hired to inject some fresh life and youth into the then 110-year-old brand. She was there when Cadillac made its huge and controversial move from Michigan to Manhattan. At just 31 years old at the time, Lee was certainly one of the youngest executives General Motors had ever hired. And that came with a whole bag of challenges. 'I was like a fish out of water,' she said. 'I was born and raised in Texas and moved to Detroit. I had never worked in automotive, never worked in marketing. My entire career at that point had all been crisis and financial communications. And there I was, wandering the hallways of this very traditional automotive company. I was young and Asian, and I didn't know cars the way all these guys did. It was a bit of an alien experience.' GM is widely known for its insular and conservative corporate culture, and Lee spoke about not being taken seriously when voicing a differing opinion. 'I was frequently asked in the Renaissance Center elevators if I was an intern for the company or how my summer internship was going,' she said. 'There was a lot of ... criticism [I heard] that I just 'didn't understand' because I wasn't an engineer or designer.' Not all of Lee's ideas were popular. People thought she and her team (also made up of a bunch of GM outsiders) were doing unnecessary things for the brand. 'There was a lot of pushing water uphill,' Lee said. 'But sometimes, when you've been around for a long time, you gotta try unnecessary things.' A few things Lee did manage to get through was the opening of Cadillac House, Cadillac's flashy SoHo showroom, as well as the brand becoming a sponsor of the inaugural New York Fashion Week: Men's event in 2016. Designer J. Mendel even showed its collection at Cadillac House during NYFW. 'We started to try to move ourselves into arts, culture, and fashion in a way that Cadillac really had not participated in in a long time,' Lee said. 'We [attempted] to position the brand as one that people wanted to be a part of and associated with.' But perhaps the thing Lee is most proud of is Book by Cadillac, a vehicle leasing subscription service. 'I know subscription is still controversial, and I know a lot of people say it just flat out didn't work,' she said. 'But I think the success of it was it taught us a lot about consumer preferences and behaviors when it comes to buying a car.' Ultimately, GM sent Cadillac packing back to Michigan, and the Book program was halted at the end of 2018. But from a 2025 perspective, perhaps Book was ahead of its time. Subscriptions are now more the norm than ever, and the practice has expanded to a ton of other automakers. 'I don't know the last time the Germans followed an American company into anything, but in the case of vehicle subscription, they did,' Lee pointed out. 'Mercedes, BMW, Porsche—they all followed Cadillac in that regard.' Lee was at Cadillac for six years before departing in 2018 for stints at Shiseido, Herman Miller, and MillerKnoll before joining Mercedes. Looking back, she's very proud of what she and her team were able to accomplish. 'I built a really strong relationship with the engineers and the designers,' she said. 'I think I was able to illustrate if marketing wasn't there to help build and keep a strong brand, nobody would know about the products they put their hearts and souls into. The symbiotic relationship between brand and product became illustrative of my own internal relationship with the people who actually worked on the cars.' Yet she also acknowledges it wasn't a perfect time. 'I made a lot of mistakes, to be honest,' she said. 'I was very opinionated, very precocious. I definitely had opinions without even thinking about why something might have happened or really understanding the context and the background.' Like for every executive just starting out, the challenging early jobs yield some of the greatest lessons. And Lee certainly doesn't regret her time at GM: 'I'm still rooting for Cadillac.' Building Toward a More Equitable Future Lee didn't think anything of taking on a colossal job like Cadillac. She owes her outlook and work ethic to how she was raised. 'It's the Asian upbringing of overachievement, punching above weight, working really hard, and never, never giving up,' she said. 'All those values came into play and really helped me out. I might joke about my tiger mom but, man, some of the values and practices she instilled in me did come in handy in my career.' To give back to the community, Lee has been on the board of Apex for Youth for the past four years, which is a New York–based nonprofit that empowers Asian American youth from immigrant and low-income backgrounds. 'It's about offering generational change for the Asian community,' Lee said. 'Helping children is core and fundamental to what Apex for Youth does, but for me, there's a much loftier goal: If we can unlock their potential, help them see their way through a mental health crisis, or get them mentorship, it can really create a more equitable future. If you can change the trajectory of an Asian child's life, it will shift the generation going forward.'
Forbes
02-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
An Edible Ode To Art Nouveau: Merchant Roots' New ‘In Bloom' Menu Redefines Edible Flowers
Jasmine Tea Smoked Duck Merchant Roots has long carved out a special niche in San Francisco's dining landscape—an intimate culinary theater where imagination and fine dining converge. Since opening in 2018 as a hybrid artisanal market and café, the concept quickly evolved under Owner/ Chef Ryan Shelton's direction. 'After years of being the chef at restaurants that were always trying to be bigger, open more hours, more a la carte options, full cafe and bar offerings, I realized that what I wanted to offer was something different,' Chef Shelton says. 'I just wanted to create an intimate space where I could cook something I was proud of and present it to the guest myself.' By 2019, Merchant Roots had fully transitioned to a destination for highly creative, themed tasting menus hosted at 'The Table at Merchant Roots,' a communal experience for just eight guests per evening built around storytelling themes. The first one? Elements, where each course embodied a celestial force. Themed, experiential dinners quickly gained a loyal following, leading Chef Shelton to close the café and focus entirely on The Table—building the momentum that eventually fueled Merchant Roots' expansion to a new SoMa location in August 2024. Now, with its new location, Merchant Roots continues to redefine experiential dining with its latest menu, In Bloom. The premise is simple: an entire, beautiful menu built around edible flowers. But at Merchant Roots, flowers aren't just tossed on as a last-minute garnish—they take center stage. Diners experience the full spectrum of floral potential, from nuanced, aromatic sauces made with jasmine and rose to hearty courses showcasing flowering vegetables like artichokes, cauliflower, and asparagus. Triple Black Sea Bream Each dish pushes the guest to rethink the role of edible blooms, highlighting their flavor, complexity, and unexpected versatility. For example, the centerpiece course is a Jasmine Tea Smoked Duck which features jasmine tea glazed duck; duck and jasmine pho; chioggia beet pickles; jasmine candy and milk pudding; and chrysanthemum leaves. This course is served in three dishes, presented with a mini gold greenhouse that's filled with billowing jasmine tea 'smoke' from a bronze watering canister. For Chef Shelton, the theatrical aspect of the experience isn't just aesthetic or for vanity—it's essential to deepening the connection between diner and dish. 'I've always considered guest engagement to be the 'secret sauce' of a dining experience,' he explains. 'If I can connect dishes in a way that the guest either anticipates or remembers after the fact, the menu becomes more vivid to them.' Rather than relying on unexpected ingredient combinations, Merchant Roots crafts menus designed to evoke memory, nostalgia, and retroactive enjoyment—making the dining experience resonate long after the final course. Past menus have transported guests through mushroom-centric foraging journeys in enchanted forests, Victorian novels, monochromatic adventures through all the colors of the rainbow, and Wonka-style candyland fantasies, but In Bloom offers a more grounded, sensory journey through nature's fleeting beauty. It's another powerful example of how Merchant Roots, fueled by creativity and a dedication to meaningful guest engagement, continues to evolve past the traditional tasting menu format—and remains one of San Francisco's most captivating culinary experiences. Spring Picnic As the team at Merchant Roots developed In Bloom, they found themselves drawn to the philosophy that cooking, much like art, is a kind of alchemy—a transformation of ingredients, techniques, and influences into a sensory experience greater than the sum of its parts. The idea of challenging and expanding diners' perceptions of edible flowers sparked an exploration not just of flavor, but of presentation and meaning. In seeking a creative framework, they found inspiration in the Art Nouveau movement, which similarly sought to integrate form and function in a way that honored the natural world. Just as Art Nouveau offered a striking departure from the rigid, revivalist styles of the 19th century, In Bloom reimagines how flowers can function in cuisine—going beyond simple decoration to become a central, transformative element of each dish. We chatted with Chef Ryan Shelton on his unique restaurant and dining concept, legacy menus, the creative process and more. Here's what he had to say. I've always considered guest engagement to be the 'secret sauce' of a dining experience. If I can connect dishes in a way that the guest either anticipates or remembers after the fact, the menu becomes more vivid to them. Merchant Roots rarely relies on using novel ingredient combinations, instead, we tend to build dishes on flavors that will trigger memory and incorporate retroactive enjoyment. It's a bit of a trick, but the kind that benefits guest and chef alike. The theatrical theme has been a potent tool for us in achieving this, and it has driven us past the traditional tasting menu format. In terms of Merchant Roots' origins—after years of being the chef at restaurants that were always trying to be bigger, open more hours, more a la carte options, full cafe and bar offerings, I realized that what I wanted to offer was something different. I just wanted to create an intimate space where I could cook something I was proud of and present it to the guest myself. Hummingbird Wanting to create this boutique mercantile which showcased the roots of my craft was what inspired the name. The original plan was to focus on food retail, (fresh pasta, charcuterie, jams… etc.) but knowing my background in fine dining, we envisioned periodic themed series where we could flex on some tasting menus. As demand for our fine dining series grew, (and the fun we had creating them) Merchant Roots evolved to what it is today. I had the unique opportunity to attend an Art School which had a Culinary program as part of its offerings. Unlike most culinary schools, this meant I had to take classes like Art History and Color Theory. I've always found the material fascinating. Knowing that different cultures perceive colors differently due to language and shared experience almost feels a bit like pulling the veil back on reality a bit 'there is no spoon…' Chefs normally take such pains to make dishes colorful, and the existence of monochrome dishes are so boldly antithetical that they have an even more intense emotional resonance. Looking at other monochrome dishes in books and magazines, I always found it weird to see an all-white presentation plated in a splashy or violent manner. Likewise, it seems odd to me to see an overly manicured or geometric dish in all green. Our goal was to create a menu of monochrome dishes presented in harmony with their emotional nature, in style and flavor. We had served this menu as a meal kit during the pandemic, which takes a lot of recipe practice and refinement, so we knew it would be a strong menu with which to start at our new space. A dish from Color Theory We design dishes as a team in quarterly brainstorming sessions. Our creative process always starts with the theme. First we break the theme out into its various components. Then we list feelings, emotions, aesthetic styles, and flavors that can accompany each color. We then look at the grouping of ingredients and descriptors and try and conceive of a dish that fits. The amount of iterations varies—for example, our Black course (a mirror-glazed Black Forest moussecake) was pretty much done in one iteration. Alternatively, we had to try 10 or more completely different ideas over the course of months before we found something to suit Blue. This ultimately became a blue corn grit soufflé with crab and caviar. Blue is probably one of my favorite dishes on that menu now—I love that it manages to feel novel and familiar at the same time. I also love the freeze-dried spinach fonduta flower pot that we made for Green. It's a technique that we developed in house and I think it's pretty special. I think the strongest move we've made to strike this balance comes from the fact that we all take turns in service. As a chef, when you are stuck in a traditional kitchen - a stainless steel box in the back, it's hard not to get trapped in all the little imperfections of the food and slowly lose yourself to frustration. By keeping our kitchen exposed to the dining room and allowing the chefs to share the floor with guests, we can break down those barriers and have an opportunity to feel like we are a part of the party. It makes it hard to take yourself too seriously. Milk & Honey We say that the themes we choose represent restaurants that don't exist and could never exist again. We hope to select narrow pie slices of culture, shared experience, or the natural world and explore them to the fullest. Our menus are the product of nine months of brainstorming, R&D, and revision, though we only serve them for 3 months. We've taken these opportunities to immerse ourselves fully in Color Theory, Pasta & Stories, Summer in 42 Plates… etc. We've tried to make immersion easy for our guests with conversation starters on the table during their dinner and a list of continued experiences on the back of our menus. We hope, in addition to a delicious and satisfying meal, that our guests end up with a bit of thematic food-for-thought.
