Starting a new restaurant can feel like surfing a tsunami. Luckily, the cousin-cousin culinary team behind Snacky Mini Mart has a great sense of balance. Sandy and Vivian Pei launched their pan-Asian food stall at the Iowa City Farmers Market in spring 2023, cooking under a red canopy and hand-painted signs made by Sandy, one in the shape of a surfboard, another spray-painted onto a tapestry of The Great Wave off Kanagawa, that iconic Japanese art print.