LYNNWOOD—Beloved Bellevue-based dumpling house Dough Zone has taken their delicious, and cultural, dumplings to local schools through a new program called Bao Buddies which takes dumpling making classes, educational cultural events, and fundraising to local schools throughout Washington and beyond.
The Bao Buddies Program is a way to give back to the communities who have supported Dough Zone over the years, the company said. It involves holding fundraiser Dine Out Nights, dumpling making classes for students of all ages, Lunar New Year Cultural Presentations, Storytelling and Cultural Kits, and school festival booths.
The dumpling making classes take place twice a month, where dedicated Dough Zone staff bring supplies (filling and fresh dough) to local schools, teach kids how to make bao while learning about its history, and of course – enjoy delicious food. The Bao Buddies program has already visited Martha Lake Elementary in Lynnwood.
While Dumpling Making Classes are educationally focused, the Dine Out Nights, on the other hand, is centered on fundraising. Students from a partnering school can dine out at a Dough Zone restaurant on a particular day and 10% of all money raised that day go back to the school to be used for whatever they need.
Community projects are extremely important to Dough Zone, said Nancy Yun, Marketing Manager for Dough Zone USA, and being involved with schools is something the dumpling house has done since its founding in 2014.
Dough Zone’s more recent Bao Buddies Program, on the other hand, is a fairly new program that launched November of 2025. In just four months Dough Zone has already partnered with 30 local schools, and over 500 students, through the Boa Buddies program.
“Last year I decided it is time for us to not reach out to schools, it’s time for schools to reach out to us, so I created this program in the fall. We had a huge response with 200 schools reach out to us,” said Yun. “We knew we wanted to try to do dumpling classes, we knew we wanted to get involved in fundraisers, and we also want to do creative things like school fairs…We really are trying to increase how much community involvement we do and our main giving is schools. That’s our core.”
Being a new program, Dough Zone is open to more creative ideas for the future.
The Bao Buddies program is currently only available in Washington State but the dumpling house plans to expand to Oregon, Texas, and California later.
“My goal is to eventually keep expanding, and to keep growing this program. We just want to work with schools in any capacity, so bring us some great ideas and maybe, hopefully, we can get involved,” said Yun.
The application process is extremely simple for interested schools, Yun added. All it consists of is visiting www.doughzonedumplinghouse.com/bao-buddies-school-program, filling out a series of questions, and the school should hear back within a week.
“We want students to learn about what dumplings are and have an education that food is culture. I feel like a lot of times it depends on what area you grew up in, what the diversity is like, but we’re just trying to spread diversity and show people that what you eat is your culture and we want to bring that to our community,” said Yun.
Separate to the Bao Buddies Program, Yun was excited to announce that Dough Zone will be opening two new locations soon – one in Vancouver, Washington and the other in Pruneyad, California.
Partnering schools of Dough Zone’s Bao Buddies program include:
Other participating schools include:
Dumpling Classes Completed:
– Martha Lake Elementary School (Lynnwood)
– Jing Mei Elementary School
– Tukwila Elementary School
Upcoming Dumpling Classes:
– Maplewood Heights Elementary School
– Broadview Thomson K-8 School
– Highlands Elementary School
– Ridgecrest Elementary School
Dine-Out Fundraisers Completed:
– Issaquah Valley Elementary School
– Issaquah High School
– Kent Meridian Cooperative Preschool
– Hope Chinese Charter School
– Talbot Hill Elementary School
– Parkside Montessori School
– The Honor Roll School
Upcoming Dine-Out Fundraisers:
– Glenridge Elementary School
– Maple Hills Elementary School
– Mercer Island School District
– Richmond Elementary School
– Broadview Thomson K-8 School (Lynnwood)
– Crescent Heights Elementary School
– Hazelwood Elementary School
– Leigh High School
About Dough Zone Lynnwood
Dough Zone recently opened its first Snohomish County location last year in Lynnwood, offering delicious, quick, and affordable bites to north end guests for the first time ever.
The Lynnwood Dough Zone location, located at Lynnwood Crossroads at 19702 Highway 99, is one of Dough Zone’s largest locations at 5,100 square feet (interior of 4,265 sq ft and 848 sq ft).
“Dough Zone Lynnwood has been going really strong, especially since T&T opened which has been drawing a lot more people,” Yun told the Lynnwood Times.
Though Dough Zone does offer traditional dim sum dishes it hesitates to call itself solely a dim sum restaurant as it offers a variety of other dishes, ranging from several different areas of Chinese cuisine.
In China, wheat-based dishes (such as bao and noodles) were traditionally served in Northern China – where more wheat was grown – while rice-based dishes were more typically seen in Southern China – where more rice was grown.
While Dough Zone’s namesake is influenced primarily by Northern Chinese food the restaurant chain plans to implement more Southern Chinese, rice-based, dishes in the near future.
Dough Zone offers a variety of small-portioned Chinese comfort foods dishes at affordable prices (every menu item is under $10). The concept is inspired by Chinese dim sum, which is an assortment of small-portioned dishes meant to be shared and typically served with tea. These include Siu Mai (pork and shrimp dumplings), Xiao Long Bao (soup dumplings), noodles, veggies, and an assortment of house specials.
Inspired by dim sum restaurants in China, Dough Zone utilizes a paper menu where patrons check the boxes of what they want to order (and the quantity) and can expect their food delivered within 15 minutes or less. The paper menu is left taped to the side of the table in case customers decide they would like to order more.
The first Dough Zone opened in Bellevue in 2014, founded by husband-and-wife duo Nancy and Jason Zhai. What started as a mom-and-pop operation, with Zhai working in the kitchen and his family and friends working the front of house, has now grown to 27 locations across Washington, Oregon, California, and Texas.
Author: Kienan Briscoe
