Yvonne and Mike Thompson are restaurant owners who started their small business in Pounding Mill, Virginia. Their restaurant, Cuz’s, surprised their small coal mining neighborhood with Southern American and Chinese American fusion food. Yvonne was born in Hong Kong and moved to Missouri for college. During school, she worked at her uncle’s Chinese American restaurant in the south. She learned many recipes and techniques for him. When Yvonne and Mike met, they decided to fuse their recipes together and created Cuz’s Uptown Barbeque.