The Siblings of KREW Talk Success, KREW EATS and Making Their Parents Proud

Siblings Betty, Kim, Kat, Wenny and Allen are better known collectively as KREW, beloved for their creative and family-friendly variety gaming content and their love for each other, which shows in everything they do together.

The children of Vietnamese immigrants, the siblings spent much of their childhood helping out their parents by working in their family restaurant, and would spend their free time playing their favorite games together. They'd often make skits together featuring these games' characters, and when they decided to start sharing these skits on YouTube, they realized they had something special on their hands.

Their videos started taking off, creating not just an outlet for the siblings, but a way to support their family and change their lives forever. The five still work together, but now creating videos as one of the most successful gaming groups on YouTube, with each member playing an important role both in front of and behind the camera. We got the chance to chat with the siblings to discuss everything from their incredible success story to their love of family and their KREW EATS mobile game, and here's what they shared with us.

Sweety High: Can you tell us a little bit about how you all got your starts in the gaming space?

Wenny: Growing up, we always loved playing video games. We would even make funny skits with game characters while playing. So we thought, why not post these videos to YouTube? Our Minecraft roleplay series became a viral hit. Kat didn't want to post the first episode initially, but Kim convinced her to. We were scared if anyone was even going to like the video, but so many fans kept asking, "When's the next episode?"

Kim: I remember when we made our first $1000 on YouTube. I think that was the biggest eye-opening moment for us. It really put things into perspective that we could actually make a career out of doing something we loved together—needless to say, we haven't stopped since.

 

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SH: What would you say is each member's "role" in KREW? 

Allen: We all have our own individual roles to help keep the channel running because what we do is so much more than just recording and uploading—we're basically running a business together. Betty is our manager, who makes sure all the day-to-day tasks get handled. After we record, I begin the process of editing down the content and really trimming it to the key portions of the video. From there, Kim continues the editing process, while also adding in some "sparkle," as she likes to call it. Kat and Wenny both create our thumbnails and add in the fun effects, backgrounds and whatnot that you see in each video. And finally, once that's all put together, Kat will do one last review of the video, just to make sure everything looks good. It's a process, but we've got it down to a science!

 

SH: Where did you each get your nicknames?

Betty: I think rainbows make people happy, so PaintingRainbows is about creating joy.

Kim: GoldenGlare—I love the color gold and thought it would be so cool if there was a superhero character that had a gold glare.

Kat: When I was younger, I thought I was funny and I'm Canadian so I put eh at the end to create ItsFunneh.

Wenny: Lunar—I love the lunar eclipse. When I was making my username on Minecraft it said username available and I was so excited that I forgot to spell-check. So now my username is Lunareclispe.

Allen: Draco—I liked minerals and ores at the time and found a really cool ore called draconite and I also liked dragons so that's how DraconiteDragon came to be.

 

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SH: What does the word "KREW" mean to you?

Betty: When it's all said and done, we created this amazing career together, as a family—as a "KREW." We all know we wouldn't be here, doing what we love every single day, if it wasn't for each other. But what makes our name even cooler is the way it's evolved over the years. What started out as a name that referred to just us, the KREW siblings, has since grown to reflect a huge community. Nowadays, KREW is made up of so much more than just the five of us – the millions of our fans who support us around the globe, our KREWFAM.

Kat: Also, people ask us all the time, "Why 'KREW,' with a 'K'?" It's pretty simple, honestly. We knew we wanted a name that represented us as a group, but we also wanted it to feel unique. We played around with different words that would fit, but we really liked the word "crew." Since Kim and I both have names that start with "K," we replaced the "C" with our favorite letter, and it just stuck.

 

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SH: In the mostly male-dominated field of gaming content creation, what does it mean to you that your group of four sisters and one brother has been able to find such success?

KREW: It means a lot to us that we have received so much support and love from our fans. There is so much content out there and we feel grateful that our fans choose to spend their time watching our videos.

 

SH: Can you tell us about KREW EATS? What's the game all about, and why was it important for you to involve your background with/love of food in it?

Betty: When we found out it was a possibility to create a game of our own, we immediately knew we wanted to do it, but it was also extremely important to us that whatever we made be uniquely ours, a true KREW game.

Kim: We grew up working in our family's restaurant, so food has always been a huge part of our lives—and all five of us are "foodies." It just made sense that food would be the cornerstone of our game. And the dream for any foodie is eating as much of your favorite dishes as you want, without any consequences. We brought that dream to life in KREW EATS.

Wenny: It's basically an epic eating adventure. Fans get to pick which KREW member they want to play as in the game (all five of us are featured in the game as cool avatars), then they travel to different locations with each level, trying to eat all the food items at every spot—but like real life, the more dishes you eat, the harder it gets to consume them!

Allen: And that's just the beginning. To celebrate our one-year anniversary of launching KREW EATS, we've been working on a lot of exciting updates that will be rolling out soon. We actually just launched the first "taste" of what's to come earlier this month with a new game mode called KREW Kitchen. It's a whole new experience within the game that lets players collect some of our favorite recipes and gather ingredients to master making each of these dishes in their own kitchens in KREW EATS.

 

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SH: What has it meant to you all to be able to make a name for yourselves, while also supporting your family in such an incredible way?

Kat: It doesn't feel real at times. We worked really hard to get where we are now, but the reason we have the work ethic we do is because of our parents. Growing up, they did everything they could to support us, and they've always been our biggest cheerleaders in everything we do. To now have the ability to give back to them and lift that weight off their shoulders, just knowing that their kids have found our own lane of success, and then repay them for all they've done for us, is pretty amazing.

 

SH: What's something that KREW is super proud of but doesn't get to brag about enough?

Kim: Something we are very proud of is when we were just starting the channel we made a good amount of money and the first thing we planned to spend the money on was a plane ticket for our parents' first vacation so they could take a break from working at the family business. We filled up a big jar with sand and made a mini beach display in it. Bought the tickets and surprised them. It was a lot of fun!

 

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