As of September 2023, the United States has approximately 6,340 pho restaurants. Pho has left a deep impression on the Vietnamese community in the United States. According to The Food Institute, if Vietnamese sandwiches are considered the quintessential American dish, pho is becoming increasingly popular.
The secret to a million dollar pho business
Ms. Huyen Nguyen (Helen Nguyen) and Mr. Harry Nguyen are the owners of the Pho Ha Noi brand, which is being mentioned by many American newspapers as a successful example of pho business and helping the community.
When the US was still in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, Huyen Nguyen and the staff of Pho Ha Noi sent thousands of free meals to frontline workers in the Bay Area (California, USA). These were "meals of gratitude" made from organic ingredients, given to doctors and nurses to encourage their spirits.
Ms. Huyen Nguyen and Harry Nguyen stand at the Milpitas pho restaurant with Indochine style design and imported furniture from Vietnam.
After the pandemic, Pho Ha Noi's reputation began to spread further because many newspapers mentioned it. At the same time, Ms. Huyen Nguyen also had the opportunity to get new premises for her pho restaurant, because many restaurants had to return their premises due to difficulties after the Covid-19 pandemic.
Ms. Huyen Nguyen shared the secret of pho restaurants still standing firm and successful after the pandemic: "Many restaurants have not been able to survive because of the economic downturn, having to close, return the premises, and even have few customers, but the three Pho Hanoi restaurants in the Vietnam Town, Cupertino and Palo Alto areas are still crowded with customers, and customers still patiently line up to eat pho. To achieve this, we have tried our best with quality for many years, sourcing fresh meat from local farms."
Specifically, Ms. Huyen Nguyen's Pho Ha Noi restaurant is the only pho restaurant that can buy beef directly from Harris Ranch fresh every week, at a good price, and then have a good price for the pho sold. Not only that, the beef from this farm is black Angus cattle, which gives very delicious meat, so the rare pho at Pho Ha Noi becomes extremely excellent thanks to the use of high-quality meat, and is also famous for the "short-rib" beef pho that is rare in any pho restaurant.
The restaurant space in Milpitas is about to open, very impressive and strange to the American people.
Harris Ranch only sells to restaurants, supermarkets... with large purchasing power, so only Pho Ha Noi and the In-N-Out Burger chain can buy directly. Every day, about 1,200 bowls of pho are sold at each restaurant, and on weekends alone, more than 2,500 bowls of pho are sold each day, with revenue each weekend day reaching up to 1 billion VND.
Shark Louis Nguyen (real name Nguyen The Lu), Chairman of the Board of Directors and General Director of Saigon Assets Management SAM, said he was not surprised by the success of Pho Hanoi in the US, because "they have created a process to complete a bowl of pho in 15 seconds to bring to customers".
Shark Louis Nguyen, who has lived in the US for 30 years and is currently living in Ho Chi Minh City, said that Americans increasingly love Vietnamese pho because it is delicious and nutritious, and the price is not as high as Japanese udon noodles. In Silicon Valley, Pho Hanoi costs from 15 to 20 dollars for a very large bowl, full of meat, noodles, and soup. He emphasized: The fact that Pho Hanoi has a prime pho location in the Palo Alto area on a "money-making" street, near Stanford University, is a sign of their great success.
Pho Hanoi's famous bowl of pho: includes rare beef and short rib.
According to Ms. Huyen Nguyen, to have a bowl of pho "15 to 20 seconds", her husband, Mr. Harry Nguyen, has researched the "pho making" process using many machines to reduce human labor, using a 500-liter bone cooking pot, an onion cutting machine, a meat cutting machine... To complete a bowl of pho, 3 people are needed (standing in the kitchen, picking up noodles, adding meat and pouring broth), operating quickly and rhythmically to have enough capacity to meet the large number of customers.
In the US, lunch break is only about 1 hour, so if the service is not fast, workers will not have enough time to eat lunch at the restaurant. Seeing the line of people waiting every day, Ms. Huyen and Mr. Harry are more determined to research the best possible service so that customers do not have to wait long.
More success by promoting imports from Vietnam to the US
Also due to the difficulties after Covid-19, Ms. Huyen Nguyen has tried every way to reduce costs and increase quality. After the success of three restaurants, she continued to spend money to get new premises that were returned due to lack of customers. The cost of opening a new restaurant in the US is very expensive, so she found a way to design the entire restaurant at a company specializing in high-end restaurant design in Ho Chi Minh City, then transport the entire design and interior of the restaurant to the US by sea.
By returning to choose the advantages from the homeland, Pho Hanoi in the new location in Milpitas will open in January 2024, the fifth one in Fremont will open in April 2024, bringing the number of pho restaurants to 5.
Pho Hanoi restaurant in Palo Alto near Stanford University.
Hanoi pho restaurants are always crowded no matter where they are located.
To get the best aroma for the pho, she stopped buying cinnamon, star anise, and cardamom spices for cooking pho in the US and imported them from Vietnam, so the already fragrant pot of pho is now even more fragrant.
She also tries to buy as many other ingredients in Vietnam as possible for her restaurant. This way, the quality of the dishes is higher and retains more Vietnamese flavor while saving more money than buying them in the US.
With the speed of restaurant opening and cost optimization, Huyen Nguyen and Harry Nguyen's goal of selling 1 million bowls of pho by 2025 is expected to soon come true. The mayor and police chief of San Jose, as well as the mayor of Fremont, always create favorable conditions and help Pho Ha Noi because of its valuable contributions to the city.
The name Pho Ha Noi in the US was given to the restaurant to emphasize the origin of pho from Hanoi. The taste of Pho Ha Noi restaurant tries to keep the taste of Northern pho, but still has a Southern flavor because it adds a little sugar and serves pho with vegetables and bean sprouts if the customer requests.
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