Talks of Food, Wine, and Passion
Two weeks ago, we arrived at NewComer Wines, a low lit, cosy wine bar in Dalston, North London, for the VietStartup London event — ‘Starting a business in Food and Drinks’. This was VietStartup’s first ever event dedicated on the topic. We invited 4 young entrepreneurs who have different food and drinks businesses but share the same dedication for what they do. Through them, we learned the twists and turns, difficulties and excitement of the journey of entrepreneurship.
1. NewComer Wines
Our first speaker, who was also our host of the event, was Daniela Pillhofer, co-founder of Newcomer Wines. Daniela is an Austrian native who has a great love for her country’s wines and an entrepreneurial flair. In 2014 while studying at LSE, she started a small retail wine business in Boxpark Shoreditch. Having in mind that most start-ups fail, Daniela saw the business as an opportunity to learn about entrepreneurship. Yet her hard work paid off. Upon graduation in 2015, Daniela worked on her business full time and opened a shop and wine bar in Dalston. Started as an importer of only Austrian wine; she has now expanded to the Swiss, German, Czech, Hungarian and Italian wine market, and supplied to some of the UK’s most regarded culinary places such as Noble Rot Bar & Restaurant, The Clove Club, Sager + Wilde, Marcus Waering, and Fera at Clardige’s, etc.
At VietStartup event, she gave 5 key takeaways:
Passion — Fall in love. To Daniela, drinking wine is part of her childhood memories and lifestyles. She longed to recreate the cosy atmosphere she had drinking wine over family dinners and with friends in Austria. While not having any qualification about wines, her love for this sophisticated drinks urges her to continuous learn and explore, she talks to every wine growers that she imports and sources her wines with dedication, to bring the best of Austrian wines to the UK.
Think Small — Do something manageable and bootstrap. It’s important to not overthink a business idea when you start. In her example, Daniela trialed opening a small shop in Boxpark Shoreditch, and imported 2000 bottles of wines, an order which she couldn’t grasp the scale of how large it was when placing. So she needed to start selling, fast.
Inspire — Convince your customers. Since she operates in a very niche market (initially selling only Austrian wine), Daniela realised the importance to telling her story and conveying her mission. She was told that the market was so niche, it would not be successful, and nobody would know about Austrian wine. Yet through inspiring her customers, she started to gain attraction and Michelin star restaurants started to knock on her door.
Dedicate — Be prepared for a marathon . Growing too fast can be dangerous, as a business can lose its core while chasing profits. A few times, Daniela had rejected big online retailers approaching.
Scale — Grow and implement structure. One important thing Daniela has learnt is to be more organised at the start. She advised being aware that not everyone on the team would like to be an entrepreneur like you. Therefore, having a structure is essential for sustaining your business. Once the business grows and starts hiring more people, you won’t have time.
2. Market Green
This ‘mini-chain’ of a market stall and 2 restaurants in City area is founded by Ryan Hieu Tran. In a witty, positive, and utterly honest tone, Ryan told us his inspiring story of changing careers and changing directions to finally arrive at his business.
Before opening Market Green, Ryan joined Bank of America Merrill Lynch after graduating from LSE in 2011. After 3 years, he took up a new challenge working for a Vietnamese start up to grow rice in West Africa. Whilst working abroad, the disease Ebola broke out, the start-up he worked for was soon left without a project to run and he became unemployed. During this period, Ryan decided to take a leap of faith to set up a Vietnamese food stall in Camden Town market, something that he had been working on as a side project while at University. Ryan called his mom to inform her of this decision, as an entrepreneur herself, she supported him strongly and invested in his business. Four months later, it was clear the food business life was for him.
On a trip to New York, Ryan came across a shop selling healthy lunches like the concept of ‘Cơm trưa văn phòng’ — The Vietnamese office lunch style. Taking the inspiration, he did more research and decided to change his focus to healthy lunch boxes with 1 portion of carb, 1 portion of protein, and 2 portions of vegetables and target City office workers. Next step, Ryan went looking for an ideal location, and found a spot that costs £70,000 a year. While his mom agreed to invest, the spot was snatched before he could buy. Looking back, Ryan was thankful for the incident as he had to rent a stall as an alternative, which costed £3000 to start, a much more sensible initial investment! So he set up the first Market Green stall in Old Spitalfields Market.
Yet success did not come easy. For the first 3 months , his sales was stagnant, he could only sell around 60 boxes a day, just allowing him to break even. He thought of going back to banking for a higher income. But he took a leap of faith again. He then decided to change the concept by adding a lot more salad to the menu to signify the health promise of his brand. Market Green’s menu extended to 10 salad varieties, Ryan started selling more than 120 boxes a day. Soon after, a stall was not enough. Ryan bought and opened a shop in addition to the market stall after less than 1 year of trading, and recently opened his second shop.
Before the end of his talk, Ryan urged us all to experiment, just as he told his staff “Don’t work for me your whole life, go do something else” — he let his staff use Market Green’s kitchen outside trading hours to cook and experiment. One of them opened their own shop just a few days before our event. We all cheered bravo.
3. Nojo
During her trip in Japan, Simona, also an LSE graduate, came across Nojo, a healthy, gluten-free crêpe chain. When she tried the beautifully made crêpes, she was hooked. Upon graduation, she travelled to America and saw Nojo again. She loved the crêpes so much that when coming back to London, Simona was searching for something that could match but was left disappointed. At this point, it occurred to Simona that she needed to bring Nojo to London.
Nojo was started as a market stall in Camden market, a location that Simona had been searching for 7 months before opening. As a food business, finding a good spot is key. “It may take long to find the right location, but you should wait for it” — she remarked.
Her next piece of advice was protecting the value of the brand from the start, and not trading brand value for profits. A few months into he business, some of her investors urged her to cut costs. While her shares were diluted, she still sticks to the brand health and high quality promise. To her, “Everyday there is a constant going back to the beginning”.
Yet Simona recognises the need to adapt constantly through observing customers and listening to their feedback. “If a product doesn’t sell, cut it from the menu” – she noted determinedly, even when she had spent 6 months developing recipes and testing the products. In order to react quickly, her staffs needed to learn how to learn about the customers.
Business opportunites sometimes come unexpectedly. Simona recounted a time when she was first asked by a loyal customer to do lunch-time catering for the customer’s office of 400 people. At the time, she never catered for a large group before and the maximum number of customers she sold to in a day was approximately 150. She thought to herself “Just do it!” and confidently accepted the challenge. One event after another, Nojo’s team learned how to better equip themselves and operate more and more efficiently. Now, Nojo regularly caters for businesses, for example, Twitter and UCL university have been its’ guests. Catering also turns out to be its main revenue stream.
Having one’s own business is exhilarating. To Simona, everyday is different as everyday she serves new customers or overcomes new challenges. Yet, the thrills and blood rush also signal something. “It’s supposed to be boring” — she said, “You need to prepare in advance and think 10 steps ahead cause anything can go wrong”. As investors encourage her to grow, she needed to always think about the easiest and most efficient way to operate.
In her ending note to aspiring entrepreneurs, Simona smiled confidently, she advised us to be ready to feel perplexed and embrace the journey.
4. EatChay
Our last speaker, Liz Nguyen, is a young graduate from UCL and Cass Business School. Liz had always been determined to be an entrepreneur, and as a big foodie herself, having food business has always been her goal. While at UCL, she dreamed to open a “Vietnamese Pret”. She created a business plan and worked out that she needed £200,000 to kick start. She talked to investors, yet, no one felt ready to invest. So Liz put her business plan beside and continued searching for other ideas.
During that period, Liz started to cook vegetarian and vegan food for herself occasionally to reduce her individual footprint on the environment and staying healthy. As Liz increasingly cooked vegan food, an idea sparked in her again. This time, Liz wanted to create a Vietnamese vegan lunchtime grab-and-go chain. The vegan market in the UK has been soaring with now 800 millions customers. Understanding that UK customers are increasing cultured and mindful about health and environmental impact when it comes to food, Liz strongly believed in the value she will bring. While at Cass, she began developing her brand and products with her boyfriend Joseph (Jo), and participated in the School’s entrepreneurship programme. To fund her idea, she took 2 part time jobs to save up while studying. Liz and Jo also won a number of awards from Cass, received a grant of £5000 as well as an office space, and were granted the Tier 1 Entrepreneur Visa. Eventually, EatChay was born in 2016, the word “chay” means “vegan” in Vietnamese. This time, Liz learned to start small, she set up EatChay as a stall in Bricklane market with just £500.
Within just half a year, EatChay has enjoyed healthy and organic growth, with more than 5000 Instagram followers and overflowing support from the vegan community, encouraging EatChay to also do catering and supper club.
Her journey, of course, was not smooth and easy, Liz opened up and shared with us her worries, she would often cry and feel tired from a day of trading, yet her strong will and genuine care for her customers urged her to keep going. “Whenever the thought of stopping occurred in my mind, I thought of my customers – “ But what if Ben, the guy who loves the baguette, couldn’t find us tomorrow?”” – Liz said wholeheartedly, her soft voice shook a little.
Looking ahead, Liz understands that she and Jo still have a long way to go, she is learning to operate more efficiently, scale and grow sustainably. And we firmly believe our young entrepreneur will get there.
Our VietStartup event ended with Austrian wine tasting, Daniela and Peter, her co-founder, carefully selected their country’s signature wines. They explained to us tasting notes and the stories behind the wines one by one. We sipped slowly and merrily, and (i hope) felt a little more courage to follow our dreams, just like our 4 entrepreneurs did.
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