In 2011, Mr. Fong started working as a project manager at Renault and received a high salary.
After a month of working there, he received the bad news that his family in Vietnam had gone bankrupt with a huge debt of $1 million. At the time, Ms. Fung had a well-paid, stable job and was expected to help her family pay off debt.
In 2014, when Fong was stuck, a friend of his invited him to visit relatives in Grenoble. Phuong could never have imagined that meeting a Vietnamese-born woman in France would change his life.
“Tora had been living in France for 30 years and was running a restaurant. Business was relatively good at that point. Mr. Tora was old and wanted to give up the business, so he sold the restaurant to Mr. Fong for 150,000 euros. “I wanted to sell it,” Fong recalled.
The bank did not agree to the loan because Mr. Fong had no money and there was no collateral for the loan, but Mr. Tora agreed to sell the house to Mr. Fong in installments.
He borrowed 20,000 euros from a friend and gave the amount to Mr. Tora, promising to pay it monthly at bank interest.
In July 2015, Mr. Phuong officially retired from Renault and began running a small, old restaurant in Grenoble that specialized in selling Vietnamese-style fried spring rolls.
Fong, who worked in an air-conditioned office with only a pen and computer, then had to learn how to hold a knife to peel carrots, cut meat, fry spring rolls, and clean the toilet. It didn’t.
“I don’t remember how many times my hands bled, but I always felt filled with the energy of hope because of the opportunity to learn new things,” he recalled.
Just two months after Mr. Fong started his business, his wife gave birth to their child. He had to divide his time between caring for his wife and baby and running a restaurant.
Although there were many difficulties, I felt happy that I was able to “unleash” myself and accomplish what I wanted to do, with a strong belief that I would succeed in spreading Vietnamese cuisine to the world.
“I truly became a new person and began to take on the new role that fate had given me. There were many difficulties and challenges, but I never once thought of giving up. On a thorny path. Despite this, I always believed in a better future for myself,” he said.
Fung had to wake up at 6 a.m. every day, go to the market to buy ingredients for cooking, greet customers, clean, and close the door at 10 p.m. After the customers finished their lunch, he had lunch, which was mostly fried rice.
Although our initial income was still low, we complied with regulations by filing and paying taxes, always ensuring financial transparency.
As his business improved with a 30% increase in revenue, he took a bank loan to pay the money to Tra.
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A problem arose in his business. That said, there were very few customers in the summer, as the restaurant was small and hot.
In the summer of 2017, Phuong visited Au Bo Vung, a Vietnamese restaurant that serves spring rolls and rice noodles mixed with shrimp, vegetables and spices, when the owner told him he wanted to sell the restaurant.
Mr. Fong decided to take out another bank loan to buy the restaurant. Due to the transparency of our financial reporting and the success of our first restaurant, we were able to obtain financing without collateral.
He had to spend days thinking of solutions, analyzing costs, finding suitable suppliers, negotiating prices, and optimizing production processes to minimize costs. .
Mr. Phuong continued his work with the dream of Au Bobun becoming not only a part of Thai, Vietnamese and Chinese cuisine, but also an international place and independent in the market rankings.
Tuan Nguyen