Da Nang Quitting his accounting job with a monthly salary of 30-40 million VND, Mr. Truong Thanh Hien started a business making veal, pork, and shrimp patties in bamboo tubes.
Graduated in finance and accounting, more than 10 years ago, Mr. Hien worked as the chief accountant of a mineral factory in Laos for a large corporation, with his own driver and interpreter, all travel expenses paid by the company. Despite the attractive income compared to that time, the young man born in 1986 was still not satisfied.
Having a passion for entrepreneurship, he bought land to open a restaurant with 30 employees, aiming to serve Vietnamese customers working in the same company. However, the restaurant failed, losing 2 billion VND, and Mr. Hien returned to Da Nang in 2018 with only 800,000 VND left, and had to stay in a rented house.
Mr. Truong Thanh Hien with the bamboo tube sausage product he made. Photo: Nguyen Dong
Admitting that he lacked communication skills, Mr. Hien went to Hanoi to learn about experience and business directions. But his subsequent startups did not go smoothly. He opened an e-commerce site for oriental medicine, but few people were interested, so he went bankrupt; selling solid wood furniture, although it made money, with a monthly profit of 80 million VND, felt "meaningless".
During his visit to his coastal hometown of Thang Binh (Quang Nam), Mr. Hien saw that the locals raised a lot of shrimp, but they mainly sold them as commercial products, with little profit. "I decided to start a business making shrimp cakes to get rich with the locals," Mr. Hien said about his decision 5 years ago.
Returning to Da Nang, he asked around about shrimp patties but "no one had made patties from shrimp", so Mr. Hien decided to learn the traditional beef patty making craft of the Quang people, and from there he would try his hand at making shrimp patties.
After 4 months of learning how to make beef patties, Mr. Hien creatively stuffed them into bamboo tubes to make the dish more fragrant and closer to Vietnamese culinary culture. At first, he did not know what size bamboo tube to choose; small tubes were difficult to stuff with meat, and large tubes made the patties not tight. When he finally chose the right bamboo tube, another problem arose - the patties were soggy and had to be thrown away.
Mr. Hien arranges the patties on bamboo tubes. Photo: Nguyen Dong
After many sleepless nights, he came up with a way to cover the bamboo tubes so that the water could drain out, and thus the bamboo tube beef and pork patties were successful. When the two types of patties brought in some income, he went back to making bamboo tube shrimp patties. To proactively source clean ingredients, he spent 200 million VND raising shrimp. But the shrimp meat was not connected, so he could not make patties.
During the 6 months of experimentation, Mr. Hien said he spent an unknown amount of money because each batch of shrimp spoiled, costing him 10 million VND. One day, he was so frustrated that he threw the shrimp and some leftover sausage powder into the refrigerator and went out drinking with friends. The next morning, he took out the ingredients to make breakfast for his child, but discovered that the shrimp and sausage powder had stuck together.
"I knew I had succeeded," Hien said, immediately stuffing shrimp meat mixed with a little sausage powder into a bamboo tube and putting it in the steamer. The first batch of shrimp patties came out, and he cried with joy. The recipe for making shrimp patties was summarized by him: 65% jumping shrimp, 20% squid, 10% carrot sausage, 5% pepper, garlic, fish sauce, salt, and tapioca starch.
Bamboo tubes originating from the Central Highlands are boiled to remove bacteria before being stuffed with meat. Most of the steps in making meat patties at Mr. Hien's workshop are done manually, except for the meat grinder and the steamer. The workers are mainly relatives, friends, and unskilled workers from his hometown, who are directly trained by him.
Bamboo tube shrimp rolls under the brand name "Cocimo" are now available in many provinces in the Central region. Photo: Thanh Hien
Currently, "Cocimo" grilled veal sausage, Han River beef sausage, pork sausage, shrimp sausage, grilled shrimp sausage in bamboo tubes have become familiar to consumers in Da Nang, Quang Nam, Quang Ngai, Binh Duong... The brand is taken from the familiar saying "there is nothing wrong" of Quang people. The sausages are committed to not having borax or preservatives, if detected "we will pay 10 million VND and testing costs".
The bamboo tube sausage product "Cocimo" has been granted a food safety certificate. The facility's annual revenue is nearly 3 billion VND. Mr. Hien's goal is to complete the OCOP profile and expand the market. "Vietnam is a very large shrimp exporter, so making sausage will create new products, promoting the development of the shrimp farming industry," he added.
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