Mr. Lam Boi Minh cycles more than 15 km every day to deliver coffee across Saigon, building a business worth 400 million USD and expanding the chain after 55 years.
"When you're hungry, you look for work," Lam Boi Minh describes his early days of starting his career. His father's tea-making business was his, and his childhood working in and out of the factory helped form the concept of tea leaves and coffee beans. In 1968, when he was 16 years old, he worked at a freight station. At this time, he was inspired, gradually fell in love with the taste of tea, and from there started his own business, selling tea leaves and roasted coffee beans. After work, he returned home to open a shop selling tea and coffee ingredients, the stall was just a pushcart located on Chau Van Liem Street, District 5, Ho Chi Minh City today.
Tea industry dream
In 1975, he opened a second store at 307 Le Van Sy, District 3, Ho Chi Minh City. In addition to selling tea leaves and coffee beans, the shop also offered a drink - filter coffee. A few years later, he moved his store, also on Le Van Sy Street, and maintained it for more than ten years.
He is both the owner and employee of the shop, responsible for everything from buying ingredients to roasting, grinding, and delivering. Under the scorching sun of Saigon, he has to cycle to District 6 every day to pick up the goods and then deliver them all over the city. Once, when he cycled to Le Van Sy Bridge, his shirt was soaked with sweat. To avoid feeling embarrassed in front of the shop owner, he stood on the bridge to let the wind dry his shirt before continuing to pedal.
Waiting for the shop owner to pay, he had capital to buy ingredients for the next day. There were days when the owner postponed the payment, Mr. Minh could only sadly leave. Day by day, he accumulated capital, rented a small corner behind Le Van Sy market to roast and grind coffee and deliver to customers. He stood by the frying pan himself, each batch for more than an hour, sometimes roasting more than 120 kg of coffee a day, his hands were about to fall apart from fatigue but he still kept trying.
In 1980, Mr. Lam Boi Minh first tested a new model: machine-brewed coffee, sold at 63 Mac Thi Buoi. The store was only 9 square meters but this was the place that marked Phuc Long's milestone in the F&B industry. From here, the brand achieved many important milestones throughout its development journey.
The store at 63 Mac Thi Buoi (taken in 1980) - the place that marked the milestone of the unit entering the F&B industry. Photo: Phuc Long
In the 90s, the founder and his team continuously improved products and expanded branches. In 2007, Phuc Long developed tea hills in Thai Nguyen; at the same time, invested in a tea and coffee processing factory in Binh Duong with the goal of ensuring quality raw materials, serving the domestic market and meeting export needs.
From traditional tea to creative drinks
To make tea, he buys raw tea and sorts it himself. In front of him are nearly 10 baskets, he meticulously sorts each type: bran, large-petal white hair - small-petal 3-10 cups, the finer the leaves, the better. For each type of raw material, he packages and prices it separately. The best tea is soaked, brewed by hand, combined with syrup to create fruit tea.
With constant creativity, Mr. Lam Boi Minh researches to turn traditional tea into unique drinks, suitable for modern trends and the preferences of young people. He uses fresh tea leaves to brew the essence and mixes them with fruits and syrups to bring strong, aromatic drinks. The processing method still follows the manual process from screening to brewing, hand-steeping tea to be able to extract the strong bitter taste, aroma, characteristic astringency but immediately after is the sweet aftertaste. The selection process from the place of cultivation to screening, drying tea, then self-producing syrup according to a separate recipe to optimize quality, according to the criteria set by the founder: self-production - self-consumption (production - consumption) ensures the best quality and freshness. This is the secret for him to create unique, interesting and quality drinks.
Mr. Lam Boi Minh - Founder of Phuc Long. Photo: Provided by the character
When asked why he was able to create these drinks, Mr. Lam Boi Minh said: "The profession teaches the profession". In his time, there was no school to teach how to make tea or roast coffee, only life to hone his experience. He roasted so much coffee that just by smelling it, he could tell what kind of coffee it was, from which region it came, what ratio it was roasted, whether it was ground yesterday or stored for a month. Tea is the same, his hands sifting and brewing tea for more than five decades, while working, he inferred and imagined the formulas and ways to combine them to create the most complete and unique flavor.
Phuc Long fruit tea (peach tea, lychee tea and herbal tea) has just been launched and has created a fever. Attracting the attention of the market, business is expanding day by day.
A turning point for further efforts
In 2012, Phuc Long affirmed its position in the food and beverage (F&B) sector by opening a store at Crescent Mall, an important turning point in its development journey. Here, Phuc Long switched to a self-service model in a modern space and attracted the attention of customers. In the following decade, the brand continued to expand at a slow pace with the motto: "Quality comes from passion". From two stores in the 80s, four decades later, Phuc Long reached the milestone of 70 stores.
Phuc Long store at Crescent Mall today. Photo: Phuc Long
In mid-2020, Mr. Lam Boi Minh decided to transfer the Phuc Long brand to a corporation with a larger scale and vision. This decision is significant in the development of Phuc Long, changing the way this brand operates and develops.
The founder of Phuc Long believes that with the vision and scale of the group, Phuc Long will become a symbol of Vietnamese tea and coffee brands worldwide. His goal is to maintain the core values and traditional flavors, combined with modern enjoyment styles, bringing the product to more users.
"Transferring the Phuc Long brand marks a new phase, helping the brand continue to develop, bringing the unique flavor of Vietnamese native drinks to tea and coffee lovers on all continents, that is my wish," said Mr. Lam Boi Minh.
Minh Tu
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