U50 exports Quang noodles to the land of kimchi

Starting a business with the idea of Quang noodles made from vegetables and roots

Born into a family with a tradition of making Quang noodles for more than 30 years, the childhood of Mrs. Phan Thi Hue (49 years old, Hoa Thuan ward, Tam Ky city, Quang Nam ) was a series of days following her mother wandering around the village roads and alleys to make a living with this famous specialty dish.

U50 xuất khẩu mì Quảng sang xứ sở kim chi - 1 — Ms. Phan Thi Hue was born and raised in a family that has been making Quang noodles for 30 years (Photo: Ngo Linh).

After finishing 7th grade, Ms. Hue stayed home to help her mother make noodles to support her siblings' education. "In the past, making noodles by hand was very hard, and the profit was not worth much. But the noodle making job and my mother's Quang noodle stall helped raise my sisters and me," Ms. Hue shared.

In 2012, Ms. Hue officially inherited her family's traditional Quang noodle kiln. "My mother was old at that time, so I took over the family business and replaced her," Ms. Hue said.

U50 xuất khẩu mì Quảng sang xứ sở kim chi - 2 — Inheriting the family business, Ms. Hue invested in modern machinery to replace the manual noodle making oven (Photo: Ngo Linh).

To meet the growing market demand, Ms. Hue invested in more modern machinery, producing hundreds of kilograms of noodles every day, supplying the market inside and outside Tam Ky city.

By 2019, with the desire to bring Quang noodles closer to all diners, especially children and women, Ms. Hue began to realize the idea of producing Quang noodles made from vegetables and tubers such as gac fruit, brown rice, and turmeric.

Thinking is doing, but things are not as easy as Mrs. Hue thought. It took 2 years of perseverance and many failures for Mrs. Hue to make Quang noodles from vegetables and roots, different from the traditional ingredient of Quang noodles which is finely ground rice flour.

"Hundreds of kilograms of experimental Quang noodles made from vegetables and roots were thrown away or given to neighbors to be used as animal feed. But the more difficult the task, the more I was motivated to do it. Just when I thought I would have to give up because of too many failures, I overcame the challenge. Making the noodles that were exactly as I had envisioned, I cried tears of joy," Ms. Hue said with a smile.

The raw vegetables and tubers are carefully selected by Mrs. Hue from agricultural sources in the mountainous region of Quang Nam and reputable suppliers in Da Lat. As for gac fruit and turmeric, the family grows them organically in their home garden.

Dream of exporting Quang noodles

In 2021, after successfully making Quang noodles from vegetables and tubers, Ms. Hue again had the idea of making Quang noodles with a longer shelf life than traditional noodles (usually only used within the day from the time of baking - PV); at the same time, it can be processed to be eaten immediately like instant noodles and pho on the market.

"With instant Quang noodles, users only need to pour the pre-cooked broth into the noodles and eat immediately, without having to spend time cooking," Ms. Hue said about the idea of instant Quang noodles.

With this product, Ms. Hue still maintains her family's experience with the ingredients. "My mother's experience is that the rice flour used to make noodles must be seasonal rice that has not been cultivated with pesticides, has not used preservatives in processing, and has a reasonable water-rice ratio," Ms. Hue revealed.

To have a complete legal basis, Ms. Hue brought the product to the National Institute for Food Safety and Hygiene Testing for testing. The results showed that all the criteria of the instant Quang noodles product were met. At this time, Ms. Hue's Quang noodles product had a shelf life of 4 days, instead of only being usable within the day of being baked like before.

Currently, Quang noodles made from Ms. Hue's facility in Quang Nam are exported to the land of kimchi - South Korea.

U50 xuất khẩu mì Quảng sang xứ sở kim chi - 3 — Quang noodles products of Ms. Hue's facility have been exported to Korea (Photo: Ngo Linh).

In addition to the mindset of constantly improving products, Ms. Hue shared that to be more accepted by the market, she both relied on her 30 years of professional experience in making Quang noodles and applied new technology to improve productivity. Especially, the products ensure quality and food safety.

Currently, Ms. Hue's facility produces 1 ton of Quang noodles of all kinds every day (fresh Quang noodles, dried Quang noodles and instant Quang noodles). The average revenue is about 400 million VND/month. The facility creates regular jobs for 6 local workers, with a salary of 5 million VND/month.

Sharing her upcoming plans, Ms. Hue expressed her desire to expand the market with a production facility near industrial parks, where there are many consumers of the facility's products. In particular, Ms. Hue dreams of exporting more Quang noodles, since Quang noodles have been exported to Korea.

Source link