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Harry and Helen Nguyen have plans to have as many as 15 restaurants up and running by 2030.

Fewer than seven years after opening their first pho shop and a little more than six years after opening their first Pho Ha Noi location, the Saratoga couple now operates three Pho Ha Noi eateries in the South Bay, with two more slated to open later this year.

And that’s just the start of their expansion plans. The Nguyens plan to open new locations in Fremont and in Orange County next year and one-to-two additional restaurants a year after that, with a goal of having 15 up and running statewide by 2030.

Few restaurant owners operate more than a couple of restaurants, and even fewer try to build even a local chain. Restaurateurs who offer ethnic cuisine can face even more challenges; to date, no one has built a California-wide chain of Vietnamese restaurants, much less a nationwide one.

But the Nguyens feel driven to grow their business.

"We want to leave a legacy of great Vietnamese restaurants for the next generation," said Helen, who is 52. "If we have good food, why don’t we take a chance and bring it to more consumers?"

A starting place

As recently as 2015, the Nguyens would have seemed an unlikely couple to build a restaurant chain.

After immigrating to San Jose from Vietnam in 1994, Harry got his degree in computer science from San Jose State University, then went to work in the tech industry. He and Helen, who had a degree in international trade, got married in 1996. After immigrating to San Jose two years later, she initially worked as a dishwasher at SJSU.

When Harry got laid off in 2002 in the aftermath of the dot-com bust, he and Helen started Uni-Freight, a shipping brokerage that dealt with goods being traded between California and Vietnam. Over the next dozen or so years, they built it into a successful business.

They might have stayed in that industry if it weren't for Harry’s sense of duty. The youngest child in his family, Harry was the only one of his siblings to complete high school, the only one to go to college and the only one to become a high-paying professional. By contrast, when his brother and two sisters moved to the U.S., they spoke little English and had no degrees, so they got stuck working restaurant jobs that were low-paying — if they paid anything at all.

“They struggled with life here,” said Harry, 54.

Harry wanted to help them out. His idea was for the Nguyens to start their own restaurant where his siblings could work. They could lean on his siblings’ knowledge of the food business and eventually hand the restaurant over to them.

There was just one problem. Helen was dead set against the idea. She had good reasons.

For one thing, they had Uni-Freight to run. For another, "I didn’t know anything about opening a restaurant," Helen said.

But Harry kept at it. About two years after he first pitched the idea, his sister Huong told Helen she hadn’t been paid in nearly three months. That finally swayed Helen.

“I felt like if I don’t open a restaurant now, then I’m being very selfish,” Helen said.

The pair amassed $150,000 in Uni-Freight profits and family contributions to lease and build out a space on South White Road in East San Jose. When they opened in the summer of 2016, they named their eatery Huong after Harry’s sister.

Things didn’t work out exactly as they planned. Although Harry and Helen had intended to operate the restaurant as a side business, leaving the day-to-day operations to his siblings, they got increasingly pulled into it to deal with various problems. It initially lost money. And because Harry’s siblings didn’t speak English well, Harry and Helen had to help the restaurant navigate compliance and regulatory issues.

The couple soon found they liked the work and were good at it. Despite the early losses, Huong made about $700,000 in its first year, according to Helen. The couple was encouraged enough to open a second restaurant — their first Pho Ha Noi, located on Story Road in San Jose’s Little Saigon neighborhood — just five months after launching Huong. In its first year, the original Pho Ha Noi pulled in $1.3 million in revenue.

They ended up closing Huong in 2018 and their Uni-Freight shipping brokerage a year later to focus on Pho Ha Noi. They opened their second location in Cupertino in 2019 and an upscale French fusion version of the restaurant called Pho Ha Noi Elite in 2021. They plan to open a new Pho Ha Noi location in Palo Alto next month and one in Milpitas in August.

Since opening their first restaurant, the Nguyens' sales have consistently climbed. Their three restaurants, which offer an assortment of Vietnamese and Asian dishes, in addition to pho, raked in a combined $9.9 million in revenue last year.

A dining area at Helen and Harry Nguyen’s new Pho Ha Noi restaurant opening in May on University in Palo Alto.

As they got more involved in the business, Harry started using his engineering background to create new food preparation tools, and Helen started focusing on the restaurant’s design ambiance and managing employees.

"We work together, that’s why the restaurant became successful so quickly," Helen said.

Who’s the boss? It’s the customer

Over the years, the Nguyens have turned the Pho Ha Noi operation into a well-oiled machine.

Helen Nguyen is in charge of restaurant staffing and organization. Harry Nguyen handles kitchen processes and pho ingredients. Harry’s sister Huong curates ingredients for everything but the pho. And Andy Phan, Pho Ha Noi’s head chef, creates new dishes.

The Nguyens have also tapped into Harry’s engineering expertise to keep labor costs in line. He’s designed machines that increase employee productivity. One of his machines is a giant soup kettle that can cook 600 pounds of bone and marrow at a time and only requires one employee to operate.

As a result, Pho Ha Noi restaurants can cook more food faster with fewer employees than similarly sized operations.

Harry Nguyen stirs bone marrow broth in a giant kettle he designed at the Pho Ha Noi restaurant in Cupertino.

Harry Nguyen stirs bone marrow broth in a giant kettle he designed at the Pho Ha Noi restaurant in Cupertino

To design the machine, Harry researched what big food companies used and copied their designs, hiring a company to build the kettle for Pho Ha Noi for a lot less than buying one off the shelf.

But the Nguyens aren’t only looking at costs. They’ve also focused on service. They’ve done that in part by remembering why they got into the restaurant business in the first place — to make sure employees were well compensated for their work.

Pho Ha Noi pays its staff — which numbers 70 and counting — above minimum wage. It also pays them bonuses and offers them health care coverage after they’ve worked full time for six months. Including bonuses and overtime pay, the best workers can earn around $8,000 a month, Helen said.

The Nguyens have tried to instill in their employees the idea of making Pho Ha Noi’s customers happy.

"I always tell my workers that the boss is the person paying for the meals," Helen added. "They’re the ones who pay for your salary. It’s not me or my husband, it’s the customer."

Giang Pham prepares Pho at Harry and Helen Nguyen’s Pho Ha Noi restaurant in Cupertino. The Nguyens have opened 4 Bay Area restaurants since 2016

Members of the Pho Ha Noi staff at an end-of-the-year part in December 2022 at Pho Ha Noi Elite. The jackets worn by several of the pictured employees were a Christmas gift from the Nguyens.

Secrets to success

The Nguyens' ambition for Pho Ha Noi is unusual — and not just among operators of ethnic restaurants.

For various reasons, it’s uncommon for restaurateurs to turn their establishments into regional or even statewide chains, said Stephen Zagor, an adjunct assistant professor of business at Columbia University’s business school.

Although thousands of restaurants are parts of larger chains, they represent only a tiny portion of all the restaurants in the country, he said. That’s because most people who open an eatery are content with running just one or two locations and would rather avoid the headaches of managing a bigger operation, Zagor said.

“Not everyone wants to be the next California Pizza Kitchen or In-N-Out Burger,” he said. “Opening two (locations) is good, three is hard, four is really difficult. And each time you open another one you compound the challenges and have to keep the open ones doing well too.”

To be sure, the Nguyens' restaurant journey hasn’t been completely smooth sailing. Initially, they had to learn the basics of running a restaurant and complying with the various regulations involved in that.

House Special Combination Pho at Harry and Helen Nguyen’s Pho Ha Noi restaurant in Cupertino. The Nguyens have opened 4 Bay Area restaurants since 2016.

Korean Barbecue Short Ribs with Jasmine rice at Harry and Helen Nguyen’s Pho Ha Noi restaurant in Cupertino. The Nguyens have opened 4 Bay Area restaurants since 2016.

Perseverance is key

Like many restaurateurs, they struggled during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, when efforts to limit the spread of the disease forced many eateries to shut their doors. The Nguyens cut their staff 60% and still lost money.

More recently, like other business owners, they’ve been struggling with spiking inflation and high utility costs. The latter, for their three locations, has jumped to about $25,000 a month.

“Some weeks we make good money, sometimes we don’t make much money,” Harry said. “Sometimes we break even, sometimes we’re losing a little.”

The Nguyens have also faced issues that are more particular to their situation. In general, building a chain of ethnic restaurants can be challenging, because there’s not necessarily a deep well of demand like there might be for restaurants that offer more traditional or established cuisines, said Zagor.

Conversely, in San Jose — a city with the largest Vietnamese population in North America and a huge concentration of Vietnamese restaurants — the Nguyens faced the challenge of figuring out how to make their Pho Ha Noi eateries stand out from the crowd.

So far, they’ve endured it all.

During the peak of the pandemic, they cut their pho prices by 25% to attract customers and ensure they had enough money to pay their remaining employees, Helen said. By the end of 2020, with the help of $800,000 in Paycheck Protection Program funds, they were able to hire back 70% of the workers they’d laid off and keep them on the payroll.

The restaurants also began donating bowls of pho to nearby hospitals for frontline workers, which helped them introduce their eateries to new customers.

“We learned from ... the pandemic when we had to work very hard and create a new way with the new situation,” Harry said. “Luckily we got through the pandemic,” he continued, “and we’ve become more and more popular.”

The Nguyens plan to use what they’ve learned as they expand their chain.

One point of emphasis is on design. Pho shops typically aren’t big on aesthetics or ambiance, Helen said. But in the age of Instagram, how an eatery looks and feels and the atmosphere it offers is critical, she said.

Helen wants to make sure that each individual Pho Ha Noi location and its menu reflect the community it’s in and that no two Pho Ha Nois are exactly alike.

Designs for the Pho Ha Noi Milpitas shop, which is slated to open in August

Additionally, their small chain has proven to be an attractive place to work.

While other restaurants and retail businesses have struggled in recent years to hire and retain workers, Pho Ha Noi's Palo Alto location already had 15 applications for open positions two months before it was due to open.

A good portion of the chain's recruitment effort has been led by current employees convincing friends and family to come work for them, Helen said.

"Some of our employees really appreciate what we do, and they treat us well in return," Helen said.

The Nguyens aren't the only local Vietnamese restaurateurs attempting to build a chain.