Once crying with his wife over earning only 500,000 VND at the end of 2018, Nhat Thuan now holds a million-dollar contract to export Quang Tri snakehead fish porridge to the U.S.
In mid-June, the food service and packaged food startup, Ca Men, finalized a contract to officially export Quang Tri snakehead fish porridge (banh canh ca loc) to the U.S. Founder Nguyen Duc Nhat Thuan (born in 1991) stated that this milestone paves the way for millions of product packages to enter this challenging market each year. The total contract value through 2026 is approximately 5 million USD (about 115 billion VND).
“To my knowledge, snakehead fish porridge is the first Quang Tri dish to be packaged and exported to the U.S.,” Thuan said, noting that it took him eight arduous years to achieve this initial success.
Nhat Thuan left his hometown in 2009 to attend the Ho Chi Minh City University of Industry. After graduating, he worked with a salary of over 1,000 USD. “At over 22 years old, that income felt quite comfortable to me,” he recalled.
Nguyen Duc Nhat Thuan at the signing ceremony with LNS on June 13. Photo: Ca Men
However, after a period of stable work, Thuan wanted to challenge himself and noticed that while there were many local food shops, Quang Tri cuisine was rare in Ho Chi Minh City. Knowing many fellow countrymen, he proposed the idea of opening a Quang Tri food restaurant, which was well-received by everyone.
In 2015, Thuan quit his job to open Ca Men, initially a small eatery hidden in an alley in Tan Phu District with just a few plastic tables and chairs. Later, he moved the restaurant to a well-known dining street in Phu Nhuan District with a space of 15 square meters. The first dish that helped him build his brand was Phuong Lang wet cake, and he later expanded to snakehead fish porridge, duck porridge, chicken salad with Vietnamese coriander, and stir-fried eel glass noodles.
Ingredients and spices were imported from Quang Tri by air. The Quang Tri community, which Thuan surveyed before opening the restaurant, was the main customer base in the early stages and helped with word-of-mouth marketing. Thanks to the large customer base, Thuan was able to develop a total of three restaurants by 2018.
However, he encountered difficulties when trying to expand into a chain. “Due to a lack of management knowledge, at the end of the year, after paying salaries and bonuses to employees, my wife and I were left with only 500,000 VND and could only cry together,” he recalled. That Lunar New Year, he turned off his phone and locked himself in his room for three days to review his mistakes and regain his spirit.
He decided to scale back from three restaurants to one. Personnel and finances were tightened. After six months of restructuring, his restaurant began to generate good profits. Thuan bought a house with a portion of the income saved from the restaurant combined with additional loans from the bank and friends. “Previously, the crisis was due to poor management, but customers still loved us, so after tightening operations, they supported us even more, helping sales to explode,” Thuan explained.
With the restaurant stable, Thuan had a new idea, stemming from understanding the desires of fellow countrymen in many places to enjoy Quang Tri food. “Living far from home, I understand the craving for hometown food,” he said.
The idea of packaged Quang Tri snakehead fish porridge was born. In June 2022, after a period of experimentation, Ca Men launched the product with a weight of 230 grams. The package includes whole fileted snakehead fish, rice flour noodles, concentrated sauce, chili paste, and dried green onions, all frozen. The user needs about five minutes to reheat it before eating.
In nearly a year, Thuan established ten domestic distributors and ventured to the U.S. via hand-carry to test the market. “I remember one night, almost 2 a.m., an over-80-year-old lady who had been living in the U.S. for three decades called and cried. She said the porridge tasted like what her mother used to cook, which moved her deeply,” Thuan recounted. From June 2022 to June this year, Thuan sold a total of 200,000 packs of Quang Tri snakehead fish porridge both domestically and internationally.
Ms. Nguyen Thi Kim Huyen (Jolie Nguyen), Chairwoman and Founder of LNS—a company specializing in importing Vietnamese agricultural products and distributing them to around 1,000 supermarkets and stores—confirmed that in early 2023, Ca Men’s snakehead fish porridge suddenly became “hot” in the U.S. market, especially in Houston. Out of curiosity, she also bought some. The first time she saw a packaged dish with a large piece of snakehead fish that tasted like it was homemade, she decided to find the supplier to import the product.
Coincidentally, Ca Men had just approached LNS to explore export opportunities, making it easy for both sides to finalize the contract. “The demand for specialty products among Vietnamese people in the U.S. is very high. They don’t mind spending money to buy familiar dishes for their families,” Huyen said. In June, Thuan’s first container of Quang Tri snakehead fish porridge started its journey to the U.S. by sea.
From the partnership agreement to the first shipment, Thuan said the biggest challenge was standardizing the product for official export. “Exporting to the U.S. is very difficult; besides ensuring the product is delicious and consistent, the procedures are also stringent,” he confirmed.
Specifically, after obtaining FDA certification from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the business also had to meet a series of other legal requirements, including FSMA (Food Safety Modernization Act) and FSVP (Foreign Supplier Verification Program).
Huyen explained that to ensure U.S. customs clearance, it was necessary to standardize the FSMA process at the factory, complete the FSVP supplier evaluation (handled by LNS), and ensure the packaging complied with FDA regulations. “We had to work with Thuan to redesign the packaging because it lacked required warnings and specific nutritional information,” she said.
Thuan did not disclose the profit margin for the U.S. order but confirmed that it was profitable, allowing the startup to confidently reinvest in additional processing machinery.
Nguyen Duc Nhat Thuan looks at the first batch of snakehead fish porridge being loaded into a container for export to the U.S. Photo: Ca Men Nguyen Duc Nhat Thuan looks at the first batch of snakehead fish porridge being loaded into a container for export to the U.S. Photo: Ca Men
According to Huyen, Ca Men should continue to diversify its products. In recent discussions, LNS indicated that Thuan plans to develop more products, such as eel glass noodles and hot pot sauce. “It’s essential to develop convenient Vietnamese specialty products for the U.S. market because the Vietnamese diaspora is busy and it’s not easy to find authentic hometown dishes that don’t require much cooking time,” she recommended.
Currently, Ca Men’s factory produces 200,000-300,000 products per month and plans to build another factory in Quang Tri to increase capacity and diversify product lines. Thuan stated that he will launch a new packaged product in a few months and is negotiating to enter several supermarket chains, as well as building a distribution system in the German market while also expanding the number of stores. He is not afraid of competition.
He believes that the success of a product comes not only from its taste but also from the story behind it. “We are fortunate to have support due to our startup story, which embodies the spirit of our homeland in the product. Competing requires time; money alone cannot achieve everything,” he said.
However, he acknowledges that challenges for a startup are “never lacking.” Despite having eight years of experience in the food industry, Thuan admits he is still inexperienced in production. In the early stages, creating the product required a lot of time. Additionally, the characteristic of Quang Tri cuisine being spicy and salty means that when introducing it to different markets, it is necessary to adjust the spiciness and saltiness to suit customers’ tastes while retaining as much of the original flavor as possible.
For the export market, his experience is to focus on quality and food safety from the beginning and proactively connect with distributors. “Initially, we build the necessary conditions and then tailor the product to meet the requirements of each market,” he said.
Another source of support that has helped Thuan overcome challenges and look towards a brighter future is his family. In the early days of his startup, his parents were a “strong rear guard,” preparing ingredients for him to bring to Ho Chi Minh City.
Moreover, after marrying in 2017, he says he was “extremely lucky.” His wife worked for a company but would help him at the restaurant after work and on weekends, doing everything from serving to washing dishes. During that tearful moment at the end of 2018, they were even texted by a partner demanding a 5 million VND debt repayment. At that time, the family only had his wife’s laptop, which she decided to pawn to get the money. “That was the most memorable moment of my life,” Thuan said.
