Loss due to lack of experience
La Khanh Ly (27 years old) graduated from the University of Commerce in 2018. After that, she and her husband opened a restaurant on Kim Ma street (Hanoi). . This shop opening is considered Khanh Ly’s first official start-up even though before that, she had many years of experience business online fashion.
Remembering the first days of opening a restaurant, Khanh Ly believes that business is special. It’s not easy in a big city. Her store is about 30 square meters and the rent is up to 25 million VND per month. This price is not cheap compared to 2018.
Because it is not Having experience, Ly and her husband struggled quite a bit in managing the budget, revenue and expenditure of input materials and output, managing human resources. Seeing the problem clearly after a few months of business, Ly and her husband decided to close the store to avoid “losses upon losses”.
After researching the market, Khanh Ly suggested that the couple move back to Cao Bang where she was born and raised to start over. Ly said that returning to her hometown gave her a lot of confidence because she understood this land very well. In addition, the rent for staff housing and associated costs in Cao Bang is much lower than in Hanoi.
Returning to Cao Bang, Khanh Ly opened a small one-story garden cafe mainly serving customers. Drinks and fast food service. In the early days, even though she only welcomed a relatively small number of customers, Ly felt happy and had more motivation.
Learning from big brands to apply to small models
According to Ly, advertising and running discount programs in the province is also simpler and much less expensive than in the city. With most programs, Ly only needs to post them on social networks and then receive “word-of-mouth marketing” from customers.
Remembering the days when she first left the city to return to her hometown, Khanh Ly confided: “No There can be no moments when I miss Hanoi. My husband is originally from Hanoi, so leaving his hometown to start a business in a place 300km away is not easy.”
Leaving my coffee shop With charisma, Khanh Ly regularly learns about new drinks, how to decorate water glasses beautifully, and promotional programs from big brands to apply to her small store.
After 2 years of business in early 2022, Ly decided to “play big” one step forward, three steps back. She moved her cafe to a smaller location to demolish the old store and build a 6-storey building. The 1st, 2nd and 6th floors are used for coffee business. Floors 3, 4, 5 are used for homestay business for guests travel Cao Bang. Her total capital for this change is about 3 billion VND.
Khanh Ly wants to develop an ecosystem to serve full services for tourists, including car rental. machine to move and explore Cao Bang.
“Cao Bang is increasingly developing in tourism, so I decided to make a big investment. I think this is a good model at this time to develop. we need to maintain service quality” Ly shared.
The most important thing is human resources
Sharing about mistakes and lessons learned on the entrepreneurial journey Khanh Ly said she spent a lot of money money to build and repair the shop. Every time Ly changes the design and chooses new materials, it costs twice as much as the original plan. In addition, when shopping for equipment to make drinks, she often buys it because she’s excited and then doesn’t use it, wasting a lot of money.
According to her, the most difficult point in the F&B business is management. human resources management. Employees are those who have close contact with customers and have touch points that bring customer experience.
Therefore, personnel training is the most important point. As long as one employee has no experience in communicating well or has an inappropriate attitude, the brand image will be affected.
“In the service profession, every detail, even the smallest, must be dedicated and meticulous. I want to promote the image of Cao Bang tourism to friends nationwide and internationally, so The more I improve my business goals,” Khanh Ly said.
Currently, after nearly 4 years of “leaving the city to return to the countryside,” Khanh Ly is satisfied with her life and business. She set a goal of breaking even but not too much pressure. Because business depends on many factors, including objective and subjective, sometimes there are times when the plan goes wrong.
According to Ly, the owner is the one who feels the most clearly about the business situation. business feasibility level. When you feel uncomfortable, there is definitely a problem at work. If not, try to be careful with the smallest things.
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