Inheriting her family's time-honoured cake making craft, Mai Thi Y Nhi, the owner of the My Phuong Foods, along with her husband, has strived to spread the taste of coconut cakes made in their homeland to not only many localities nationwide but also foreign destinations. 

Mai Thi Y Nhi beside her products dubbed as her ‘brainchild’. Photo: XUAN SON

Preserving and spreading the ‘flavour’ of Central Viet Nam

The packaging workshop of the My Phuong Foods pastry production facility is located in Dai La Village, Hoa Son Commune, Hoa Vang District, emitting the highly inviting aroma of beans, coconuts and other rustic ingredients. Inside the venue, Nhi and her employees are busy completing orders with a high sense of responsibility at work.

With the great support from her husband - who used to work in the food industry, Nhi has gradually become more confident in making baked coconut cakes. Having adjusted recipes step by step and promoted machinery upgrades year by year as well, the married couple have succeeded with the traditional baked coconut cake product featuring thin slices and being uniform in size, colour, volume, flavour and taste.

Each month, the My Phuong Foods offers an estimated 80,000 packages of baked coconut cakes to the local market. Each slice of cake, as described by Nhi, is “encapsulating the traditional flavour of Central Viet Nam”, highlighting a harmonious mixture of easy-to-find ingredients such as glutinous rice flour sourced in neighbouring province of Quang Nam and coconuts transported from the famous Tam Quang land in the south-central province of Binh Dinh.

‘Made-in-Da Nang’ OCOP products going abroad

Self-proclaimed as a traditional trader with the high spirit of learning, Nhi said that the person who helps her the most is her husband. His experience from the days of working in line with the strict Japanese food production line is very helpful for the production of the My Phuong Foods, and especially, for the export of its coconut cakes to this famous foreign market.

Since its debut in 2017, My Phuong Foods’ baked coconut cake product has been put on shelves at specialty supermarkets and souvenir shops targeting tourists, the popular downtown markets of Han and Con, and food stalls on the Hai Van Pass tourist site.

Baked coconut cake packaging line observed at the My Phuong Foods pastry production facility. Photo: XUAN SON

“Fortunately, the baked coconut cake has won the trust of domestic customer, many of whom are impressed with its distinctive taste and usually buy it for their relatives and friends as gifts, whereby this product has gradually penetrated into many domestic markets and reached out to the global market”, happily said Ms. Nhi.

Up to now, the coconut cake product has been present on many store shelves nationwide and in Japan and the Republic of Korea (RoK).

In fact, it is not ‘a piece of cake’ to penetrate into the Japanese market because all products must go through a process of rigorous assessment and testing for many months in order to meet strict  import criteria, standards and requirements set by ‘the land of the rising sun’.

Having gone through many difficulties and challenges, My Phuong Foods' baked coconut cakes have been exported to Japan under the Viet Nam - Japan Economic Partnership Agreement (VJEPA), proudly alongside such big brands as G7 coffee and Kinh Do confectionary.

“The happiest thing right now is that the coconut cake product has been certified by the Da Nang government as an OCOP (One Commune – One Product’, said Nhi whilst excitedly showing off what her business has achieved.

My Phuong's peanut-baked coconut cake product is now one of the four OCOP products meeting the 4-star standards.

“In the light of the current coronavirus wave, we have changed our target from the tourist market to domestic distribution networks, and hopefully, the pandemic will be put under control as soon as possible so that we can grasp more opportunities to further promote our products at home”, said Nhi.

Reporting by XUAN SON – Translating by A. THU