Having graduated from the faculty of accounting at a tertiary establishment, Nguyen Mai Hue Man, 30, took a different path as she started a food business in Da Nang with a great passion for baking.

Nguyen Mai Hue Man (first, right) instructs Vang Nau staff how to decorate cakes. Photo: MAI HIEN

After more than 5 years, from a 9m² kitchen, Vang Nau (Golden Brown) Cake Studio owned by Man has risen to fame in the city and chucked out many delicious types of cakes highly applauded by consumers.

When she was a student, Man realized that she was not suitable for the accounting profession. Taking advantage of her free time after school, the woman taught herself how to make cakes via instructions available on the internet and gradually became passionate about this interesting profession.

Upon graduating from the university in 2017, Man decided it was time to establish her own startup as a baker. That choice was somewhat risky, but she received great support from her family, especially her mother.

“Mother is the person who has always supported and accompanied me from the time I started building the Vang Nau brand until today. I always feel lucky and happy because of that”, Man confided.

At first, Man took advantage of his family's small room of only 9m2 to make cakes and run an online bakery.

The amount of more than VND 30 million in her savings was used to buy ingredients, ovens and necessary tools. Just like that, the first salted egg and tiramisu cakes were born and the name ‘Vang Nau’ came soon.

The first customers of the shop were her relatives and friends. The online bakery operated for nearly a year and Man decided to open a shop in a small masterpiece on Dinh Tien Hoang Street for the display of her ‘brainchildren’.

In 2020, given the increasing demand for cakes from customers, Man moved the shop to Hung Vuong Street with a larger and more professional scale.

At that time, in addition to salted egg sponge, tiramisu, Man made more cakes and cookies. On public holidays and at Tet, the Vang Nau shop also serves more typical cakes such as moon cakes for the Mid-Autumn Festival, pine tree-shaped cookies for Christmas.

As for ice cream cakes, each cake model when introduced to customers brings a lot of enthusiasm and creativity the Vang Nau’s staff from cake decoration skills to the creation of ice cream recipes and cake cores.

In particular, the Vang Nau cheese cake makes it stand out from others of its kind thanks to its minimalist, modern and luxurious decoration style, and especially, the cake core with a combination of many distinctive flavours.

After more than a year of being located on Hung Vuong Street, in November 2021, Vang Nau was then moved to 83 Le Hong Phong.

Taking advantage of the large space at ‘the new house’, in addition to cakes, Man serve more coffee to customers who want to enjoy cakes on the spot.

She took a bartending course and then personally created the drink menu as well as the recipe for each drink of the shop.

Sharing about the name ‘Vang Nau’, Man said: “Initially, I chose this name simply because it was my favourite colours. Later, when I delved deeper into the baking profession, I knew that golden brown is the colour of a freshly baked cake, meeting the standards of baking time and temperature”.

In the coming time, the strong-swilled woman plans to open more Vang Nau bakeries and coffee shops to serve more customers.

Reporting by KHANH QUYEN – Translating by A.THU