Thu Ba Nguyen decided to open her first Vietnamese roll bakery after growing frustrated in her old job working for a bank.
"I couldn't handle the people and the money - they can be a bit aggressive when it comes to money," she explains. Gazing out the window one day, inspiration struck.
"I saw a vacant shop downstairs where I work and decided to open a bakery," she says.
Thu sold her house, got a bank loan, and enlisted the help of family. She managed to raise $250,000, and opened her first shop in Parramatta with her husband in 2010.
"I put everything I had into the business."
Six years later, the couple now has a total of five shops across Sydney. On a recent afternoon at their newest location in Mascot, a steady line moved towards their counter.
Destination Roll's first shop in Parramatta. Source: Supplied
Thu Ba says they sell about 2000 rolls a day across the five stores, with a profit margin of 20-30 per cent.
But the couple's success hasn't just been a happy accident. Both their fathers are bakers, so there was family expertise to draw on. They also invested a lot of time and energy researching their competition, finding most Vietnamese roll bakeries either baked their rolls in the middle of the night, or bought them from elsewhere.
So they decided their point of difference would be offering freshly baked rolls - baking from 7am and then throughout the day. They've also been meticulous in refining the recipe for their bread rolls.
The freshly baked bread rolls sets Destination Roll apart from other Vietnamese bakeries. Source: Supplied
"We spent thousands of hours if you believe it or not. My husband and I, we would do secret trials and errors. We've thrown out thousands and thousands of rolls and come out with [the ones we have]," Thu Ba says.
Now Destination Roll is eyeing even greater expansion - but their hard work could have ended in disaster, if not for some sound advice from a New South Wales government program, called Small Biz Connect.
The program aims to help small businesses across the state grow, by providing specialist advice and support.
"We did benchmarking of their business to see how well they were doing financially," says Anh-Tuan Nguyen, who is Small Biz Connect's first adviser focusing solely on Vietnamese-run businesses. He also connected Thu Ba and her husband with an external franchising expert.
Anh-Tuan Nguyen (left) mentors Thu on expansion plans for Destination Roll. Source: Supplied
After many consultations, "they decided they are not ready for franchising, they need to work more towards that end later on," explains Anh-Tuan.
Now they've got a plan in place for moving toward their goal of franchising.
"At the moment they are trying to consolidate all the businesses, putting processes in place," says Anh-Tuan.
Thu Ba says she's grateful for the advice, which helped her avoid unnecessary risk.
"They've been extremely helpful, without them we'd be in the dark."
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