Ex-refugee is living the American dream

By Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writer

Thanh Quoc Lam drove along the streets of America's capital last week and could not believe the journey that his life has taken, from fleeing Vietnam as a child in a crowded boat to meeting President Bush in the White House as the Small Business Administration's small-business person of the year.

Hawai'i's Thanh Quoc Lam, the Small Business Administration's small-business person of the year, traveled to Washington last week to meet President Bush. Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser

It all seemed too much for Lam as he toured Washington last week. "I said, 'It's like a dream. I can't believe this is happening.' "

Lam's wife, Xuan, has joined in his struggle every step, ever since they crammed themselves as children into a 43-foot boat with 184 other refugees. Clearly, she was not in a mood to let her husband miss a beat of his moment in Washington.

"She said, 'Would you like me to slap your face?' " Lam said.

Lam believes he owes his award, in part, to a story of struggle that honors an entire generation of Vietnamese immigrants who started over in America and — for many — found success.

"He's the American dream come true," said

Keith Braham, whose company, Sentech Security Inc., installed the security and other electronic systems in Lam's Ba-Le Kalihi headquarters, just across from the O'ahu Community Correctional Center. "He's the walking example of what can happen in America."

Braham has serviced the systems for 10 years and worked in the background as Lam has dealt with employees, customers and business people.

"If he makes a deal where he's going to give you a Grade A product," Braham said, "what he'll deliver is a Grade AAA product with the best ingredients and the best service."

It's clear that Lam is the boss at Ba-Le. But Tammy Doan, who supervises production for Ba-Le's airline customers, said Lam has been known to stand side-by-side with some of the 75, mostly immigrant, workers and make sandwiches or wrap desserts.

"I work six days a week," Doan said. "Working here is fun, so it doesn't feel like work."

Lam designed and served as general contractor for the two-story, 17,000-square-foot bakery that opened in 1996 and cost $2.4 million, including equipment. The operation runs 24 hours a day, pumping out bread for the franchised Ba-Le shops, pizza dough for all of Hawai'i's Papa John restaurants, bread and rolls for big-name hotels and 200 different products for nearly every airline that touches down in Hawai'i.

Lam owns just one of the 22 Ba-Le sandwich shops — the name means "Paris" in Vietnamese. And it accounts for just 5 percent of his $400,000 monthly sales.

Lam instead licenses each franchise to friends and former employees for $20,000, or sometimes sells an operation outright for $40,000. He also provides zero-percent financing on franchise loans.

Another 25 percent of his business comes from wholesale bread sales to hotels, the Ba-Le franchises and Papa John shops. The Papa John contract alone, requires Lam to produce 40 tons of pizza dough every month.

The remaining 70 percent of his business comes from supplying airlines with everything from first-class desserts to coach-class rolls.

Lam also plans to convert a kitchen to meet USDA requirements so he can supply meats and other foods. And by the end of the year, or maybe in the first few months of 2003, Lam hopes to build another plant to produce partially baked, frozen breads. He believes it's a lucrative, unfulfilled market that hotels and other catering businesses will embrace because it gives both sides more flexibility, rather than worrying about either producing or buying fresh bread on a daily basis.

Lam hardly started out with such big dreams.

He was 9 when his father died, leaving the family of six boys desperate for money and struggling in the South Vietnam city of Kien Giang. He went to school for half of the day and sold lottery tickets for the rest. He was 16 when South Vietnam fell and Lam found himself chaffing under the Communists.

In 1978, Lam's brother arranged to take the 18 members of their family and 168 others out of Vietnam aboard an overloaded boat. Those who could find space sat thigh-to-thigh.

"There was no room," Lam said.

The boat took them to a Malaysian refugee camp and the journey for Lam and his family eventually ended in San Jose, Calif., one of the biggest communities for Vietnamese refugees in America.

Lam took classes, through English as a second language, at a local high school, where he would split one 55-cent hamburger with his future wife. He worked a string of low-paying jobs — at a flea market selling sodas, washing cars, busing tables at a Vietnamese restaurant, on a computer-chip assembly line and as a handyman for an apartment complex.

Then in 1980 he saw an ad in a Vietnamese-language newspaper offering $27 bus trips to gamble in Reno, Nev. Each person was promised $27 worth of chips in return. Lam thought the deal couldn't possibly be true and took the ride himself.

The deal was real and Lam asked seven hotel managers how he could run similar tours. They said he basically needed a business license and a van and would collect $27 from each passenger and $14 per person in commissions from the casinos. Lam had to pay the hotel rooms out of his profits.

On the first trip he made $153 but on the second the van broke and cost $1,000 worth of repairs. He borrowed the money from his family and began expanding, offering bigger buses and sandwiches he made in his kitchen.

Over time, Lam was cranking out 80 sandwiches and decided it was better to buy them from a Vietnamese refugee named Le Vo, who ran a local sandwich shop named Ba-Le. The gambling tours grew over the next 3ý years but so did the competition, which drove the price down to $15 per person, taking Lam's profits in the process.

Vo had heard that Hawai'i had no Vietnamese sandwich shops and told his friend Lam that there might be opportunities for them in the Islands.

In 1984 they flew to Honolulu, picked out a busy Chinatown location and negotiated a $20,000 lease. When they met the landlord in person, the price was suddenly $40,000 and Vo refused to pay. Lam, however, liked the steady stream of Vietnamese people walking by and secretly laid down $2,000 as a down payment.

"I was 26," he said, "married, a young guy with no house, no credit, no credit card. Nothing. I can't believe they gave me the lease."

With money borrowed from friends and family and the sale of his tour bus, Lam and Vo came up with $120,000 to open the first Ba-Le in Hawai'i.

Lam knew almost nothing about baking French bread but got what he calls a "special ingredient" from Vo and another ingredient from a refugee in Australia. "It was like learning from two kung-fu masters and putting them together for something better," Lam said.

The first day Ba-Le and its four employees — Lam, his wife and Vo's son and daughter — sold out 200 desserts and more than 200 sandwiches.

Three months later, Lam and Xuan were burned out. They worked 12 to 16 hour days baking bread and making sandwiches and desserts in return for just $2,000 a month. Lam wanted to sell his stake to his friend Vo and instead drive a taxi — like other Vietnamese immigrants who made the same money as he did, but for less work.

Instead, Vo sold his share to Lam for $7,000. "Owning the business outright made me work harder," Lam said.

Then Honolulu magazine gave Ba-Le a positive review in February 1987 and people lined up. By the end of 1987, Ba-Le's sales had increased 100 percent. Lam then bought another shop at the end of 1987 for only $5,000, with his brother running the new store.

Lam decided to bake the bread for both stores, just as a Korean barbecue owner began asking for a constant, daily supply.

And that's when Lam's business formula began to take shape.

Today, he operates out of an office decorated with Asian accents, focused around white leather couches. There's a picture of Lam with former Gov. John Waihe'e during a tour of Chinatown. Lam's 1989 Small Business Administration award as O'ahu's young entrepreneur of the year and a 1998 trophy as recipient of Ernst & Young LLP's Entrepreneur of the Year Award in the retail food and beverage category are on his bookshelves.

An enormous portrait of a smiling Lam rests against one wall, as does a family picture that includes his sons Trung, 21, and Brandon, 18.

Amid all the talk about sales and business plans, the past and the future, Lam paused to brag about his sons, who are both Eagle Scouts.

"Troop 42," Lam said. "I'm very proud of them."

Hard work. A visit to the White House. Eagle Scouts for sons.

Just one more piece of Lam's American dream.

Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8085.