08/18/2026
❤️ A Letter to My Community
I’m hoping someone in our community can tell me where I went wrong.
I feel like my last post about sponsoring North Penn Football and putting a Hoiana Café ad in their magazine has become the talk of the town.
It upset quite a few people because I was planning to use an AI-generated image. Several people mentioned that if I truly wanted to support local, I should hire a local photographer to photograph our actual food and a graphic designer to create the ad.
I hear you.
But I also want to share my side of the story.
About a year ago, when I brought up the idea of opening a restaurant to my husband, his exact words were:
“Are you crazy? Since COVID, do you see many new restaurants opening in this town anymore? Do you see how many restaurants close every year?”
Now I understand why he said that.
You guys are a tough crowd to please. 😂❤️
But seriously, if you’ve followed our story from the beginning, you probably know why I wanted to open Hoiana Café in the first place.
Why I Opened a Restaurant
Our family of four usually eats out once a week. So often we would ask each other, “Where should we go?”
Nowadays, almost anywhere we go besides fast food, a meal for a family of four can easily cost more than $100.
My idea was simple:
Create a place where families can come together, enjoy good food, and not have to break their budget.
After our first couple of months, there are three pieces of feedback I’ve heard repeatedly:
“The food is expensive.”
“This isn’t authentic Vietnamese food.”
“The service is slow.”
So let me address them.
🥖 Why We Believe Our Food Is Fairly Priced
Vietnamese food has been undervalued for a long time.
Historically, many Vietnamese restaurants have been able to keep prices low partly because labor costs were lower. Vietnamese and Latino restaurant workers have often been among those working long hours behind the scenes for lower wages.
At Hoiana, we made a different choice. We believe in paying our employees well—more than double Pennsylvania’s minimum wage.
We have a wonderful, diverse crew, including young teenagers getting some of their first work experience.
Some businesses don’t want to deal with the extra training and patience that comes with hiring teenagers.
We do.
We bring them in. We train them. We teach them. We pay them well. And our employees get to eat and drink for free during their shifts.
When people told me our $12 bánh mì was too expensive, I listened.
We increased the meat portion by 50%.
We increased the bread size from 9 inches to 11 inches.
But in the back of my mind, whenever I go to McDonald’s, Subway, or Panera, I can’t help thinking:
How can we comfortably pay these prices for a sandwich from a large chain, but feel that $12 for a handmade bánh mì from a small local restaurant is expensive?
If you could see the quality of ingredients we use and the amount of preparation and labor that goes into making that one sandwich, I think you’d understand our pricing a little differently.
On top of everything else, we chose to use halal meat for our menu.
Why?
Because a Muslim friend once told me that they wished there were more restaurants in our area where their family could eat.
Out of so many restaurants around us, there are very few halal options.
So I thought, why can’t we be one of them?
Now that I’m actually running a restaurant, I understand why more restaurants don’t do it.
Halal meat costs us significantly more.
It makes keeping menu prices low even more difficult when our food costs are already high.
But I don’t regret that decision.
If it means another family in our community can walk through our doors and know there are options for them, that’s something I’m proud of.
🇻🇳 For Those Who Say, “This Isn’t Authentic Vietnamese Food.”
I can promise you:
The Vietnamese dishes on our menu are authentically Vietnamese.
Yes, we also serve French fries, wings, popcorn chicken, and garlic noodles.
Why?
Because I thought about families.
Maybe Mom and Dad love Vietnamese food, but their child wants chicken and fries.
Maybe one person loves trying food from different cultures while another person just wants something familiar.
Those items are there so everyone can sit at the same table and enjoy a meal together.
Serving wings doesn’t make our phở less Vietnamese.
Serving fries doesn’t make our bánh mì less authentic.
Hoiana is simply a Vietnamese café that wants to welcome everyone.
❤️ “The Service Is Slow.”
This criticism was fair, especially when we first opened.
We were slow.
My employees were learning.
And I was learning too.
But we’ve spent the last couple of months training, changing things, and improving.
If you came during our first month and were disappointed with our service, please come back and give us another opportunity.
I think you’ll see a big difference.
I love my young employees, and I’m incredibly proud of how much they’ve improved.
It took a lot of training and patience to get here.
So when you come in and receive great service, please tell them.
Give them a compliment.
And if you feel we earned it, give us a 5-star review somewhere. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
It means more to a new small business—and to these young employees—than you may realize.
And if you don’t receive good service or you’re disappointed with your food, please tell us.
Call us. Message us. Ask to speak with me—Tamie.
Give us a chance to make it right.
I promise you, we listen.
A one-star review on Google or Yelp can discourage people from ever giving a small business like ours a chance. In this economy, reviews can have a very real impact on whether a small business survives.
I’m not asking anyone to hide a bad experience.
I’m simply asking:
Please give us the opportunity to fix it first.
And Finally… About That AI Ad
I apologize for this very long letter. 😂
But this is really what I wanted to explain.
Some people asked why, if I wanted to support local, I didn’t hire a professional photographer and graphic designer to create our North Penn Football ad.
The answer is simple:
Right now, I can’t afford to.
Hoiana Café is still operating at a loss.
I’m not even sure when we’ll start making a profit.
And yet, when I saw that North Penn Football had passed its sponsorship deadline, still needed sponsors, and was behind on fundraising, I still wanted Hoiana to contribute.
I could have easily said:
“We’re a new restaurant. We’re losing money. Maybe we’ll sponsor next year.”
But I didn’t want to do that.
I wanted to help now, even if our contribution was small.
So yes, I tried using AI to help create an advertisement because it was something I could afford.
Then I heard your feedback.
So I changed it.
For the past week, I’ve been working on different designs—with the help of my 11-year-old. ❤️
And then something happened that reminded me why I love this community:
One of our customers offered to create a design for us completely free of charge.
That meant a lot to me.
So now we have three designs, and I’m going to let the community decide.
❤️ Picture #1 was created with help from my 11-year-old.
❤️ Picture #2 was created by one of our customers.
❤️ Picture #3 was created by me using ChatGPT, but this time I used real photos of our actual Hoiana food instead of AI-generated food images.
So yes, I still used AI as a tool to help with the design—but the food you see is our real food. 😊
👇 Which one should represent Hoiana Café in the North Penn Football magazine?
Comment #1, #2, or #3 below.
And if you actually made it all the way to the end of this ridiculously long letter… thank you. 😂❤️
I’m trying to build a restaurant where families can afford to eat, where different cultures and communities feel welcome, where young people are given an opportunity to work and learn, and where we can give something back to the community that supports us.
Sometimes I’ll get it wrong.
When I do, tell me.
Just give me the opportunity to listen and make it better.
Thank you for supporting Hoiana Café. ❤️
Tamie Nguyen
Hoiana Café
