College friends Cassie Ghaffar and Sandy Nguyen have seven young children between them, and, inevitably, there was one child or another asleep in the car when they wanted to pick up a meal. If there was one thing their hometown of Houston needed, they agreed, it was a good fast-casual concept offering healthy food with a drive-thru for busy families on the go.
And that was the impetus behind Saigon Hustle, a now two-unit fast-casual Vietnamese concept they created that is about to grow very quickly.
Nguyen had attempted to open a Vietnamese restaurant when she was just out of college. “I was really young at the time, and I didn’t know what I was doing,” she said. She sold it a few years later.
Ghaffar, meanwhile, had gone into wealth management, later stepping into the franchising world with six lash salons in Dallas and Austin. She had grown up in a restaurant family, but her father wanted out of the food business. He told his daughter opening a restaurant would be the “worst idea in the world,” Ghaffar said.
So when Nguyen came to Ghaffar with the idea of working together to build a restaurant chain, it was a hard sell.
“Cassie was like, ‘I’m only going to do this if it can be scalable and big, not a mom and pop, or one or two units,’” Nguyen said. “Our visions really aligned on that. It was very intentional.”
Sandy Nguyen (left) and Cassie Ghaffar with their collective children. | Photo courtesy of Saigon Hustle.
So they began to develop two brands to see what would stick.
The two friends first launched a coffee café called Sunday Press, which now has three units. Then they developed Saigon Hustle, first as a ghost kitchen and, in 2022, as a brick-and-mortar.
The first Saigon Hustle opened in a former gas station in 850 square feet, with no dine-in, and soon earned the description of being the “Chipotle of Vietnamese food.” (Except, of course, that Chipotle doesn't franchise in the U.S.)
On the menu: banh mi, rice or noodle bowls, salads, rolls and pho, built around five proteins and various sauces and marinades. Guests don’t walk a makeline, like at Chipotle, but they can build their meals from locally sourced, quality ingredients.
“We have revenue of $2.2 million,” Ghaffar said. “Out of 850 square feet.”
As they prepared to open that restaurant, the entrepreneurs entered a pitch for the concept into a competition for startup brands by private-equity firm Savory Fund.
And they won, beating out about 240 other entrants for a $1 million prize. That gave them the capital they needed to open the second location—a larger unit with drive-thru and dine-in.
But, before they could even get the second unit open, Savory Fund decided to invest further in the concept, now counting Saigon Hustle among its 10 restaurant brands, including concepts like Swig, Houston TX Hot Chicken, Via 313 Pizzeria and others.
And earlier this year, another investor came knocking.
Last month, Saigon Hustle announced the family office Virentes Partners Group has also joined in the investment and will help launch franchising. The family office is parent to Virentes Hospitality, a franchisee of Shipley Do-Nuts, Sweet Paris and other brands.
Virentes not only took a stake in Saigon Hustle, the family office signed on to become the first franchisee, pledging to open 24 Saigon Hustle locations in four states: Florida, North and South Carolina and Tennessee.
Ghaffar and Nguyen, meanwhile, are expecting to open their third location in Houston early next year. They plan to keep restaurants in the Houston market company-owned. But, with franchising, Ghaffar sees a path to 150 units in the next five years.
The banh mi is among the options on the menu, including bowls, salads, rolls and pho. | Photo courtesy of Saigon Hustle.
“Now, it’s serious, right?” laughed Ghaffar.
“This is the beauty of the partnership with Savory Fund and Virentes,” she added. “They have a big team. So it’s not like we’re starting as amateur franchisors who don’t know how to operate.”
The three-unit Sunday Press café brand will continue, but Ghaffar and Nguyen are focusing their growth efforts on Saigon Hustle.
When Ghaffar’s father urged her not to go into the restaurant business, he didn’t realize how much operational knowledge they already had, she said.
“We didn’t have to be the one opening the door in the morning and closing the door at night, seven days a week,” she said. “We are there, and we are present. But we know how to grow people from within.”