Sonny Nguyen - The story of the Co-owner of 7 Leaves Cafe
Photo Credit: Benny Chiu, BYC Photography
Where did you grow up?
I was in Vietnam until I was four. My family left Vietnam and went to the Philippines on the island of Palawan for a year. We were sponsored to the US and landed in El Monte and now very proud to have a store there. We didn’t necessarily get settled as we moved around to El Monte, then to Riverside, then ultimately settled in Garden Grove. Garden Grove was where we anchored ourselves and at that time I was about in the 1st grade.
What was life like for you and what did you enjoy the most about it?
We have a family of 4 boys so everything was surrounded by my siblings. We grew up poor but it was in an environment where I didn’t feel poor. We were used to sharing everything - clothes, food, even our room for the longest time. That was part of our DNA. Life was very simple, nothing complicated and we were just getting acclimated to school. Our parents were struggling to survive and worked multiple jobs to get by. I remember my meals of the day were when we went to school. Being in a low-income household, we received meal tickets for free lunches and that’s what we looked forward to going to school. It felt normal and we didn’t think much about it. Our parents never had any time to go to any parent conferences and we didn’t really understand why we went to school - it was just part of our daily life.
What were the circumstances that led you to leave your home?
We left because my dad fought for the south. After the war when we lost, he was put into a concentration camp. Through his escape that’s how we fled.
What was life like in the transition from your home to the U.S.? What were the first few months in the U.S. like?
I remember being about 4-5 years old, we lived in a garage. It was 6 of us - mom & dad and 4 kids. I remember thinking it was cozy because we were all together but I’m not sure how my parents saw it; I’m sure they felt it was cramped for the six of us. I remember my parents and grandparents said I used to wander the streets a lot because that was normal in Vietnam, a 3 year old wandering the streets of our neighborhood, but here I was a 4 year old wandering the streets of El Monte. I remember seeing a lot of homeless people and people pushing shopping carts. It was probably more strange for them to see a 4 year old wandering around than it was for me to see them.
What is the thing you are most proud of when you consider your [heritage, journey, culture, global experiences]?
One thing that I am most proud of is our resilience. To think about what my parents did: going to the ocean and into the unknown where millions of people died, being displaced from your homeland, and finding a home and anchoring yourselves; starting from the bottom and being able to succeed here in the US. When people say “anything is possible when you put your mind to it,” our heritage is a great example of that.
What do you miss most about your home?
There are things that I gravitate towards. I gravitate towards the islands and perhaps it’s because we were in Palawan. Although I don’t remember it, I do remember the palm trees and the beach and street foods. Going to the beach and to the swap meet is all part of me and those are the things that I gravitate towards even if I don’t distinctly remember it.
What do you like about your new home?
There’s so many things to love about it. One is freedom. All of the things that we take for granted, such as the laws. This home is truly a place where whatever you can dream of, you can bring to reality. It was based on your want, hard work, and desires. I can say that about where I was born. I think of the opportunities that exist here and this is a better version of home. Even though it’s “Little Saigon,” it’s really a bigger Saigon because it’s better in every way. It isn’t limited to one culture, it’s a melting pot. You learn from each other and experience different cultures from food, religion, way of life, and from that you become more colorful. And the weather’s better.
What would you like to share about starting over in a new culture?
Even though I am considered a first generation immigrant because I was born in Vietnam, I really think of it as my parents were first generation, my kids are second generation, and I am the 1.5 generation. When you’re 4, you’re still in elementary school so you live with one generation at home and at school you grow up with another generation. It gets confusing but you get to live in both worlds at the same time. The first generation is still struggling to get acclimated because they had 30 to 40 years in one country. They have the saying “it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks” which is very true and why it’s extremely hard for their generation to get assimilated to a new culture. Being in the 1.5 generation is great because there are benefits and good aspects to both; you get to pick and choose. I would say the hardest thing for the first generation is trust. When you have to be displaced it’s because you lose trust in your last culture while the new culture is taking you in. I saw a lot of that with our first generation. If they were more trusting and more open to assimilate faster, they probably would have had a better experience but because of their circumstances they always had guardrails. You couldn’t trust the government, so that took longer to assimilate. We were kids so we were led by our parents and it was hard to give them feedback, but we were always in this weird middle ground where we were trying to help guide the first generation in a way. For the next generation coming in here, I believe they should be more trusting and try to assimilate sooner than later.
What led to start your business?
When my brothers and I accomplished what our parents wanted us to achieve, we then started to think about what we wanted to achieve in life. Opening our business was a project to do together because growing up, we did everything together. Naturally, when we look back on our happy days, it was when we were goofing off and just doing things together. We just came back to that.
Photo Credit: Benny Chiu, BYC Photography
How was the journey of starting a business in the U.S.? What challenges/victories did you encounter along the way?
Business is very difficult to start with especially when you go into food and beverage. The reason why it’s difficult is because in business, there are so many different facets. You have to have a lot of capital so you already have to have some kind of money. For some when you start off business using credit card or debt, you’re under some pressure. The other elements of business include marketing, accounting, operations, the people aspect, training, real estate, and in some cases there’s legal. You have to have an expansive knowledge base. If you don’t have awareness of these then it would be very difficult to succeed in business on your own. When you go to school, you major in one aspect, but when you go into business you have to know all of this. It wasn’t like our parents taught us or someone taught us all of these things. You either have to have the knowledge and awareness or you have to have a team. We were lucky that as siblings we all had backgrounds in different aspects of the business. I came from a world of banking and real estate, Ha was a lawyer, Vinh was a director of IT and engineer, and Quang was creative so he was in design and software. The different experiences that we had came together to really give us a holistic view of business. That’s where we were able to be somewhat successful starting off because it wasn’t a one-man team; we had a broad perspective on what we had to do. We all worked in corporate America and we used the money we saved for years to open up the business.
What impact do you hope to have in your life and the lives of others in regard to your Business?
We have an opportunity to shape the experience of the next generation’s first experience to the workforce. We are the gatekeepers in some ways. With that responsibility we are able to teach them what teamwork is really about, how to serve the community, how business can be conducted, and how to be responsible. Within most of these things, there’s a certain culture that we embody. Our culture sets the right tone for them to enter the workforce.
The other element is our mission statement which is to enhance the human experience. Our hope is to bring joy to any customer who enters our stores even if it’s for a brief moment in time.
What are you hoping and dreaming about for the future?
When it comes to the future, I hope that what we do and our lasting impression leaves the world a better place before we got here. To have our organization be a company that lasts for a very long time, has the ability to create jobs, beautify local communities where we have our 7 Leaves locations, and by having us in the community we enhance the community in every way from the workforce, to job creation, to joy. We can inspire the next generation from our story that you can go from nothing, can come from being displaced and going through hardships, but if you put your mind to anything then you can achieve anything.
How can we as a society help?
It comes down to this word: care.
If we just placed more care into everything we do, I think society as a whole gets better. We were given this opportunity because someone in the U.S. cared for what was happening in Vietnam and created sponsorship opportunities for us. Then when we came over here, there were folks who cared for the wellbeing of displaced individuals and created programs that fed us. It all came from a place of care. If we cared more, that’s the foundation and building blocks of how we can continue to improve.
Is there anything else you would like to share as a part of you and your story?
I think the essence of 7 Leaves is family and that essence of us coming together doing something together, can get lost in business. In society, everything spotlights an individual story like “the CEO.” There’s always a hero in the story. How I want to emphasize our family is that our success is our collective effort of everyone coming together, everyone laying a brick, and that gets lost in stories. If there’s anything that I want to emphasize it’s that 7 Leaves’ success is a culmination of so many people coming together and laying bricks together. Beyond our family and immediate siblings, we’ve had so many people such as our teammates, community, mentors, and everyone coming together to help coach and guide us and help us lay bricks. That’s where we see the future of 7 Leaves growing together and becoming more successful because our family has become more of a community.
