Despite the brand’s popularity from day one, Roll’d has had no marketing since launching.
“As we develop more, we’ll do more in terms of marketing. But for the first store launch we put a menu on the window and had a queue of people out the door from day one, and that hasn’t changed.”
The most challenging aspect of running the business for Hoang so far has been learning and understanding the food industry.
“I had to develop a really good understanding of the processes behind the food and beverage industry. So things like costs of goods and wages in the industry, none of it came as a surprise, but I really had to find out the industry standards.
“I wouldn’t say it’s been difficult, but it has been a challenge. The other challenge was finding capital to grow the business, but we’ve gotten to a level now where we’ve brought on an external investor and that’s helped the process.”
Hoang is now working on a broader range of food to capture the dinner trade. The new food selection will include Vietnamese pancakes and a Vietnamese version of a taco. Rice dishes will also be on the menu, as will skewers, but the new food options won’t be rolled out in every store.
“Ray and I generally make the decisions in terms of expanding the menu, we’ll then bring on a consultant chef who will work with my mum to develop to recipes,” he says.
“My mum comes up with the flavours and the food and then we’ll bring on the consultant chef to find out the process behind it. Then we’ll have a taste testing day. We’ve got one in about two weeks where we’ll have 20 to 30 people. If it goes the way we hope, then we workout the processes, the price over three to four weeks.”
During the week Hoang aims to be home for dinner with his family each night, but to fit extra working hours into a five day week he does a ‘double day’ once a week.
On Tuesday nights Hoang works until 4am to make his five day week the equivalent of six days.
“I find working between 8pm and 2am I can work without as much distraction. On weekends this also means I can have family time.
“I love sport and I play basketball every week still on a Monday night with my high school team. I also love my AFL (he’s a long-time Essendon supporter) and I try to go every week. I also like playing golf and I often take my seven-year-old boy.
To some degree, Hoang believes in work-life balance, but he knows hard work is crucial to grow a business.
At the moment, Hoang is expanding Roll’d stores into suburban locations and other states, as well as working on a home delivery model for the suburban stores.
“What we’re doing is testing different markets to see where the markets are at. Melbourne is the most mature in terms of food development around the country; Melbourne was ready for our concept,” he says.
“From what we’ve seen in Canberra, it is too, but Brisbane doesn’t have as refined an understanding as what Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra do, although it’s getting there.”
The big goal for Hoang is for Roll’d to be one of Australia’s few big food brands to go international.
“Boost has done it really well, but there haven’t been many others. It’s an opportunity to deliver something that’s accessible worldwide.
“The plan is to stabilise in Australia over the next 12-18 months and then look internationally next year. We’re considering Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines. And then in the next five years we want to be in all the major locations like New York, London, and then China and Indonesia.”
Hoang’s best tip to aspiring entrepreneurs is to have a long-term plan to work toward.
“We have a 10-year plan and going toward that makes everything easier. We wrote a list of the all the places we wanted to launch in the first three years on our white board when we first started and while we’ve adapted that when we’ve needed to, generally speaking, we’ve gone pretty close to it so far.”
