Born and raised in Gia Vien (Ninh Binh), a place famous for its shrimp paste, in 2019, Ms. Nguyen Thi Le Thanh decided to start a business with the product "Thanh Nguyen Braised Pork with Shrimp Paste". Ms. Thanh shared that in the early days of starting her business, the difficulty for her was finding a way to make braised pork with shrimp paste that both ensured quality, had the flavor of her hometown, and was also suitable for the taste of the majority of consumers.

Therefore, on the journey of researching and finding the right flavor, Ms. Thanh had to throw away tons of pork many times. Determined to take "heart" as her business philosophy, she is willing to listen to customer feedback to improve the product.

"Once I stood in the rain just to hope that a customer would agree to experience my product again after being dissatisfied. And now she is one of my "regular" customers," Ms. Thanh recalled.

With the desire for absolutely safe products, with the support of experts from the Institute of Food Technology, she launched a product of stewed meat with shrimp paste without preservatives. The product has been certified with 4-star OCOP, "Typical rural industrial product of the Northern region".

After a while, she developed the production facility into Thanh Nguyen Agricultural Production and Trading Cooperative. In 2022, Thanh Nguyen Cooperative faced many difficulties due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. To help the Cooperative overcome the difficulties, Ms. Thanh quickly found a new direction:

Promote the application of digital technology in online business; diversify business lines by providing food to schools and industrial parks, and providing catering services.

In production, with the determination to "reinvest as much as possible", Ms. Thanh constantly upgrades machinery and equipment in production, applying the advanced quality management system HACCP (the principle of establishing a food safety management system) to strictly control the production process, minimizing damaged products.

This helps Thanh Nguyen Cooperative to grow more and more, achieving a revenue of 7 billion VND in 2023, 3 times higher than the previous year. The Cooperative creates jobs for about 40 workers, most of whom are women.

In early 2023, Ms. Thanh decided to quit her government job and devote herself to building the brand "Thanh Nguyen Braised Pork with Shrimp Paste". At the same time, Ms. Thanh built the Com Que restaurant in Hoa Lu ancient town (Ninh Binh). But the restaurant business was not favorable.

At this time, she received feedback from many overseas Vietnamese wishing to export the dish of steamed pork with shrimp paste to foreign countries, meeting the needs of people living far away from home. With more motivation, Ms. Thanh exported Thanh Nguyen steamed pork with shrimp paste to countries such as Cambodia, Laos, Korea, etc.

One of the lessons Thanh learned from her startup process is "slow but steady", step by step developing and constantly improving knowledge and skills to build a livestream sales channel, do advertising communications for the brand, learn foreign languages...