Today I’m chatting with Jackie Nguyen, owner of Cafe Cà Phê in Kansas City. Jackie was a Broadway performer before COVID-19 shut down her tour and she found herself rooted in Kansas City while she waited things out. Eventually, she opened Cafe Cà Phê, which is the city’s first Vietnamese-owned coffee shop—and one of only a handful of Vietnamese-owned specialty coffee shops in the nation.
Jackie was moved to open Cafe Cà Phê because of the lack of Asian representation she noticed in her new city. This episode is about listening—to others, and to yourself—and about storytelling and personal reflection. Jackie shares poignant lessons of life-altering moments that convinced her that her cafe was necessary, and reflects a deep understanding of her why—why this coffee shop, why this city, and why this moment. Here’s Jackie.
A content warning: There is a mention of a hate crime around the 7:30 mark.
Ashley: Jackie, I was wondering if you could start by introducing yourself?
Jackie: Yes. Hi, my name is Jackie Nguyen. I am the owner of Cafe Cà Phê.
Ashley: Did you grow up with coffee in your life?
Jackie: Yes, I did actually. Coffee to me was just an everyday thing that l always, like, I think I started drinking coffee at three. My mom would make Vietnamese coffee, and so I literally just always have had coffee in my life. It wasn't like an adult thing. I grew up drinking coffee for sure.
Ashley: When did coffee become a more serious pursuit for you?
Jackie: Well, when I was 16, I got my first job at Starbucks and I worked there for a really long time. That was my job that put me through senior year of high school and then I worked all through college, all four years of college. I worked across the street from my college, and then I worked in LA for a year.
Then I worked in New York for another three years at Starbucks. So ever since I was 16, it was just part of my life. That was my main job pretty much.
Ashley: What inspired you to open a coffee shop?
Jackie: What inspired me was pretty much necessity. I am an actor. So prior to opening Cafe Cà Phê, I was actually performing on a Broadway tour—and the pandemic hit. And so I was out of a job which really, really sucked.
I ended up seeking refuge in Kansas City—very, very random, but my partner at the time who was also on the tour with me, he is originally from Kansas City, and during that time we were trying to figure out what to do to wait out the pandemic. And he's like, “My parents have some room here. Let's just wait it out for a few weeks.” As we all thought.
Ashley: How optimistic of us.
Jackie: Right. I was like, “Yeah, I'm just gonna temporarily wait it out.”
So we moved to Kansas City just thinking, “Oh, I'll just be there temporarily.” But I had always had this plan C—not even a plan B, but a plan C, to maybe one day open up my own coffee shop, or maybe a bookstore or just something like that. I was romanticizing the idea of just, “Oh, maybe I can have my own business one day of something cute.”
But then when the pandemic hit, there were no auditions, there was no jobs. My show was indefinitely closed. I was pretty much without any work. And so I thought, “Oh, okay, I'm gonna have to find a way to come up with some money. I'm gonna have to find a way to really figure out what to do with my time.”
I worked on my branding at first just to see—I wanna get my logo and my colors done, things like that. I actually just started off thinking it would just be like a simple money-maker for me temporarily. So I started making Vietnamese iced coffee. And I would sell it at a table, just like lemonade-stand-style outside of different small businesses that were actually still open during the pandemic.
I would sell individual cups of Vietnamese iced coffee because like, I love Vietnamese iced coffee. It's what I grew up with and I didn't really see any spots in Kansas City that was selling it. So I was like, “Oh, let me just sell this real quick.”
But then a lot of people started to follow me on social media and be like, “We don't have anything like this here. There's nothing like this in Kansas City.” And I was like, “Oh, okay. Interesting.”
I didn't really know anything about Kansas City at all. I was just doing it because I really needed money. I also needed friends. So I thought that that would be a really good way to meet people in the city and get to know the community. But then it kind of dawned on me as more people came that this was something that was needed in the city.
And what kind of pushed me to continue was I actually was really upset one day because I felt like there was really no representation in Kansas City for the Asian community, I felt like I didn't really know where I could hang out.
I didn't really know where the cool hip spots where I could go get boba or popcorn chicken or just the things that are very accessible in California or Chicago or New York. I grew up in San Diego. I lived in New York for 10 years and so I was not a Midwest girl, I was not a Kansas City girl. And so I was super upset one day talking to my mom about how I was like, “Ugh. I don't feel like I belong here. I don't feel like I have anywhere to like hang out.”
And she's like, “Well, why don't you make a space like that? Why don't you create something like that? Because I'm sure there are other kids that feel the same way you do.”
I was like, “Oh—I mean, yeah, I could do that. Yeah Mom, you're right.”
I was like, “You know what? Why not? Why not try—the pandemic's happening. I don't know what's going on. This is what I can pour my heart into.” It wasn't necessarily a plan, it just happened out of necessity for me. And then it continued because out of necessity for what the city needed. I didn't realize the impact was gonna be bigger than I expected at that time. I was just fulfilling this need that I thought, “There’s space here for it, I should create it.”
Ashley: I wanna talk about that moment because it seems like your—not necessarily intention, but way that you approached pursuing this changed once you realized, “Oh, this is something that the city needs. This isn't just for me. This can be something bigger beyond me.”
When was that apparent? Was there a specific moment where you were like, “Oh, this is much bigger than what I thought this was?”
Jackie: Yeah, for sure. The biggest moment was fall of 2020. There was a pretty massive attack in Atlanta where eight Asian women were slain. It was a hate crime and I was noticing there wasn't really anything happening in our city to kind of commemorate that or honor that—no one was saying anything, it wasn't really being talked about.
A customer of mine at the time—it was just me and one of my other managers. It was just us two and she's Japanese. It was just two Asian women running my little cart at that time. I eventually got a mobile cart and so we were really nervous and so we would close down our cart sometimes because we didn't know if these attacks were targeted.
We didn't know if a lot of people were going after Asian women and those businesses. Another Asian woman came up to me and said, “Can we do something to honor these women?” We decided to hold a vigil for the city and announce to the press and announce to the city, “Hey, we are just gonna hold this little event outside of our coffee shop, our coffee truck. Everyone's welcome to come. We're gonna teach you how to light incense in the way that we do it in Vietnam, and we're just gonna hold some space for these women that had died and that were Asian and that owned businesses.”
And actually 500 people ended up showing up to that vigil that day. All types of people from the city. We had speakers that were state representatives come out. We had tons of people wear and bring the flags from Singapore and Japan and Vietnam. I just saw this huge crowd of so many people, and I wanna say for maybe an hour, I was just like talking to person after person coming up to me and being like, “Thank you for doing this. No one was doing this. We really need this in our city.” The Asian community here, especially in the Midwest, have no representation. There's no voice here. We exist here, we live here. But because like, I guess the population just isn't as big as in other places on the coast, people have, honestly, kind of forgotten that we exist.
And I was like, “Oh no, that is not happening. If I'm living anywhere, that is not happening to my community, you know?” And so that was a really pivotal moment for me to be like, “Okay, this is bigger than me. This is more about my culture. It's more about amplifying us.”
And then I started to see, wow, this trend of being invisible and this trend of being quieted—it exists not just in the press, but it also exists within the coffee space.
Ashley: Yeah, I was just about to ask you about that because I think that you're speaking to all these big themes of not having your voice represented, maybe being in a smaller population than the coasts. And then I'm thinking about this as you're saying it. I'm like, how did you start to see yourself once you really saw, “I'm needed in this community,” but then now you're part of this larger coffee community that's maybe not so locationally based—it's kind of this whole national specialty coffee community.
How did you start to see yourself in that space and when did you start to realize like, oh, “This is a problem kind of everywhere?”
Jackie: Oh my god. I mean, the minute I started researching other Vietnamese coffee shops. And I was like, “Okay, cool. We have a few in Seattle, we have one or two in Philly. We have Nguyen Coffee Supply, but that's not a shop. You know what I mean? So I was like, “Wait, there's only like four of us, like in the whole United States—Vietnamese coffee shops that’s not a boba shop or not just [coffee as] a menu item in a restaurant.”
I think it was the research that I started to do—I started to see how many coffee shops are in Kansas City, how many of them are owned by people of color. And I was like, “Okay, well that narrows it down quite substantially.”
And then I looked even more and I was like, “Wait, there's no space at all that serves any type of coffee from Vietnam, any robusta, any type of Vietnamese-style coffee as well.”
And it was honestly, in all that research, I was really disheartened, because I think coming from Starbucks is very different, such a different environment. I worked in New York, so to me, being in a corporate setting where you are surrounded by tourists and surrounded by so many diverse people—because I worked in a lot of stores that had a lot of actors and a lot of creators and creatives—I was always surrounded by diversity.
But then when I started to see the specialty coffee world, the third-wave coffee shops, I began to feel very intimidated because I was like, “Whoa. It's like a lot of white, cis, hipster dudes,” and I felt really outnumbered. I felt like I couldn't really go to them for advice because their narrative is completely different than mine.
And my culture is involved in the process of coffee. Not just with the beans, but with the style of brewing, the lifestyle. It is actually part of our culture and part of our cuisine. It's not just this glamorized idea of Vietnamese-style coffee.
No. I grew up with it. It's part of every single Vietnamese household. It's something that represents our culture very, very deeply. And so I was inspired, but also really discouraged at the same time. You know what I mean? I was like, “Man, I have this amazing opportunity to showcase my culture, to showcase my community. But then I also don't know where I could go for guidance or where I can go for inspiration.”
I would literally sit in different coffee shops and study and see the amount of people that would walk in and how diverse it was. I started to feel like I gotta go with the beat of my own drum here because what I'm gonna do is gonna probably shake things up a lot and I don't wanna compare myself to other people or necessarily make an assumption or copy anything else that exists because this is already so different, you know?
So it was quite a struggle at first to to find some guidance, not just with how to run your shop or anything, but even finding capital. I'm a woman of color and I'm also first generation—my whole family, they're refugees. So there's no generational wealth there. There's no savings, there's no anything to help back up financially me starting my own business. So the whole journey itself was quite scary and a little alienating to be honest, because I was going off just myself.
Ashley: That's wild to think. I mean, it's not wild to think because it's true, it's just a fact of the coffee industry. But just to run down some facts: Vietnam is the second-largest producer of coffee, the largest producer of robusta coffee specifically. And hearing you say there weren't very many Vietnamese-run coffee shops or coffee shops that were even using Vietnamese coffee in the specialty world seems kind of appalling in a way.
And the fact that it's relegated almost to a drink versus an actual cultural entity …before we started recording, I was telling you about my interview with Sahra Nguyen who owns Nguyen Coffee Supply, and she was telling me that like one of the reasons that she started her business was that she would go to coffee shops and order Vietnamese iced coffee and people would not use Vietnamese beans. And she was like, “Why? This makes no sense.”
To realize that there's so few examples, there's so few blueprints for people who wanna do something different, is kind of—I don't wanna say sad, it is sad, but like it's more complex than that. It's more nuanced than that. It feels like we often replicate the same things over and over. So when you try to do something different, there really is no blueprint for how to do that.
Jackie: Totally. And in a way it was, it was super sad for me, mainly because it was this overall representation of the bigger picture of like, “Oh my god, if we don't exist in this coffee world, imagine how we feel.” In the Midwest in general, that's how it was. Just this layer upon layer of feeling othered and feeling a bit kind of like—”Oh man, you do really use our culture for your benefit.”
As I grow older and you get older and wiser and you're learning more about yourself and your identity—that has been my journey all through my 20s and now, my mid 30s is like discovering what trauma I've experienced in the past from racism and things that I've just accepted as normal, which wasn't normal or I thought was like, “Oh yeah, well, I'm just Asian and so of course I'm not gonna get a spot on this team.”
That was normalized to me and now I'm older being like, “Whoa, I can't believe that was my experience.” And the same with coffee. It's like, if I go into a hipster coffee shop and they'd be like, “Oh, Vietnamese coffee.” I'd order it and be, and I felt low-key like I'm so glad they have Vietnamese coffee, but not realizing they weren't using Vietnamese beans, not even using Vietnamese brewing styles.
But that was normalized for me because we were never in any type of scene or mainstream anything. So just having the fact that someone would say it's Vietnamese coffee was like, “Oh, cool.” But now I'm like, “Wait, no, that's not cool at all. Like that wasn't legit at all.”
I think my shop has been this crazy journey of not just the Midwest but the third-wave coffee industry and also within myself—all these layers of realizing, wow, we have never really truly had space. And now I'm trying to take up space and it is very difficult, but it's necessary and I'm hoping my shop can continue to shake things up and rearrange what you think is normal. Or what you think you're used to isn't necessarily always gonna be correct or isn't always necessarily gonna be relatable to everyone. It's just what we've been accustomed to for so long.
Ashley: What's really powerful about what you just said is just how many layers there are to this conversation. It wasn't like you specifically were like, “There isn’t Asian representation in Kansas City, so I'm gonna open up a shop.”
It is an individual journey. It is a locationally based journey, exploring your community in Kansas City, but it's also an industry-wide exploration, and that's a lot of layers to unpack and a lot of work that you have to do on so many levels—not just opening and running a business during a pandemic, which is a huge feat on its own.
But then also realizing like, “I'm doing something very specific and I'm doing something very intentional. What does that look like and what does that mean for the larger community?” And I wonder how did you start realizing that this was just so much more than what you set out to do?
I don't know if like you realized how complex that was gonna be when you started this process. When did it kind of dawn on you, how complicated and nuanced this was gonna be?
Jackie: Well, I really wanted to make sure that, if I'm gonna own a business and if I'm gonna run something, I want it to align with my values. I want it to align with my morals. I want it to literally be a reflection of who I am as a person, and I don't wanna hold back on that. Even if it means I don't make as much money, or even if it means I lose a certain customer base or whatever—because I, as a customer, as a consumer, I like to spend my money where I know that the money's going somewhere important or I'm supporting someone that might not have enough support.
I love supporting small businesses that mean a lot to me, so I started to think, “Okay, how do I wanna run my business and how do I wanna make sure that I'm doing it with grace, but also honesty and aligns with who I am as an artist and a human.” I was researching a bunch of different books that I could read about business and specifically I was taking a free course online about branding—because listen, I studied musical theater.
I have a BFA in musical theater. My adulthood and all my college studies was singing and dancing and voice—I know show business, but I couldn't really tell you anything about starting an LLC. So, I did a lot of research. I took a lot of free online courses and one of the branding courses suggested me to read this book called “Start With Why” by Simon Sinek.
And that book really changed a lot of how I began to see my business. It basically says, “Why are you doing what you're doing? What does it mean for you personally?” And you have to be super specific: If your why is, “I want to make sure that my Vietnamese-American narrative of who I am, growing up in San Diego, California is shown because I believe that there are other Vietnamese Americans that want representation,” that's how specific you can be with your why. That will be an anchor for you to always go back to. Part of my why is also profit. Because profit means breaking generational trauma and creating generational wealth—and that why can have an even bigger impact.
And then another layer is within the coffee industry. Within my research I was like, “Whoa, Vietnam is the second-largest exporter and then the number-one exporter robusta. So it's like what? Like in the whole world, you're saying we're up there and no one knows about our coffee?”
That's crazy to me. That's bananas. But everyone knows about Brazil and everyone knows about Colombia. But even then, the cultures behind Ethiopian coffee or Colombian coffee are not highlighted. It's just the beans. It's just—maybe some of the farmers, but not their culture.
I just wanted more of that. I wanted to be like, “Yo, like my mom used a Vietnamese phin growing up. I grew up, at five years old, seeing that and knowing exactly when I saw that condensed milk come out, that means mom's making coffee in the morning,” you know? Like, why aren't those things being told?
People don't know that the reason why we use condensed milk is because Vietnam is a super poor-ass country and did not have refrigeration back in the day. And so they had to use condensed milk because it was the one sweet thing that lasted without electricity or refrigeration.
Like people don't know that. They just think, “Oh, it's yummy.” You know? It's like, “No, it was out of necessity, bro. Just because you use condensed milk in your shop, you don't really know why.”
It’s those little nuances were so important to me because that's just part of my identity and it's part of what I grew up with, and so I really wanted to make sure people knew about that and that they saw that and thought, “Wow. There's so much more to this than I knew before.”
Ashley: As you were describing this, I was thinking about how little cultural identity so many coffee shops have, and that seems kind of the opposite of many restaurants. We honor and seek out restaurants that honor cultural traditions and bring in knowledge and expertise of people from all over the world.
And yet in coffee we use a product that comes from somewhere else and we really just make it devoid of any cultural identity. This is me speaking kind of in blanket statements and there are a lot of places who are starting to change that narrative, like your cafe, but I wonder why that's happened.
Obviously I don't expect you to know the answer to that because that would be a whole thesis-level research topic. But I think it's really interesting that you decided to inject this part of your identity and this part of your cultural understanding of coffee in this very multifaceted way and it really informed why you were there.
Like, “Why am I here? I'm here to do X, Y, and Z.” And you talked about the book that you read too. I even Googled it while you were talking: “Start With Why.” And I feel like for so many coffee shops, because they're seen as kind of a low-risk startup or a low-risk business, that question is often never asked.
Jackie: To me, I feel like coffee shops are not a necessity, right? Like a necessary business to open. Especially for me, in the POC world, in the Asian and specifically more of the Vietnamese narrative, a lot of the things that I grew up with or seeing family members start, it's like, “Well, we wanna make sure that this lasts.”
And so food is gonna be lasting. Everyone loves food. You can really cook your traditional dishes—it's easier to be in a survival mode, versus coffee shops almost seem decorative. It seems like, “Oh you have extra money. I wanna open up this like passion project,” versus like, “No, I need to open this up to survive.”
Within the Vietnamese culture, nail salons are a huge, huge part of our culture because when there was a huge refugee population coming over to America during the ‘70s, there was a woman that created this program for Vietnamese women to learn how to do nails so that they can make a living.
That became a family business and it just spread. It was like, “Oh, we know that we can come to America to open a nail shop and survive and make money.” That's like our survival job versus a coffee shop is a bit more like, “Well, I have money. I wanna invest in something. But it's not necessarily to survive.”
It's more like, “Oh, I wanna own a nice business." I'm either passionate about coffee, but this might not be the only thing I do, maybe I do other things, or maybe my family has many businesses, so I wanna own my own business as well.” And usually those people that open coffee shops in the past—and I'm talking like maybe five, 10 years ago, have a lot of generational wealth, have investors, have people that are willing to be like, “Yeah, coffee shops are necessity. We all love them. It’s a very recession-proof business.”
But in Asian culture, it's not deemed as like, oh, that's gonna be a thriving business that's gonna help me survive. I think that's why maybe we see less of that in the coffee world because it's, it's also very expensive and a hard business to kind of pursue. Clearly I've experienced that because there's not any of us to base that off of or to get guidance or to get help. But you know, there's so many restaurants, so many nail shops, so many other types of instances that we're like, okay, at least I have a blueprint for this.
It'll make it easier. But with coffee, none of that exists for specifically Asian coffee.
Ashley: I was thinking too that a lot of what I think robs coffee of its cultural identity is the way that we source coffee as well. Coffee runs basically on the idea of exploitation of labor. So part of the process is devaluing its cultural identity by like presenting it as, “Oh, this is a nice so-and-so washed arabica from here.” But we're not gonna talk about anything else. Like, that's it.
And again, it's a thing that we have purposely devalued monetarily to the delight and like pleasure of consuming countries. We've done this on purpose. The cultural history of coffee is based on exploitation.
We're starting to challenge that in really meaningful ways and on all levels. On all levels through the supplier, through the farmer, through the people who were seeing opening coffee shops and seeing you say, “Hey, I can serve Vietnamese coffee—I can serve coffee that is actually from Vietnam in my coffee shop,” which doesn't sound like a necessarily revolutionary idea.
It seems like it should be pretty obvious. We were talking about how Vietnam is the second-largest importer or exporter of coffee, and yet, you're one of the only people doing it. So there is a really encouraging sea change. But at the same time, the history of coffee has just robbed so many people of any sort of like cultural identity.
It's amazing to see people reclaiming that.
Jackie: Yeah, and there's a lot of opportunity to change it. It's not like the coffee spaces now that exist won't be able to do that too. It's just like, “Okay, then hire people that represent your shop in a way that can be culturally authentic or go to these places, learn about their culture. Learn about your vendors. Learn about the things that you promote in a deeper level, and educate yourself.”
I'm not saying that this is how all coffee shops need to be—all I'm saying is that we should have an opportunity to showcase our culture and our space without feeling othered or without feeling super invisible.
To be like, “Yo, this is part of our culture. This is not just a trend, this is not some new pop-up fusion idea.” We have had Vietnamese coffee in America for decades, and yet it's 2023 and we're just at maybe six coffee shops, seven coffee shops in the whole United States.
Like, what? That doesn't make any sense to me. It doesn't make any—I don't know. It just seems very weird, you know? I'm doing a lot of different work to try and help amplify that, but I'm also just focusing on making sure that I'm having fun, I am supporting the certain small businesses that really help amplify not just Asian communities, but marginalized communities, because it's tough out here for people of color in the coffee industry. We're trying to break through, but it's always been very dominated by white people.
It’s very hard to create space and take up space when you haven't had that space before, without shoving down things, shoving down your throat. I wish I didn't have to be so outspoken. I wish I didn't have to continuously be like, “Hey, there is no space for us in this industry. There is no space for us in the industry.”
If there was already space, I wouldn't have to do that. I wish I could just be a regular coffee shop, instead of being like, “I'm an Asian coffee shop,” or “I'm a Vietnamese coffee shop.” It's like, well, I should just be able to have a coffee shop.
But unfortunately, it is just not the case right now. It's tough, but it's also very exciting to see that I was able to open my own shop, but there were a lot of hurdles and still many challenges.
Ashley: What I find really inspiring about everything that you've said, and there's so much to pick at, there's so much personal, community, bigger picture things that I think you're doing and you're operating on so many different planes.
Just to distill it back to what I think a lot of coffee shops are lacking is that you seem to have a really specific purpose. And not to say that that's a purpose that can't evolve or can't change, but it seems like you know who you are and you know what you're doing.
When I think about a lot of other coffee shops, particularly ones where maybe a competitor opens up close by or maybe there's a dip in customers, what I find when I talk to people like that is that they don't really understand why they're there. And I've talked to so many people who think opening up a coffee shop is easy or it's a hobby.
Business, like we were talking about earlier, it's not necessarily needed—a coffee shop isn't offering a vital service that helps people, they don’t live or die without it, but it needs a reason, it needs a reason to exist. I often find that people don't really know what that reason is.
And hearing you talk, even though there's like pain and joy—pain and joy are kind of two sides of the same coin sometimes, but it seems like you know exactly why you're here.
Jackie: Yeah, I do. And I think being niche and being specific is such a boss business move because you're not afraid to be specific. I am very open about me being very supporting of the queer community and the Black community, the Hispanic community. I talk about a lot of the things that I support, and I remember getting interviewed by somebody a long time ago being like, “But what about the people that don't agree with you and you're gonna be losing their service? You're gonna be losing their money.”
And I said, “I don't really want their money. If they don't support the things I support, like that's not the consumer base I want walking into my shop.” I'm okay with that. I think a lot of coffee shops are kind of generic or they're not very specific in what they support. They're afraid. They're afraid of like, “Well, I wanna appeal to everyone.”
I'm like, look, this is a very large world and coffee is taste—it's like music and not everyone's gonna like punk. Not everyone's gonna like rap or country, but that's why those artists exist: because they're catering to a niche group of people.
I think coffee should be the same. You wanna be super specific with your audience because there's room for everyone. There's literally room for everyone. If you're afraid of losing a type of consumer base, then you need to do a lot more digging into your personal why.
Are you just doing this because you just wanna make money? Okay. Then what is deeper than that? Is it because you’re financially insecure?—and that is a truth for me. I do worry about profit because I don't have a secure background. I don't have any savings. My parents don't have a wealth or anything. My mom doesn't even have a high school degree.
I live very transparently with my values. I talk about how I started my business. I'm very, very transparent with that journey because I know that there are other young, first-generation Asian Americans, kids of refugees, that wanna open up their business—that is so freaking specific, but it makes me know why I'm doing what I'm doing.
You know what I mean? I think other coffee shops, you gotta have a very specific why. Are you catering to the young hip LA Instagram influencers that love blogging—like, that is okay. That is totally—if you can be that specific in that niche because there's room for everyone.
There's going to be hundreds of people that visit your shop that want your specific blend, that wanna see your specific barista. That love is not just according to location, but it's your vibe. Maybe they love having meetings there because it's so quiet and clean and you should lean into that. Like that's okay.
I think people are afraid of leaning into their authentic selves because they're afraid of either judgment or they're afraid to lose profit. But you have to understand that you won't lose profit because the people that support what you do are gonna come in. You know what I mean? So, yeah, I am very specific with my why and with who I am.
Mainly also because I am running the show, I am running the shop. It's my first time owning my own business. Why not make it as much me as possible? Why not have that reflect who I am? Then it'll make my job easier because I don't have to fake anything. I just know, “Oh, I love the branding. I would wear it every day.” If you are not gonna wear your brand every day, you’re not making your job easier for you.
Ashley: Right, right. Going back to something that you were saying earlier that we touched on really briefly, but we didn't really go into it too much, but I have to imagine that knowing what you're for and what you're about also makes your job way more fun. I can only imagine going into a coffee shop where you're not sure why you're there.
The moment conflict arises, that's not fun because you're not really sure what your guiding principles are, right? If a customer comes in and does whatever X, Y, Z action, and you're like, “Well, what am I about? Am I about appeasing the customer at all costs? What is the answer here?”
Versus like, “No, this is what I'm about. And if I don't have vanilla lattes and someone freaks out about it, then that's fine. I'm secure in my identity.”
I know that's a silly example, but I think there's something to be said too about being able to sit down, say exactly what your why is, and then being able to kind of conform your day to that.
Because I have to imagine there’s some like level of stress removed from knowing your why, because you're like, “I know what I'm gonna do when I show up every day.” You know what I mean?
Jackie: Yes, and we are not generic people—we are individual people with stories. With specific cultures, with family histories. And I think that should translate in your business because we are of the business of serving people. We're not serving robots or computers that don't have stories.
There's a cadence to our understanding and there's emotions involved. Business is emotional, business can be personal business. Yes, we can set proper boundaries within business, but at the same time, if you're serving human beings with hearts and brains, you are going to have emotions, you're going to have specific stories that are being told and we have to remember that.
I think what I do, as often as I can, when I try to put myself as a business person, I look at myself as a customer. What stores do I love? What do I need as a person when I go shopping or when I go to a coffee shop, or what brings me joy as a consumer, and put yourself in those shoes.
I try to do that every day with my customers and I try to be a customer in my own shop every day. I think we get so wrapped up in like, “Oh my gosh, I need to make money,” or, “I need to have social media following,” or, “I need to run the business well.” And I totally get that too.
But we're just humans. We gotta put more into what we do, you know? And I think that that is changing. And I see a lot of shops opening up that are way more specific, that are very intentional, and I love that. But there's so much more room to grow for all of us, especially in this industry.
Ashley: Is there anything that you want people to know about you before we wrap up?
Jackie: I just want people to know that I'm one of many people that deserve space and that deserve time and deserve the ability to be on Boss Barista podcast. I'm one of many, and just because I might be the loudest right now within the Asian culture doesn't mean that there are not dozens behind me trying to do the same thing.
I think that we should start with conversations and questions—I think a lot of people are nervous that they don't wanna offend anyone, and I get that, but being quiet doesn't help anything. Ask your friends, especially your Asian friends, “How are you feeling? Have you heard of this Vietnamese coffee shop? Have you felt this way in other coffee shops before?”
I just think opening up dialogue is gonna be so important because learning and having perspective is key, is so key to beginning your journey of learning about Asian culture or just like coffee shops in general. So I think that's it.
Ashley: Jackie, thank you so much for taking time to chat with me. I really appreciate it.
Jackie: My gosh, anytime. It was so lovely and I'm so honored and thank you so much for giving me the time and the space and just like being able to tell my story, because every time I get to tell my story, it's one more person that gets to learn or gets to experience or I get to talk to, essentially.
And I’m very, very grateful for that. So thank you.
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
For Jackie Nguyen, a Coffee Shop Was Plan C