An American Story: Orphan from Vietnam Achieves Success as a Multi-Unit Owner

Name: Phong Huynh
Title: Co-Owner
Company: Fuego Investment Inc.
No. of units: 30 El Pollo Loco
Age: 54
Family: Wife Mia, two daughters, Isabelle and Shanelle, and one son, Justin
Years in franchising: 15
Years in current position: 15

Phong Huynh is the American Dream MVP (Most Valuable Performer) for achieving remarkable success in his new country.

When reflecting on his personal journey and path to restaurant ownership, Phong Huynh says, “Everyone has a story.” However, few can match his account of coming to the U.S. as an orphan from Vietnam and living on the streets as a teenager before eventually owning 30 restaurants in four states.

Huynh’s path to the American dream started a few years after the Vietnam War when he moved to the U.S. at the age of 7. The Catholic Church sent orphans from the country to the U.S. in hopes of giving them better lives. He relocated to Minnesota and lived in the back of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church for five years while spending weekends in the homes of local parishioners.

When he was 12, Huynh was put on a Greyhound bus to go to California to live with an adoptive family. Once he arrived, nobody was there to meet him. Instead, he lived on the streets of San Gabriel Valley for the next three and a half years, sleeping in parks and laundromats.

“During those moments, you just do what you need to survive,” Huynh says. “I had no choice. I didn’t know any better. I didn’t feel bad for myself. It made me a stronger person.”

The only way he got a free meal was by going to school. While he was in high school, the older brother of one of his friends worked for El Pollo Loco and suggested he could sleep in the restaurant. Once there, they said he could start earning his place by cleaning the grills.

This meager start would set the wheels in motion to change his life. He soon met a young cashier at the store named Mia, who had a similar background. She was born in El Salvador, and her father was killed during an insurgency in the country when she was 2 years old. She came to New York when she was 11 and moved to California three years later. A year after meeting as young employees at El Pollo Loco, the two got married while they were still teenagers.

Huynh was promoted to assistant general manager on his 18th birthday and continued to move up the ranks in various roles with the restaurant and company. Huynh said he possessed an ownership mentality as an employee, and after working there for a year, he knew his goal was to someday own an El Pollo Loco restaurant.

Huynh and his wife both worked for the El Pollo Loco corporate office for about 25 years. While they were good operators, they didn’t have the money to buy a restaurant. The change came when the couple’s three children reached high school, and the couple realized they needed to find a way to fulfill their promise to send them to college. The Huynhs partnered with an existing franchisee to purchase an underperforming restaurant in Hemet, California, and then doubled its sales. They used the income it generated to purchase additional restaurants, and their move into multi-unit ownership had begun.

He owns 30 restaurants and wants to reach 100 in the next five years. As he grows, he gives others opportunities to own franchises. He started a restaurant partnership program in which an employee can partner with Huynh on a new restaurant and earn 10% of the profits with the option of purchasing it from him after five years.

The program gives aspiring franchise owners valuable experience and teaches them how to save money and invest properly while establishing a line of credit. It also allows Huynh to help others on their path to franchise ownership and financial freedom. He is thankful for the opportunity to invest in others and says that may be the reason he made it through the most difficult times of his life. 

“The only country where you can come from nothing to realize the American dream is here in the United States, and it is alive,” Huynh says. “Nothing will be given to you. You just have to work hard for it. Focus on what you want and go after it. You only have one life to live. Go make the best of it.”

MVP QUESTIONS 

Why do you think you were recognized with this award? I believe it is because of nearly 40 years of our life’s work as a crew member with an amazing growth opportunity into management and leadership roles. It all led to achieving the American dream as an entrepreneur/franchisee through personal consistency, trust, and hustle as well as our love and commitment to the El Pollo Loco brand and family.

How have you raised the bar in your own company? We focus heavily on providing ongoing leadership skills training and individual growth plans for our team members to ensure the highest level of service for our employees and guests. We try to help them identify their skill sets at a young age and match their passions with where they want to go in life. 

What core values do you think helped you win this award? We are experienced operators and strong brand ambassadors who listen and want to help our people. Trust is an important quality when dealing with people, especially with restaurants where 80% of your sales come in cash. Trust needs to be earned both from an employee and leadership standpoint. We also strive to be open and honest with our expectations. 

How important is community involvement to you and your company? It is a big part of what we do as a company. We encourage all our team members to participate in their local communities and bring forth any ideas of how we can better support these causes and leverage our scale and resources appropriately. This can range from supporting local charities and community organizations to hosting back-to-school supply giveaways and fundraisers in our stores. Some of our best community involvement ideas have come from our field-level team members, and we love participating in these events.

What leadership qualities are important to you and your team? Having a strong vision, setting expectations, empowering our team, and giving them career paths to grow. Holding ourselves as owners accountable as well as our team to the same vision. We never ask an employee to do something we won’t do. Most importantly, integrity in the relationships we have built over the decades is vital.

PERSONAL

First job: I was a night porter at El Pollo Loco when I was 16. 

Formative influences/events: My wife and I are both immigrants who came to America at very young ages. That experience taught us many great lessons that made us who we are today: full of grit, perseverance, and ambition for the American dream. I was an MVP for my high school varsity basketball team. That taught me a great deal about teamwork, competitiveness, and having a winning mindset.

Key accomplishments: We became parents at a very young age with responsibilities and determination to provide the best life possible for our kids. The urge for family growth led us from a night porter and cashier to becoming restaurant managers and then general managers. After five years, I was promoted to a multi-unit district manager and then director of new restaurant openings in charge of promoting growth across the country and international markets. Soon, we both realized that for us to be able to financially support our three kids for college, we had to pivot from workers to owners, starting with our very first El Pollo Loco restaurant in Hemet, California.

Biggest current challenge: We continue to be challenged with staffing and labor costs.

Next big goal: We are marching toward achieving our goal of owning and operating 100 franchise units by 2030.

First turning point in your career: When my wife and I both decided to become restaurant managers for El Pollo Loco.

Best business decision: When we pivoted from being employees to owning our own restaurants and becoming franchisees of El Pollo Loco.

Hardest lesson learned: We believe in exercising control of what we can control and not sweating the rest. Always being optimistic with a can-do attitude often leads to better outcomes. As leaders, we cannot afford to have a bad day.

Work week: We work six days a week with Sundays off.

Exercise/workout: We strive daily to eat a healthy diet and incorporate as much sunlight as possible. Regular physical activities include mountain hiking and working out at the gym five times a week. We realized that our health is our wealth, and so it is a nonnegotiable priority.

Best advice you ever got: Life isn’t fair: Get over it, and move forward. Give it all you’ve got, and pursue your dreams as none of us get out of this life alive. 

What’s your passion in business? To help light a fire in another person’s life through mentoring, nurturing lifelong friendship, and supporting their growth in pursuit of their dreams. 

How do you balance life and work? We learned that the way to achieve a work-life balance is to recognize when imbalances occur, make the necessary adjustments, and then reprioritize what is needed. For us, we chose this lifestyle early on, and so to be effective, we learned to harmonize the two.

Guilty pleasure: We love to eat basically any type of food.

Favorite book: The Tortoise and the Hare is a simple book that taught us at an early age to do things slowly and steadily rather than quickly and carelessly to win the race. 

Favorite movie: “Forrest Gump.” It depicts stories of perseverance, hope, and the American dream. It taught us that we can shape our own destiny through our disciplined actions and choices. 

What do most people not know about you? We both had a very tough beginning, and survival was the only option available with a lack of family structure or parents growing up.

Pet peeve: Witnessing the lack of desire to make disciplined decisions for one’s future.

What did you want to be when you grew up? I wanted to be an astronaut, but the most I got off the ground was getting my pilot’s license and flying an airplane. 

Last vacation: We climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and reached the highest mountain peak on the African continent together.

Person you’d most like to have lunch with: Elon Musk.

MANAGEMENT

Business philosophy: Work on the business, not in the business, and ensure everything we do is adding value that someone else can’t or is unwilling to do. Be a positive force in changing a person’s trajectory in business and in life.

Management method or style: We spend the necessary time with our team, listening, understanding their needs, and sincerely caring about them as people. That is how we gain their respect and loyalty.

Greatest challenge: Finding the right employees can be challenging in our business. We are always in need of qualified, hardworking employees who can handle multiple tasks and adapt to change quickly. Therefore, to find great employees, we choose to invest time heavily in the hiring process. 

One thing you’re looking to do better: As we expand our business ventures, we are hoping to further establish our restaurant partnership program to offer the resources and leadership experience necessary to empower others to follow in our footsteps and transition from workers to owners. 

How close are you to operations? Operations are the backbone of our business, and because we began our careers as operators, our transition to ownership was seamless for the first several units. However, once we acquired additional units, some of our days had to be dedicated to understanding financials and key business metrics that helped drive our business. Other days, we would visit the store to observe and help wherever possible to build relationships with employees. We did this to gain their trust, answer their questions, and then move on to the next store. That’s where we are most comfortable.

What are the two most important things you rely on from your franchisor? Their leadership in developing and implementing marketing strategies to help grow our business in the local markets in which we operate. In addition, we also look forward to new and innovative training programs that corporate rolls out for our managers and crew members in support of our efforts to provide exceptional guest service.

What you need from vendors: Their commitment to providing us with high-quality products and timely deliveries via our back door so that our team can turn around and produce quality foods our guests expect. 

Have you changed your marketing strategy in response to the economy? How? Yes, we have increased our focus on third-party deliveries and online business to increase our reach. 

How is social media affecting your business? In most locations, it has been a positive lift in sales by attracting new guests who may not even know our brand or what we serve, which is fresh flame-grilled chicken marinated daily in secret herbs and spices. 

How are you using technology, like AI, to manage your business? Currently, we are in an early stage of exploration and testing. We hope to have some applications by the end of this year. 

How do you hire and fire, train and retain? I believe in having hiring managers aligned with our philosophy and principles for hiring, which is hiring for attitude and training for skill. Division leaders are involved at the management level and focus on functional skills, like scheduling and ordering. They understand the importance of good operations and are well prepared to cover every situation that could arise. We also have an HR director who is involved in the termination processes to ensure we are following all the respective laws in each state in which we operate and that all employees are treated fairly.

BOTTOM LINE

Annual revenue: $48.5 million.

2025 goals: To reach $55 million.

Growth meter: How do you measure your growth? One important measurement we use is customer satisfaction via Market Force indicator. We review the satisfaction rates with the team on a consistent basis to look for the root causes of any decline. We monitor how many new and repeat customers we are getting and use these metrics to predict growth and measure success. Additionally, we stay current with the market technology and new efficiencies, such as order ahead, online orders, deliveries, etc.

Vision meter: Where do you want to be in five years? 10 years? Our target by 2030 is to own and operate 100 franchise units and continue to develop and invest in a diverse business portfolio. I only look ahead in five-year stretches because there is so much change in the restaurant industry.

Do you have brands in different segments? Why/why not? None at the moment. However, our growth strategy is to build a diverse investment portfolio.

How is the economy in your region(s) affecting you, your employees, your customers? Out of the four states in which we operate, the most challenging is California. This is due to high minimum wage and strict state/local laws and regulations, which contribute to a tough business environment. 

Experience with private equity, local banks, national banks, other institutions? Why/why not? We have partnered with a traditional bank in national franchising, which has funded us from the early stage of our growth to now 30 units and counting. Because of our long-term business relationship, we believe we have found the perfect partner to support our future growth plans. 

What are you doing to take care of your employees? We provide vacation time to all general managers and division leaders so that they can prioritize rest and recharge. We also provide ongoing personal training and development seminars to promote consistent self-improvement for our employees inside and outside of the workplace. 

How do you reward/recognize top-performing employees? We have a performance-based bonus program to monetarily reward each general manager whose store meets and exceeds the sales and profitability targets we set quarterly. We also recognize overall top operational performers at our year-end conferences.

What kind of exit strategy do you have in place? Down the line, we would hope to provide operating ownership to our key partners who embody entrepreneurship and seek the American dream.