Driving a car to sell sticky rice, a mother of three receives thousands of customers every day.

Among the nearly dozen stalls selling sticky rice, bread, and drinks across from the university gate in Thach That district, Hanoi, Ms. Nguyen Thi Ngan’s stall stands out. In addition to having more customers than the other stalls, her sidewalk sticky rice stall also has a very trendy name: Mazda 6 Shop.

The reason the shop has this name is because Ms. Ngan uses a Mazda 6 car to transport goods to sell. She parks the car neatly on an empty lot. In front of her, she places plastic tables and chairs for customers to sit and eat.

Like the stalls around her, she sells sticky rice with meat, meat sandwiches, sausages, coffee, drinks, etc. She also buys uniform shirts and hats for herself and her staff. The red hats are also printed with the words Mazda 6 so as not to be confused with other stalls.

The 50-year-old woman said she has been selling here for 2 years - she is one of the latest people to arrive at the food stall.

At first, she sold noodles and pho, and sold hundreds of bowls a day. But after a while, she found making noodles and pho difficult, and it was also difficult to sell more, so she switched to selling sticky rice and bread - dry foods that were easy to prepare and less laborious.

“I didn’t expect that when I switched to sticky rice and bread, I would have more customers. After the first 6 months, I started hiring students as employees. Currently, I have about 8 employees working in shifts, including 2 people working at my house to help me prepare ingredients.”

As the main cook when there are death anniversaries or parties in the family, she is quite confident in preparing food. She said that in the past, her family was well-off so she often ate out. Having eaten at many delicious restaurants, she also has a good appetite.

The mother of three said that every morning she has to go out to sell at around 5am. At this time, she grills the meat so that she can start selling to the first customers between 6am and 6:30am. The customers are mainly students from the university across the street.

At 9pm, she packed up her stall and went home. She explained that students here study in many shifts, from morning to night, so she can sell sticky rice and bread for 3-4 meals: breakfast, lunch, dinner and late night snack. The busiest time is at noon.

Currently, she sells to about 1,000 customers every day - equivalent to 400 - 500 servings of sticky rice and 300 - 400 sandwiches, in addition to drinks, sausages... The price of each sandwich or 1 serving of sticky rice with meat/egg and full vegetables is from 20,000 - 30,000 VND.

“Usually every day, I sell 3 meat trees, each tree has 8 - 10 kg of meat.”

Ms. Ngan admitted that her income is quite stable, so she can hire so many employees. However, the cost of paying employees is also quite high.

A restaurant employee said he receives a salary of 200,000 VND/day, working about 8-9 hours a day, including weekends. If he works regularly all month, each employee will receive an income of 6 million VND.

“But because the children’s schedules keep changing, none of them can work for long. After working for a while, they quit. The children working here just take advantage of their free time to work, and then go back to school when it’s time to go back to school.”

Ms. Ngan said that her driving a car to sell sticky rice may arouse curiosity and surprise for many people, but that was not her intention. She said that, in fact, at first, no one paid attention. Then, a young person posted it on social media, so the shop got more attention from customers.

She also recently created a new name and uniform for the shop so customers won't confuse it with other shops.

“I have had this car for a long time, since before I started selling sticky rice and bread. Before, I only used it to take my children to school and to go out. After I started selling goods, it was convenient to use it.”

She also revealed that her family still has a Mercedes that her husband often uses. Her family has been in business for many years. In recent years, due to economic difficulties, she and her husband have stopped doing so.

“I think I’m getting old so I should just look for a simple job to earn extra income. In the past, to be honest, I had more free time, just staying at home to do housework and take care of the children. In the past two years, I’ve been selling goods, and my skin has become much darker. But going to work and earning extra income makes me happy and worth it.”

A female student who often eats at Ms. Ngan’s restaurant shared: “I often eat at her restaurant because I find her cute. When I ask for more food, she happily gives me more for free.”