【bd kq 24h】Starting up with Moc Truly Hue’s: Simple but truly Hue

A close-up of a product line of Moc Truly Hue’s

Before embarking on the journey with Moc Truly Hue’s,bd kq 24h Pham Thi Dieu Huyen has six years of experience starting a business with Gac Mang Re – a Retro-style cafe that sells typical Hue products. Moc Truly Hue’s is the project that Huyen has nurtured for the past three years.

2019 is the fourth year that Thua Thien Hue organizes this province-wide start-up competition. While the ideas/projects in information technology application are dominant in number, those developed from Hue cultural materials gain high appreciation for their outstanding quality.

After the competition, many projects have "lived well" and sustained their great potential for development, such as Spices of Hue beef noodle soup, Applying traditional handicrafts into fashion footwear production, Developing the potentials of Hue lotus, Hue Lotus Homestay, … and also Moc Truly Hue's.

The innovative value carried by Moc Truly Hue’s is that it breathes new life into all packaging designs of Hue's typical products, thus enhancing their spiritual values.

By putting color materials and motifs of Hue culture into the design of patterns and packaging, Huyen wants to introduce and evoke related cultural stories to visitors. At the same time, this also implies the meaning that the nice small gifts that visitors bring along with them are also wrapped with the love of Hue.

Moc Truly Hue’s is providing all kinds of products, such as sweets, confectioneries, teas, fine oils, and flower bud powders. Particularly, cakes, candies and jams are very diverse in categories, such as: betel-shaped candies, Keo candies (barley-sugar candy stuffed with peanuts), ginger candies, sesame candies, Ucandies (made from sugarcane sugar mixed with ginger and wheat/tapioca powder), Incakes (or seal cakes), Mangcakes (bamboo shoot-shaped cakes), plum cakes, Loccakes (

Knowing that customers want to enjoy many different dishes while looking for travel conveniences, Moc Truly Hue’s products are crafted in low weights and volumes.

Apart from some cakes made by Huyen herself, most of the remaining products packaged by Moc Truly Hue’s are from her consultation and collaboration with artisans and traditional villages in order to create products that carry the most authentic taste of Hue. It is Huyen’s desire to choose the most delicious and sophisticated culinary products to show off with and serve tourists from afar.

 “As Hue has so many specialties, it took me a lot of time to come up with a product list for Moc Truly Hue’s. At that time, almost every day I went to Dong Ba market, supermarkets and the specialty stalls just to do one thing - that was to learn about which Hue products were sold the most”, Huyen recalled.

Even when sitting at "Gac Mang Re", a small bistro on the corner of Doan Thi Diem - Dinh Cong Trang streets, Huyen was also highly attentive to the stories told amongst taxi drivers or tourist brokers.

Even when meeting with Hue cultural researcher Tran Dinh Hang to understand more about the origins of Hue culture, Huyen had to think a lot when being asked: “Who do you want to be, a merchant or a businessperson? Becoming a merchant is not a big challenge, but if you want to be a businessperson, you have to get things done differently than what people have been doing”.

Indeed, the way Pham Thi Dieu Huyen builds Moc Truly Hue’s is what has never been done before in Hue. However, as it is completely an untraveled pathway, Huyen faces many difficulties being on it. Challenges are many, but Huyen has still cherished her pride and always strived for Moc Truly Hue’s. That serves as an identification of a product line which is simple but truly Hue.

Currently, Moc Truly Hue’s potential customers are mainly middle-class tourists who have good incomes and are willing to pay for gift products that convey meaningful spiritual values. In addition to Hue market, some product lines of Moc Truly Hue’s have merged into the sales system at airports and some school canteens in Ho Chi Minh City as well as got exported abroad on the niche market.

After the significant victory in the competition, Pham Thi Dieu Huyen still has a lot of expectations ahead. It is her desire to find and set up a good ground for Moc Truly Hue's to be identified on the tourist map of Hue, and more importantly, to connect with culinary artisans to focus better on the revitalization of products that have been lost and forgotten.

Story and photo: Dong Van