During the COVID-19 lockdown, Nguyen Thi Thuy My – Thi Hen, the founder of Love&Spice, craved the feeling of running. This urge to move prompted her to set a challenging goal: to run continuously for 160km around her farm. In other words, with a circumference of 400m, the female founder had to run non-stop for 400 laps on repetitive terrain to achieve her goal.
This seemingly impossible and boring task was accomplished by a woman in her thirties in 22 hours. While running, Thi Hen also livestreamed on social media to share her story and inspire others to overcome their own challenges, no matter where they were.
“If you want it badly enough, you can make it happen. Running alone is harder than competing. Competitions have organizers, and you have to pay for tickets, travel, etc. Quitting then feels like a waste. But if you’re running on your own farm, with no constraints, you have to overcome yourself,” the runner shared.
The phrases “overcoming yourself” and “wanting it badly enough” were repeated by the young woman throughout the nearly hour-long conversation. This not only demonstrated the female runner’s determination in her sport but also served as a guiding principle for her and her husband as they developed the Love&Spice super spicy chili brand.
Ms. Thi Hen and her husband left their office jobs to start a super spicy chili business.
Targeting a Niche Market
Michael, Thuy My’s husband, who was born in Vietnam and raised in the US, recognized the potential of the spice market. In major US supermarkets, hundreds of chili varieties range from mild to super spicy, but in Vietnam, such products are not yet common.
According to folk beliefs, if you want to eat spicy chili, you should opt for raw bird’s eye chili. However, taxonomically, bird’s eye chili – a variant of chicken spur chili, only scores 10,000-225,000 Scoville units. This falls short of the maximum spiciness achieved by many chili types worldwide, thus failing to satisfy true chili enthusiasts.
Spotting this niche opportunity, Thi Hen and her husband brought the Reaper super spicy chili variety to their farm in Dong Nai. This chili type, chosen by Hen, once held the Guinness World Record in 2013 with an average spiciness of over 1.5 million Scoville units, challenging even chili experts.
To cultivate this chili in Vietnam, the seeds had to be imported at a price of $1 per seed. Holding the first bag of seeds, her husband turned to her and said: “This might be our turning point.“
With the seeds in hand, the young couple began preliminary soil research. They experimented by sowing seeds in Dalat, Dak Lak, and Dong Nai. The chili plants in Dalat were juicier and had larger fruits, but their spiciness decreased. Meanwhile, Dak Lak was not as convenient for creating a closed model from the garden to the farm and then to the family’s dining table. Thus, the couple chose Dong Nai to establish their brand.
According to Hen, “Love” in Love&Spice represents love. This brand was created from the couple’s love for farming and agriculture. Meanwhile, “Spice” signifies spiciness, symbolizing the condiments industry that the brand pursues.
The super spicy chili variety being cultivated at Love&Spice’s farm. Photo: NVCC
A Fortune Washed Away in the Rain
Love&Spice was built on love, but getting their chili sauces onto shelves was a long journey for the founding couple.
Once, a downpour lasting eight hours destroyed their entire chili crop, amounting to 10,000 plants. They had to discard the waterlogged plants entirely.
“Some might think that since the seeds cost $1 each, 10,000 plants would be worth over VND 200 million, which isn’t a huge amount. But that’s not the case. It takes dozens of seeds to get one to germinate, and then it’s a long process for it to grow into a full plant,” Hen shared.
The feeling of losing 10,000 chili plants was akin to experiencing a stock market crash overnight. To calm themselves, Hen and her husband ran non-stop for 21km around their farm without stopping or drinking water. On that occasion, Hen achieved a sub-2 time – an impressive feat for a half-marathon runner.
The female founder recounted: “The unexpected good result made me forget the sadness before me. My husband also encouraged me, and thanks to that rain, we learned that chili plants are susceptible to waterlogging, so afterward, we became ‘wiser’ and allowed the soil to rest for 2-3 months before planting again.”
According to Hen, challenges and difficulties are inevitable in business. However, if we view challenges as opportunities to learn, there will be no permanent failures. They are only temporary setbacks that provide businesses like Love&Spice with valuable lessons for the future.
Learning an expensive lesson, both literally and figuratively, about the nature of Reaper chili, the couple had to discard an entire ton of chili during the fermentation process to find the “right” formula. As novices, they relied on Google for their first fermentation attempts.
Hen couldn’t recall how many times they had repeated the cycle of fermentation – failure – discarding. But thanks to those experiences, she knew when to add or reduce salt, how to handle juicier chilies, and what to do when the chilies were drier.
“It took us a year from harvesting the first chili fruits to having a product to sell,” Hen said.
During the first year, most of the products she made were given away to chili enthusiasts in exchange for feedback. Occasionally, she sold them at a shocking price of VND 400,000 per bottle of chili sauce. She believed that those willing to pay such a high price would understand the challenging journey Love&Spice had gone through to cultivate the Reaper chili.
Building a Farm for 4.0 Farmers
After nearly three years of building the brand, Love&Spice products are now distributed across all e-commerce platforms and the company’s website. Currently, unique chili products like “Cay Nhu Quy” (Spicy Like Hell), “Cay Qua Da” (Super Spicy), and “Cay #1” (Super Spicy #1) are always sold out.
“We plan to sell our products abroad, but first, we want to thrive in our home market,” the female founder said. According to her, the company’s strategy is to always create a supply that falls short of demand. This way, when more products are available, there will always be customers willing to wait to purchase them.
Love&Spice’s super spicy chili products are always sold out. Photo: NVCC
By targeting the super spicy chili niche and giving their products unique names, the founders also refer to their team members as “4.0 farmers.”
Thi Hen shared that the days of being a farmer because you were too poor or uneducated are long gone. The farmers at Love&Spice are sports enthusiasts who can run 42km.
“Farmers today are not ‘uncle’ farmers but ‘brother’ farmers – handsome, six-packed, fluent in English, tech-savvy, and computer literate,” Hen humorously added.
Acknowledging that starting a business is not a game, Thi Hen, who left the city for Dong Nai to pursue her entrepreneurial dream, always emphasizes the value that a brand can bring. She aims to change people’s perceptions of farmers to some extent.
Additionally, Love&Spice wants to infuse Vietnamese soul into their products. Their logo features a stylized image of a child herding buffalo and playing the flute, with the child pointing eastward, subtly indicating that this is a brand of Vietnamese people.
“Lately, I’ve been inspired by the story of David Tran – the first Vietnamese chili sauce billionaire in the US. He may be the first, but he doesn’t have to be the only one,” My shared. She added that David Tran was the first Vietnamese chili sauce billionaire, but he might not be the last.
Therefore, every day, Thuy My and her husband continue to work on their super spicy chili fields to nurture their dream of creating a brand that makes Vietnam proud and provides jobs for special 4.0 farmers. For the female founder, Love&Spice is not just a startup but also a journey of self-discovery and self-improvement.
