Driving growth with unforgettable experiences

Justin Ulrich
Oh, man. Yeah, luckily, where I’m at, it’s not too bad in terms of weather. We’ve had a little bit of a cold snap, but it’s getting better.

Andy Nguyen
Yeah.

Justin Ulrich
So awesome. Well, Andy, I was just saying to you a second ago, you have one of the most exciting LinkedIn feeds I’ve ever seen, probably in my entire career. I was looking, you know, you have all the really cool concept launches, the brand collabs that you have going on, tons of celebrity appearances like DJ Khaled, Travis Scott, Drake. What life are you living right now in the restaurant space?

Andy Nguyen
I definitely live a different life, and it’s obviously not normal. And I’m doing things that my 13-year-old self would be proud of, and I’m just continuing on this crazy journey and having fun with it.

Justin Ulrich
It’s super cool. Yeah. I look at the stuff that you’re doing. Part of, I was doing a little bit of research on you, and you’d mentioned on your Instagram, as well as a little blip in your LinkedIn about how you kind of struggle with school a little bit and struggle to focus. 

And now it seems like you’ve obviously just found your path and you have the ability that a lot of folks wish they could have just to be able to lean really heavily into their creative side and just have fun with their career, and it’s rare. And hats off to you for figuring that out.

Andy Nguyen
Thank you. I guess it’s a blessing that I couldn’t focus and pay attention in class, right? And I’m able to do a lot of things because my attention span just, like, jumps here, here, and here.

Justin Ulrich
You know, it’s funny, when I was in high school, I remember thinking, well, I guess I didn’t come to this realization until I was older, but I couldn’t separate being funny or at least trying to be funny and getting good grades. And so I leaned more heavily into the class clown side of things. Believe it or not. And later in life, I figured out you could do both. But, man, I struggled too in high school.

Andy Nguyen
Right on.

Justin Ulrich
Well, hey, one thing that you’d mentioned in some of your content, just regarding your Haven City Market partnership that you have there, is that you like to create really fun, unique, engaging environment for folks to come in. And obviously, you pair that with an edgy style and amazing food. 

When you’re looking at something like Black Coffee. I’m sorry, Matte Black Coffee, it’s a totally different experience than what you’d see in any other restaurant. Like, it feels like when I look at it, I’m looking into a comic book. It’s insane. How do you come up with these ideas?

Andy Nguyen
You know, my partner Josh is the artist for the project. Right. He’s a famous artist, and he approached me about doing a coffee shop. And when he did, I was like, it’s going to look like your artwork, right? Because if it is, yeah, I’m in. 

I think our ideation for it was we wanted to create this canvas where you enter and it takes you into pretty much another world. Right. You’re in another world. You’re in a blank canvas, and as you’re sitting down, you should be having conversations about, if you were to do something, what would you do? All these creative ideas are supposed to flow together. As you’re in this art piece and drinking coffee at the same time.

Justin Ulrich
It’s like you’re literally sitting in the art. What’s crazy is when I look at the images, it’s like, even the perspectives and everything, it’s insane how you wrap the edging on the table around, like, the black line and the top, and it looks like you’re literally in a 3d but 2d art, I mean, it’s insane.

Andy Nguyen
Yeah, it feels a lot of dimensions in it. Even the way the lines are painted, how we fill out the floor. We went and painted the entire floor. Cleaning that every day is not an easy task, and we wanted to make sure we didn’t leave any stone unturned.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah. What’s really cool about it, too, is because it is such a blank canvas, it opens the door for you guys to do all the really cool collabs that you have done in the past. I think, I want to say it was Paul Tran on an episode with us. He had mentioned collab that you had done with Harry, and it may have even been another guest that called it out, but it was so cool. And I thought, well, what was the collab with a coffee shop? Did you have sprinkles that look like beard hair?

Andy Nguyen
No, we just had a lot of…that would have been a good idea. I think we were just trying to where it didn’t make sense, but it makes sense from the product that’s being offered and attached to a coffee drinker’s lifestyle. So that’s how we kind of came up with the collaboration where we had a bunch of different merch and just tied together and a special drink along with it.

Justin Ulrich
It’s so cool. It’s so cool. So you’ve got, obviously have years of experience under your belt, just engaging communities, driving awareness, driving traffic. With all the testing that you’ve done, all the concepts you’ve launched, what do you feel like is the most important aspect of local marketing?

Andy Nguyen
I think it’s understanding your community, understanding who you’re marketing to. I think with marketing you need to have two important factors. Always matter to me is what’s the educational purpose of it, and how are you entertaining and engaging everyone. And I think if you can combine those things, that’s when you get a lot of the magic that comes from it.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, I can tell that through everyone’s journey, not everything is going to be successful. You try new things. You’ve had many of your things, at least from what I can see. I see a lot more of the success because that’s kind of what’s more public and prominent. 

But when you have your failures, it seems to me like you found a really good way to fail forward, where a lot of folks, when they fail, it stifles them, it stops them in their tracks, but you continue to learn and fail forward and it’s kind of guided you down a path to really develop the best understanding of your audience that you could have. Because the things that you’re trying seem to really resonate with them.

Andy Nguyen
Correct. And I’m trying to search for that excitement and sometimes it hits and sometimes it doesn’t. Right? Everyone’s like, hey, how did you hit this? I’m like, hey, I tried 20/30 different tactics before I landed on one that exploded. The one that exploded just happens to overlap everything else. 

So I was like, I’m okay to screw up and mess up, but I have to make sure whenever I’m trying something, I have to have that excitement. It has to generate that same excitement my heart needs to be pumping for me to go and execute it.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, 100%. You’ve launched 25 concepts in the past ten years. It seemed to me like you, and this may go back to how you’re wired, where your attention is shifting from one thing to the other you have ideas, you just go with it, and you’re very quickly accelerating your learnings and not getting in your own way of learning things due to the time it might take or the analysis of doing a certain thing. Would you say that’s accurate? You get the idea and you go with it?

Andy Nguyen
Yeah, we definitely have that habit of going ahead in first and then we’ll figure out things later along the way. Sometimes it makes things a lot more messier and more chaotic, but we know that that’s the only way we’re going to be able to execute. Right or be able to go to market first. We’re always trying to hit things before everyone else. So we’ll dive in and we’ll figure out the rest along the way.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, for sure. I could see where it would get. Anytime you don’t have a long, well thought plan, it can definitely get messy. But that’s at the expense of, like you said, speed to market. And a lot of times for our listeners, we talk about what are things they could do to improve from a marketing standpoint. And a lot of times we find through a lot of conversations that people just, they do get in their own way, paralysis by analysis, and they end up putting up enough barriers where they talk themselves out of the good idea.

Andy Nguyen
Of course, and people have ten thousands of good ideas every day. It’s just who’s willing to execute or how long you’re willing to wait. You can be at the front of it, you can be in it when it’s taking off or you’re going to be the guys too late.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, exactly. And the Wayne Gretzky line about you’re missing 100% of the shots you don’t take. It seems like you guys realize, you and the group that you’re part of realize that, hey, you just got to keep taking shots. And like you said, when you hit it, you hit it, man. There are some concepts that you guys have. I love the Trill Burger content that you have. 

And I don’t know, is it your partnership through Complex that allows you to get in with all these hip hop artists, or is it just, you just have a lot of friends?

Andy Nguyen
So my business partner, my business partner is a rap legend from Houston, Texas, named Bun B. So Bun B is a legend in the game, and his relationships with everyone’s really strong. And when I wanted to do this burger concept in Houston, I was like, I know the person to reach out to. I’m going to reach out to Bun B. And he likes food, and let’s see what he thinks and he hopped on and it blew up a lot crazier than both of us would ever imagined.

Justin Ulrich
That’s crazy. I was looking at the post, I’m like, this guy’s got, like, Drake eating at his restaurant. It’s nuts. It is absolutely insane.

Andy Nguyen
Yeah. I tell people, you can’t even pay these guys to come into your store to do it. Any regular person can’t. It doesn’t matter. You offer a million dollars, they’re still not going to come in. We have videos of them eating our food, which is priceless.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah. And saying it’s the best burger they’ve had. Unprompted.

Andy Nguyen
Yeah, unprompted, exactly.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah. That’s incredible. So with all this testing that you’ve done, what are some things that you’ve tried that you thought were some really successful tactics?

Andy Nguyen
I’ve always tried to make sure every concept or every release or project that we do has something special like that. Something special to it. I always tell the guys they want to put a new topping. I’m like, we’re not going to just put out a new item just to put it out. We need to tie something to it. We have to make it a moment. We have to spice it up a little bit. 

Whether it’s packaging, whether it’s a collaboration with someone, whether it’s an event, we need to tie it to something to make sure that it’s a larger moment than actually just putting out another product. Like, hey, we want to make a spicy burger. We’re going to throw jalapenos in it. I was like, that’s it. No. If we’re going to do a bite, we’re going to team up with, like an Ice Spice or something and make, tie it together and make it more of a thing.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah. That’s super cool. I have noticed that in all your concepts, it seems you do place a lot of focus on the presentation, the packaging and creating an actual experience as opposed to just putting it in a generic wrapper or box and sending it on its way. I feel like that probably ties into your background as, like, a designer and your start in fashion, like being able to dress it up.

Andy Nguyen
Yeah. Street wear has a lot of major influence from what I learned. I learned a lot about building hype. I learned a lot about collaboration. I learned a lot about working with certain brands, photography wise, how to make things look on camera just because in fashion you’re shooting lookbooks all day. 

So I’m applying everything I learned from street wear into this and molding it into food. In food and beverage and people. In the beginning, people were like, what’s going on? It’s in everyone’s eyes. But the reason I was able to do that is because I understood the game already. I was like, I know what to do. No one’s doing this in food, and it works in apparel, so I’m going to apply it to this world and tie cultures together. And now it’s working out.

Justin Ulrich
100%. Yet. I’ve had conversations around… like your skill set, I would consider, like, a unicorn skill set. I think probably a lot of people would say that obviously you do some really cool stuff and you make a big splash around it and have made an awesome name for yourself. 

But behind it is you have experience in different areas. You didn’t come up in an echo chamber just within restaurant. It’s like you’ve got the street wear thing. You’ve got your designer background with fashion. You’ve got your art background. All that stuff is what when you bring that into the restaurant space where folks haven’t seen it, that’s why you’re on fire. It’s like you have all these industries that you can draw from.

Andy Nguyen
Yeah. And I think it’s important because not a lot of people can jump into my realm right now. I have a lane that I’m in, and it’s hard to compete for anyone else to come and compete.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah. Get off me. So let me ask you this, because the vast majority, if not probably 100% of our audience is not. Well, I could say factually, 100% is not you. So what would you recommend folks do without your skill set, Andy, right? What would you think that say that they could do maybe today or this week if they’re struggling to drive traffic, drive awareness, like, just struggling from a marketing standpoint, what would you suggest?

Andy Nguyen
There’s a ton of great. What I’ve learned along the way. I was like, okay, if there’s an agency or a network of people that know that have their way in already, I’m going to work with those people to get my way in. For example, I jumped it. I partnered up with Bun B, and now I have access to the entire hip hop catalog. Right? 

And for most people, like I mentioned, earlier, you can’t even pay for that. So I just broke my way in, and I made it a lot easier. And Bun understands that, too. He goes, hey, I’m here to bring people in the doors. And I was like, yep, that’s exactly why you’re here. And I work on the business side of things, on helping drive this brand larger and expanding it.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, awesome. It’s a really cool story. Let’s say someone doesn’t have the network, but they need to start bringing folks in. So maybe engaging with their community could also have similar effects because there’s micro influencers and stuff, like, nearby, whether it’s…

Andy Nguyen
I think especially with social media, right. That’s a big part of why I’m here today, right? Because the last ten years, I had an early gauge on social media, and I knew how to take advantage of it at that time. And I think everyone that thinks they’re too old to learn, it’s not. You just have to start because you’ll probably make tons of mistakes, make terrible content in the beginning, but if just one piece of it hits, it’s a complete game changer, right? 

And then you start learning it, tweaking it, and get better at it. Like right now, for example, I was like, okay, I’ll listen to a Gary Vee conversation. He’ll be like, hey, you need to start doing TikTok live. I’m like, TikTok live? People do live things. They go, that’s what the algorithm is pushing right now. So you get on it. I was like, all right, but I need to start getting on it. 

I’m starting listening around. I’m like, hey. They’re like, hey, regular Instagram posts aren’t working anymore. You need to go do this. I’m like, all right. I need to switch it up and continually evolving, or else I’m going to fall right behind and I’m not going to be able to catch up anymore.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, that’s one thing I’ve noticed. You do really well. Just keep your finger on the pulse of things so you can kind of stay ahead of the game, which is great. But, yeah, like you said, starting. You just have to get out there and start doing something, because the more that you don’t do anything, you don’t start. The more time goes by and the more you perpetuate staying behind and not getting in front of things and getting in front of your audience in new ways.

Andy Nguyen
Because it takes a long time to find your voice. So as long as you start and you can ask questions along the way, you can start finding content that you like. And you’re like, hey, if somebody’s doing community content, start following pages that are doing great community content, learn from them. Like, this is what they’re doing. This is what’s working. Let me try it out. 

Okay. I didn’t do this so well, so let me continue tweaking it till it works. And you already know social media. One post literally can change your business overnight. The Keith Lee sensation. Right now you’ve seen what he’s doing and completely transforming businesses overnight.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah. Insane. Yeah. I was thinking the same thing for this podcast. We’re relatively new. We’re 20 some episodes in. I was thinking about bringing Drake on to do for me what he did for you. We’ll see.

Andy Nguyen
Ask Paul Tran for that.

Justin Ulrich
Hey, well, who do you think if you were to shout somebody out other than yourself who’s doing some really cool stuff, who’s coming in second place as far as doing really cool things out there? You want to give a shout out to.

Andy Nguyen
My buddy Viet Nguyen. He owns Key Concepts. I think he has completely shifted the entire food community within our Vietnamese culture, in our area. He’s elevating it, and I’m definitely proud to be his friend and have done collaborations with him and seeing him totally dominate this whole Orange County area. And I think he’s going to go beyond Orange County eventually, but he’s killing it right now.

Justin Ulrich
That’s awesome. No, that’s cool. Yeah, I’ve seen him on some of your content, actually. It’s cool. Anytime you can recognize someone who’s. He’s crushing it right now, so it’s a good shout out. One of the things that stuck out to me, and I reached out to Paul Tran. I know he’s your buddy, and, like, you know, I’m going to make an AI image for this guy. What should it be? 

He’s like, I don’t know what’s funny, but I know he just makes food look sexy. I’m like, you know, that’s absolutely what you do, right? The way that you dress it up. You leverage your art background, the fashion side of things. Like we talked about, you make it look really cool. You make it look sexy. 

And then I thought, well, what if he would have taken a different kind of path in his career? Because I know you kind of worked your way into restaurant, but what if you stayed in fashion instead of making food look sexy, you made the food make others look sexy.

Andy Nguyen
Wow.

Justin Ulrich
Then I was like, this one, here’s the deal. You can use this if you’d like, if you made a Trill Burgers jacket. I just thought I’d made this image and I thought, oh, my goodness, it’s so funny. Like, AI comes up with the craziest concepts, but it’s actually…

Andy Nguyen
That jacket might sell out…

Justin Ulrich
I’m telling you. Oh, man. Well, hey, it was a lot of fun having you on. You shared some really good insights. If you want, like let us know how folks can follow you.

Andy Nguyen
All my social media channels are the same as Andy Nguyen. You look for me on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, all of it. I am all over the place.

Justin Ulrich
I’m telling you candidly, I wasn’t following you until I started doing more background research on you. I subscribed your LinkedIn right away. I said, this content is insane. So if you’re not following Andy, follow him on LinkedIn. Follow him on all his other platforms. Your Instagram is also incredible, solid content. I mean, it’s obviously, you take really good imagery, but just the inspiration that you get from the artistry of all your concepts, like, really cool stuff. Follow Andy. For sure. If you’re in…is it Houston where Trill Burgers is?

Andy Nguyen
Yeah, Houston. Houston. If you’re go visit. If you go watch a Houston Texans game, we’re also in the stadium, four locations over there. We’re getting ready to expand more stores within Houston. So, yeah, it’s getting crazy.

Justin Ulrich
Awesome. Yeah, I definitely next time, because we have an office based in Texas. If I can get to Houston, I am 100% trying it.

Andy Nguyen
Yeah you have to. Must. I got you. Let me know.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, for sure. Oh, yeah. You can send me a voucher, email, a voucher for a free burger and Drake’s phone number. All right, man. Well, hey, it was a ton of fun having you in the lab. I appreciate you joining us.

Andy Nguyen
Thank you for having me on.

Justin Ulrich
As always, thanks for joining us in the Local Marketing Lab. This podcast was sponsored by Evocalize. To learn more about how Evocalize can help you grow your business, visit evocalize.com. 

If you learned something from today’s episode, don’t forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and follow us on LinkedIn and Facebook @Evocalize. That’s Evocalize and on X at Evocalize. 

And remember, keep innovating and testing new things. You’ll never know what connects with your customers best unless you try. Until next time. Thanks for listening.