AnTran—A Husband and Wife Team
By Kathy Nguyen

Although the two did not meet until high school, Hannah An and Danny Vu have journeyed down similar paths in life. At the ages of 10 and 11, An and Vu fled Vietnam with their families after the war ended in 1975. Starting over in the United States with nothing in their pockets, their families quickly learned that developing entrepreneurial skills was vital to survival.

An and Vu learned that lesson well; today the husband and wife team run the AnTran Business Corporation, the parent company of a multi-million dollar restaurant business founded by An’s family. “We had business in our blood,” said Vu.

Under their stewardship, the company has enjoyed phenomenal growth, expanding to include three restaurants—Thanh Long in San Francisco’s Sunset District and Crustacean in both San Francisco and Beverly Hills—and a burgeoning import-export enterprise.

Humble Beginnings

After coming to the United States, the Ans settled into a one-bedroom apartment in the outer Sunset. The apartment was located across the street from a deli that An’s grandmother had purchased during a trip to San Francisco in 1971. An’s grandmother and mother transformed the tiny deli into a popular neighborhood restaurant named Thanh Long—which means “green dragon,” symbolizing good luck and prosperity—known for its roast crabs and garlic noodles made from secret family recipes.

The inspiration for the An family’s culinary tastes date back to Hannah’s childhood home in Vietnam. Helene An—Hannah’s mother and executive chef at Thanh Long—is a descendant of the ruling Tran family in the northern province of Tuyen Quang. According to tradition the family employed a Vietnamese, Chinese and French cook. The Ans later drew from these three culinary influences when creating a signature cuisine for their restaurant business.

Everyone from grandparents to grandkids put in long hours at the Thanh Long, doing dishes, taking orders and prepping in the kitchen. “We have a strong sense of family unity and because we came from difficult circumstances, [we knew] it was our duty to help out the family,” said 35 year-old An, the eldest of five daughters.

Vu’s family ties also nurtured his entrepreneurial spirit—Vu started his own seafood business at the age of 16. One of nine children, Vu first came to San Francisco with his uncle and two brothers, while his parents and the rest of his siblings joined them five years later.

“I knew it would be difficult for my family to find jobs because they didn’t speak English, so I started a business to help them get work,” said Vu, 36. The business started out with a small crate of fish, eventually graduating to a “broken-down minivan.”

Vu later bought a space at Pier 28 and the minivan eventually grew to the $10 million company it is today, complete with a fleet of 30 fishing boats. But Vu turned his efforts toward other business ventures after the Loma Prieta quake in 1989 slowed his seafood business.

Vu became involved in multiple operations, including mortgage lending and an import-export business for women’s high fashion. The growth of the clothing company spawned another commercial enterprise, and within two years, Vu developed the business to annual revenues of $2 million.

The Beginning of a Partnership

Vu and An first met at Lowell High School in San Francisco and began dating at UC Davis, where Vu earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and An a B.S. in electrical engineering. After graduation, they decided to acquire the skills to work and help support their families rather than pursue medial careers. The couple went on to obtain MBA degrees from Golden Gate University.

An worked at Bell Northern Laboratories where she conducted research on ISDN for developing phone systems. Utilizing her skills in computer science, she designed a software system for the restaurant industry to expedite kitchen operations and control employee theft. After putting in eight-hour days, she worked at Thanh Long in the evenings.

Vu began helping out at Thanh Long in order to see An more often, and in 1988 the couple combined their diverse skills and began devising plans to expand the business. They restructured the business into a corporation, carefully analyzed the restaurant market in the Bay Area and developed strategies and concepts that would take the restaurant to the next level.

Challenges to Expanding

“Going from a mom-and-pop restaurant to a corporate structure was very challenging because we were used to working as a family where everyone is involved in making decisions.” In order to expand, An and Vu had to follow certain procedures and implement solid business principles, which meant that each person had to take control of specific areas of the business. “We had to reorganize everything structurally and that was very difficult internally,” explained An.

Breaking into the mainstream proved to be another formidable challenge. “The restaurant business in San Francisco is very high-risk, especially for Asian enterprises,” said Vu. Although Chinese restaurants had a strong presence in the Bay Area, “few Asian establishments emphasized service and atmosphere,” he continued.

“In a sense, we had to retrain people’s way of thinking, taking into consideration not only how the American mainstream would receive us as Asians, but also as Vietnamese. At that time, Vietnam was not a popular country and we were not perceived in a positive light,” he continued. “Even now there is some negativity that exists from the stigma of the Vietnam War.”

The Right Marketing Approach

Yet An and Vu felt that they could overcome any barriers with the right marketing strategies. They focused on two main factors in developing the concept for a new restaurant that would appeal to the mainstream: the restaurant name and a downtown San Francisco location.

“Thanh Long was doing very well but we wanted to create a new image that was more universal,” explained Vu. “We knew that some people would perceive Thanh Long as ‘too ethnic’ so we decided on the name Crustacean. This way, people could come in and judge the food on its own.”

In 1991, Crustacean opened in San Francisco’s Nob Hill neighborhood on the corner of Polk and California Streets, and the couple married shortly afterward. The honeymoon did not last long; the couple faced their biggest challenge yet when the new restaurant received a bad review in the San Francisco Chronicle. “It basically said that we were better off as a mom-and-pop restaurant out in the Sunset and that we weren’t ready for the mainstream,” said An.

Their angel came several weeks later in the form of food critic David Becks, who gave Crustacean a glowing review in the San Jose Mercury News, calling a signature dish “garlic noodles worth marrying for.”

But the owners still had the negative effects of the Chronicle review to deal with. “I decided that if we were going to fail, we might as well do something crazy,” she continued. “We, [the Ans and Vus] had lost two fortunes in our lifetime, so what was another restaurant?”

An took out a full-page ad in the Chronicle’s Datebook section, placing the negative review next to the positive write-up with the statement “Come and decide for yourself.” The couple rallied support from loyal Thanh Long customers, and along with the ad’s publicity, business soon picked up at Crustacean.

The Company’s Growing Success

In 1995, four years after Crustacean first opened its doors, the AnTran Business Corp. was officially formed with An as president and CFO and Vu as chairman and CEO. Together, the couple is responsible for the company’s financial health, strategic planning, market research and developmental concepts.

Within six months, operations manager Harlan Joseph—who began as a bartender at Crustacean that year—began supervising renovations at the restaurant, which was expanding to accommodate the increasing volume of business. “I’ve had an opportunity to grow with this company that I haven’t had with other restaurants,” said Joseph, who has been in the restaurant business for 15 years. “I feel very lucky to be able to work with people who are so dynamic.”

In 1996 the company opened a flagship restaurant in Beverly Hills. The multi-level restaurant—which features a French Colonial theme inspired by the Ans’ ancestral estate in Vietnam—quickly became the toast of Hollywood, drawing celebrities like Steven Spielberg, Jack Nicholson, Eddie Murphy, Warren Beatty, Annette Bening, Leonardo DiCaprio, Will Smith and Jada Pinkett.

Esquire magazine’s food critic John Mariani raved about the “whole roasted Dungeness crab and garlic noodles [that] could make you cry,” and the magazine named Crustacean one of 1997’s 10 Best New Restaurants. The Beverly Hills’ Crustacean was also recognized by Wine Spectator magazine for its wine list. The Ans have since been featured in publications like the Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal and People, and various television programs including CNN and Entertainment Tonight.

Publicist Elaine Sense described the “buzz on the Beverly Hills restaurant as deafening.” She added, “in my entire public relations and marketing career spanning 15 years, I have never seen an entity in such a privileged position.”

Since 1995, the company has grown a phenomenal 30 percent every year, reaching annual revenues of $18 million.

Paying Homage

In 1997 An and Vu renovated Thanh Long and added a banquet room which doubled the restaurant’s capacity. An sees the renovation as a way of revitalizing the birthplace of her family’s culinary success. “It’s a wonderful chance to do homage to where it all started 29 years ago,” she said.

1n 1998 An and Vu received Asian Enterprise magazine’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Fernando Nepomuceno, a business officer at Bank of America and longtime restaurant customer nominated the couple for the award. In his recommendation to the board committee he said, “Danny and Hannah have faced the challenges of operating a high-risk business and have overcome many of the obstacles that an Asian entrepreneur faces…they make each and every Asian proud of their past and hopeful for their future.”

AnTran now ranks as one of the top 250 women-owned businesses in the U.S. In recognition of their accomplishments, Hannah and her sister Elizabeth An—the company’s creative director—received the 1999 Asian Business League Award as well as the Jacqueline Kennedy Women of Achievement Award.

New Projects

Current expansion projects are well underway. In November, AnTran will open a entertainment supper club in Las Vegas with the desert passage theme “Prana”—a Hindu term for “first breath of life.” An and Vu are also working on plans to open a new flagship restaurant on Sutter Street in San Francisco’s Union Square in 2001. The 30,000 square-feet, multi-level establishment would serve as a showcase to launch new product lines.

“The restaurant will combine Old World and New World concepts with technological twists for the new millennium. We will introduce new food products including sauces and imported Asian beer, a home-design line and art from Vietnam,” said An. “All of the items on display will be available through the Internet.”

An and Vu are also working on developing more efficient ways to run their restaurants. “We’re also developing a software system for the industry called SOS (Smart Operating System) that will function as a complete management tool for restaurant and hospitality operations. In addition to keeping track of business transactions, it will help managers and owners make intelligent decisions to improve their business,” An continued.

They’ve come a long way from their days of bussing tables for the family business at Thanh Long. When asked if they ever thought they would be heading a huge conglomerate back in those days, Vu responded, “[President and CEO] are just our official titles but we basically do everything. Sometimes we’re the dishwashers too.”