The archive · Small Business & Money · Strategic decision · 2023–2024
Rent doubled, so a Singapore banh mi seller moved her stall into her HDB flat
When her hawker-stall rent doubled, Hue Thi Banh spent S$3,000 to run Hue Banh Mi from her HDB flat — up to 60 sandwiches a day, TikTok fame.
Hue Banh Mi
What it had to solve
Hue Thi Banh, a Vietnamese-Singaporean mother of two, opened a banh mi stall in Teck Whye after a decade in restaurants. When the landlord doubled the rent and they couldn't agree, she closed the stall.
How it works
Hue Thi Banh moved from Vietnam to Singapore in 2009, worked in Vietnamese restaurants for about a decade, then opened her own banh mi stall in Teck Whye. When the landlord doubled the rent and negotiations failed, she closed the stall and decided to move the business into her family's four-room HDB flat in Choa Chu Kang, investing about S$3,000 in equipment.
Her plan included an escape hatch: if the business didn't take off, she would sell the equipment. Instead, after about a year, the home-based Hue Banh Mi was selling up to 60 sandwiches on weekend days, with a menu that grew to include Vietnamese spring rolls and beef stew, all cooked by a routine that sometimes kept her up until 3 a.m. preparing pickles and sauces.
The turning point was a customer's TikTok in September 2024, which humorously showed the awkwardness of waiting for food in a stranger's living room. The video drew over 40,000 likes and sent customers from Orchard and Tampines — some driving 50 minutes — to her door, with peak waiting times up to an hour.
The model is deliberately simple: takeaway at the door, WhatsApp pre-orders, Grab delivery, and no rent. She refined the recipe to balance traditional Vietnamese taste with Singaporean palates, insisting quality ingredients are why customers come back.
Why it lands
- It identifies rent as the biggest cost in food retail and eliminates it entirely, rather than trying to sell more to pay the landlord.
- The home setting — customers waiting in a living room — became a novelty that generated organic word-of-mouth and a viral video.
- The S$3,000 equipment bet was reversible, with a clear exit plan if it failed.
- It is a repeatable template for microbusinesses: licensed home kitchens, pre-orders, delivery apps, and no fixed retail overhead.
What it did
Within about a year the home business was selling up to 60 sandwiches on weekend days, drawing customers from Orchard and Tampines — one couple drove 50 minutes — with peak wait times up to an hour, and the menu expanded to spring rolls and beef stew.
What you can take
When rent eats a food business's margins, question the need for a shop: a home kitchen keeps the product identical, cuts the biggest fixed cost, and the oddity becomes the marketing hook.
Since then
The business continued operating from the HDB flat with strong demand into 2025, covered by CNA, 8days, Mothership and VietnamNet; Hue kept refining the menu and using TikTok's attention to draw customers from across the island.
Sources
- Vietnamese woman sells banh mi from her HDB flat, waiting time up to 1 hour during peak periods
- Vietnamese banh mi from home takes Singapore by storm
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