The 'Vietnamese American Starbucks' unites four brothers whose drive stems from early poverty
When the Nguyen brothers opened their first 7 Leaves coffee shop in 2012, they didn't dare tell their mother and father. The siblings feared that they would be devastated.
After all, their parents were Vietnamese migrants who fled their war-ravaged homeland in the 1990s and eventually settled in Orange County, California's Little Saigon. They'd dreamed that their four boys would grow up to be successful white-collar professionals, not purveyors of creamy jasmine and mung bean tea drinks and aromatic Asian-style iced coffees.
They would never understand why their prized sons - Vinh, 42; Quang, 41; Son, also known as Sonny, 39; and Ha, 38 - would quit their safe middle-class jobs as an IT specialist, a software engineer, a banker and a lawyer, respectively, to chase a risky entrepreneurial dream.
"They have sacrificed so much for our security, and they were so happy their boys were progressing," said Sonny, who's slightly more
