As told to Nicole Grundmeier
Trang Pham is the owner of the Eggroll Ladies in Des Moines. She also works full time for the Iowa Army National Guard, where in 2016 she became the first Iowa woman infantry officer after the ban on women to serve in combat arms within the military was lifted.
Pham was born in Bien Hoa, Vietnam. She is the second of six children. She was 6 years old when she immigrated to the United States with her parents and siblings in 2000. A self-identified troubled kid with a rebellious streak, she became the first girl to play tackle football at Stilwell Junior High School in West Des Moines.
Pham started her business by making egg rolls and selling them for friends and community members in need of financial assistance. The Eggroll Ladies officially became a business during the COVID-19 pandemic. Pham purchased a food truck. She also started a nonprofit aimed at helping children thrive called the We Are More Foundation. Her food truck is often spotted at the foundation’s kids nights, providing free meals.
Pham’s restaurant has a brick-and-mortar storefront at 5548 N.W. Second St. in Des Moines that will be transformed into a central production facility. Along with her older sister, Thien Olson, and her family at her side, Pham plans to open another Eggroll Ladies location soon.
Her long-term goal is to have her own line of frozen foods that can be purchased at grocery stores. She also runs a Facebook group called Iowa Nice Businesses to foster a community of support among small-business owners in Iowa.
The following story has been formatted to be entirely in her words, and has been edited and condensed for clarity.
It was our first Thanksgiving. My mom had in her mind that Americans celebrated Thanksgiving with pizza. I was in the kitchen, and we were cooking, and she thought that the yeast came pre-portioned. It came in a little pack. She dumped the whole bag in there, and, oh my gosh, this pizza — I was 6. I was so young, but this pizza was massive. I remember we ate it for three days.
Vietnamese people, our love language is food. It doesn’t matter who you are, our love language is food, because it has such a vital role. When you go to Vietnam, there are more food vendors than there are clothing vendors.
I went back there four years ago. People will convert their houses into half of a restaurant. It’s all home cooking. No two recipes will look alike there. Everybody has their own different flavors. Vietnamese food is made to accommodate all types of economic classes. You don’t have to be rich to have great food.
Pho is a street food. It’s because the most expensive part of pho is the beef bones that go into making the stock. But a couple of bones will cook you an entire pot that will serve an entire village. So, that is the culture behind what Vietnamese food is based on. Our food is not going to be flavorful where it’s greasy and heavy, and that’s what creates the flavor. It’s layers and layers and layers of spices, because spices are cheap and you can grow them. That’s the beauty of Vietnamese food. It can accommodate any class. That’s what I grew up with. We came over here, we didn’t have anything, but my mom was able to bring our Vietnamese food here and make it affordable to us because of the ingredients that come from making true Vietnamese food.
I was a troubled kid. I like to say I was always made to be a trailblazer. We came from a country that tells you what you can and can’t do. It’s the type where your parents can disown you, and there’s a lot of dishonor there. I grew up in Vietnam until I was 6, so I was used to a certain type of country, and then I came here, and the wild thing is, behind the doors, our parents tried to push a certain culture, but then you go out of the doors, go to your school, and you see everyone live in a whole different way.
That’s the thing that they don’t talk about for immigrant kids — you have an identity crisis. I’m a Vietnamese kid, and my parents only speak Vietnamese at home, we only eat Vietnamese food at home, and we only act a certain way at home. And then you go to school and you’ve got kids that are sleeping over all the time, it’s just a natural thing, and girls wear whatever they want to school, in addition to doing whatever they want. I didn’t get my first sleepover until I was well into my teens, and even then it was a big problem.
This is no fault of my parents. I’m talking about the culture as a whole. You get raised to be a wife, and that’s the biggest role you’re ever going to play. For me, that’s not my story. My sister’s the same way; we never wanted to just do that. I think our parents, and my mom specifically, had a lot of trouble with that, especially with me. I did whatever I wanted to do, and nothing could stop me.
When I was in middle school, I did the football thing. The only thing that stopped me was my mom didn’t sign for the next year. I was the first one in my middle school to do it, and even the teacher was like, “No, you can’t do that.” I remember telling them, “I can and I will.” Did I know how to play it? Absolutely not. I learned from books. I was the only girl. I didn’t know it was such a big deal, because for me, I didn’t want to do volleyball, or any of the winter stuff, I didn’t do basketball, I didn’t want to do stuff that put me into little booty shorts. I wanted to do football because when we grew up, we didn’t have money, and access to sports and activities was just not a thing. You have to pay until you’re in the eighth grade, which is a big reason why I’m so motivated with our nonprofit.
I didn’t always want to be in the Army. But I remember that in Camp Dodge, there’s a big monument on the top of the hill. Dad swung by with me one day. He loves checking out the planes. I remember there was a plaque. I was so young, and I didn’t really speak English, and I don’t have any clue what that plaque said at the time. I remember I looked up, and all I could think was, “I’m going to be somebody that has a plaque.”
That’s all that mattered to me, because we grew up being told you can do something, you can’t do something. I remember thinking, “If this person can do this, they put their pants on the same way, they’re just a normal human being, but they did something worthwhile.” I told myself I was going to go into the Army or military. I had no idea what the difference was. To me, I did not care, because service is service.
Active-duty recruiters came to me first, and I was like, “I’m in.” But they told me I had to wait until I was 18, and I had just turned 17. I was like, “OK, I guess I’ll just wait for the next year and work out.” I was a fat little kid, so I was really working hard on it. Then a month later, I went back into the office, and I said, “OK, I’m going to spend this next year, I’ve got to do whatever I’ve got to do to be the best candidate I can be. What do I need to do?”
National Guard recruiters just happened to be in the office. One recruiter was American; one recruiter was Vietnamese. Vietnamese Guard members are very, very rare. It is because of him that my mom signed off on me joining when I was 17. He also reassured her that I would never go to combat arms and never deploy. I’m now an infantry officer. Hopefully one day we’ll deploy, but we’ll see. I will go if the Army asks.
That has probably been one of the best decisions I made in my life, because it really set the path for me. I went through basic training. I landed myself into a very terrible [romantic] relationship. Between the Army and my family, those were the two things that I needed to really push forward. I was able to enter into many, many opportunities. I ended up becoming an officer.
I went through my education. After high school, I went to college, and the Army paid for all of my college, my bachelor’s and two associates. I remember when I joined, they told me, because you’re a female, you cannot be in the combat arms. I came from a country that told me I couldn’t do anything because I’m a chick. We came to a country where you should have the freedom to do whatever, and now, because I’m a chick, I can’t do some jobs. That confused me.
I did six years in the Intel just to get through my thing. I really enjoyed it, but I had in my mind, I’m going to go combat arms. In December of 2015, the ban on females in combat arms was lifted. I didn’t even know that happened, because eventually, you’re just like, “It’s never going to happen.” I had been in for five years at that point. The next year, I put in a packet to be an officer, because I did not want to be in Intel anymore. I wanted to do something else. I put in my packet. I heard that happened, and I told them, “I’m going to be in the infantry. I’m going to be in combat arms.” I became the state’s first combat arms infantry officer as a female.
That journey taught me that nobody will ever stop you from doing what you need to do. You just have to do it. It was not well received for a couple years. The Iowa National Guard as a whole is a very supportive agency. My leadership was great. It’s just the people that are not in those leadership positions. Those people don’t matter. You get this thing called being peer reviewed. Peers around tell you if you’re a good leader.
I was peered out twice because I was a female. But they couldn’t say that, so they said stuff like, “You’re not up to leadership stature.” Like, I’m not big enough to be a leader, or one of them put, “You just have long hair.” So I chopped my hair off. Two weeks later, I was like, “What else you got problems with?” You go through this process, it humbles you, because it tells you that other people’s opinion does not matter, because those people are not the ones that gave me my blue cord.
I’m probably one of the most patriotic people that you’ll meet. I joined because I wanted to be part of something bigger. I stayed because I found that purpose.
In 2018, my sister was in high school, and she wanted to go to a Johns Hopkins thing, because she was interested in medicine. That was expensive. I told her, “Hey, I can’t really do much, but you know what? I can roll you some egg rolls.” I grew up not really being a good cook at all. I never felt that was my thing. I rolled some egg rolls. We raised her some money.
In 2019, a good friend of mine who now works here had a cat that needed emergency surgery. We raised enough for her to get a deposit to start the payments on it. That was great. That was just for a month. Then 2020 hit, and I was like, “Well, I did want to do something special for a family this year, but it’s 2020. No one’s going to want to buy egg rolls from a strange woman.” It would be unsettling to you to know the amount of people who would buy egg rolls from a lady in our strange vehicle in the alleyway of an abandoned grocery store in the middle of the night.
October 2020 comes. A friend of mine had her daughter in and out of hospital. She was up to her eyeballs in medical bills. In November, like a week before Thanksgiving, she goes, “I don’t know if I’m going to be able to keep my place.” She could not meet the medical bill requirement and her bills. I said, “You know what, we haven’t done anything this year. I don’t know if it’s going to work. Let’s just post something up here, we’re helping a family, throw it on Facebook. I almost feel like people were just waiting, waiting to give. I threw it on Facebook. I had so many people. Our goal was $1,100 or something. We raised $1,500 in three days. I gave her all of it, and I said, keep the extras, because it’s the holidays. Enjoy your time with your family.
People kept reaching out, and they kept wanting to give. I said, “OK, we’ll keep doing it, and I’m just going to find another family.” Fast-forward between November and through December, so up until the beginning of January 2021, we raised just under $10,000. I had brought on an impromptu board. They donated all of their time. The only thing we retained was what was required to buy the stuff, because then we didn’t have to pick out of our own money. But they donated the miles they put in to make the deliveries. They donated all the tips. They donated their time.
I had to buy a bunch of stuff. After the first $5,000, I had to bring on people to help roll. We had differently shaped egg rolls and this and that. We ended up supporting five families through the holidays. What that means is we got them Christmas presents, dinners, paid rent, paid bills. A lot of people were behind.
It’s after the holidays, and the spirit of giving starts to fade, the motivation of people to want to do more starts to fade. It didn’t for me, because I realized this is what I wanted. So, between January and March, I was like, “Hey, we’re going to try to do some dip chocolates.” But the only thing they took was egg rolls. I tried to move away from it. March comes, and I was like, “You know what? I want to get licensed. I want to get a spot, and I want to give this an honest try.
We got an LLC in December, and the thing about LLC is you’re a for-profit entity. You can’t say you’re a nonprofit. So we formed a for-profit function, which is called the Eggroll Ladies. August of 2021, I got my 501(c)(3), and we formed a nonprofit called the We Are More Foundation. I wanted to help kids that grew up like me, kids that didn’t grow up with much, and I wanted to give them opportunities.
We got our food truck in 2022, and by 2023, we were fully booked. I worked full time for the Army by this point. I didn’t have time, and I didn’t want to continue forcing something where it was not benefiting anybody, and it was so stressful. I took a year off from the nonprofit, and I said, “We’re just going to close our doors. We need to restructure, figure out what we want to do and go from there. All of 2023, I spent building our business, and we got our brick-and-mortar. We got our first full-timer in 2023 and we assembled the business. When we began in 2023, it was only myself and my sister. By the end of 2023, we had a team of 12.
This spot was great when we first opened, and then it wasn’t. We get up to the rush of the holidays. We get off the holidays, next thing you know it’s February, and it’s slowing down for business. The food truck isn’t out. The food truck got hit, so we had repairs with that. Insurance covered most of it, but not all of it.
The mission of the Eggroll Ladies is to create unique employment. We have a lot of people in unique employment, retired, semi-retired. We have a guy who is on our books that has taken a long leave for medical reasons: “You come back whenever you’re ready, and you can take off whenever you’re ready.” For me as an employer, I don’t understand why we can’t be flexible.
Everybody’s human. When I was growing up, I worked a ton of jobs. I was that person who worked all the time. I realized that in all of my jobs and all my positions, people are people. As an employer — and I hope to maybe slowly adapt or change the world out there — you have the ability to decide, am I going to invest in my employees? Or am I going to invest in the business?
To me, you cannot invest in the business without investing in your employees. That was a decision I made. I can cut hours, I can cut pay to make sure we work, or I can take it out of my own pocket and find a better concept. So that’s what I did. I self-funded, took on loans, did whatever I needed to do, but the one thing I never wanted to do was cut pay. I had a full-timer I had promised hours to, and so I kept her full time even when we were dead. That put us into a little bit of a situation, because our food truck was the biggest bringer of our business.
I’ve been working full time since I was 14. Your age doesn’t matter. It’s your mental acumen and your maturity. So, I empower these folks. They go in, they turn the fryer on, they turn the propane on, they open. They go through a whole rush. They get everything going and treat everyone with respect, and it doesn’t matter that they’re 16 and 17. That’s why I love being a business owner. Eggroll Ladies, for me, is not an income maker. I work full time for the Army. I don’t do it for my personal income. Anything we make extra, it goes back into the business. Because I want to push us to the next level. I want us to grow.
When I can give raises, I do. I don’t believe in the whole “You have to work for years before you get a $1 raise.” It is on merit, not time.
The one thing that I hope to enforce, especially with the young girls who work for me, is you have a lot more value than you think you do. Even when society puts a label on you and puts you into a box of what you can do and can’t do, you have to remember that when you were 16 or 17, you were in a business by yourself, that you are encouraged to be here and to treat everyone with respect and to be accountable and liable, just like when you are 30-year-old adults, because age doesn’t matter.
I remember talking to my significant other, and he said, “Well, maybe you should close the business,” and I said, “I don’t care what has to happen for me to make it happen, but it has to work. This has to work.” So we just did it. We made it work. We opened up the food truck. I took on as many events as I could. We get 40 to 50 events a month. Next year, my goal is to hit 60 to 70 a month.
We’re working on a second location right now, so this location is going to turn into catering and distribution. Our goal over the next six months, once we get the second location situated in Des Moines, is to turn this one into something that we pursue shipping. When I say distribution, I mean wholesale, so we get into the freezer aisles.
For me, the Eggroll Ladies, this is just a chapter of our story. We want to be as many places as we can be, so that we can bring on young women that don’t speak English, or it’s their first employment, or they need to have flexible hours.
My parents are absolutely the best parents you can ask for. They have done so much for us, which is why we absolutely love them so much. But when you grow up in a culture — and that’s not even just Vietnamese culture, I could say in an American culture, too — but grew up in a culture that insists on putting you in a box, insists on you not coming here from anything so you can’t ascertain anything. You can’t get to a certain status when you grow up and you’re taught menial skills for menial workers.
What I want for my daughter is, I want her to know that you are what you value and the price tag that is on you is a price tag you have self-composed; no one else can determine your value. I don’t have a fancy education, I’m not a big business person. My sister was telling me today, when we first opened, I did 16 hours in the kitchen, stood at the door and no one came through the door. And now, you can’t go into Hy-Vee, without somebody saying, “You’re with the Eggroll Ladies!”
I want my daughter to have all the opportunities she wants. I don’t want money to be something that holds her back. She was in gymnastics and she was like, “I don’t know if I want to go,” and I said, “Then you don’t have to go.” I’m not the parent that says you have to go because it teaches you something. I don’t want to teach her bitterness, and I don’t want to teach her regret. In her infinite wisdom as a 7-year-old, she goes, “I don’t have value in gymnastics.” I’m not her, so I’m not going to impose value into something I’ve never done.
Through our We Are More Foundation, in 2024 we opened our doors once a month, and we have kids night. It’s STEM-focused, because we want to encourage education. These kids show up, and all they want to do is enjoy being a kid, great. If they want to talk about being an astronaut one day, frickin’ fantastic. If you weren’t born in the U.S. and want to be the president, you guess what? I don’t know what it’s going to look like in 30 years. So, have at it, girlfriend. You want to be a team leader? Show me how you want to do that and how you’re going to do it.
People talk about the glass ceiling. Glass ceilings are only created by people who put it there. If you do not get told, “Hey, by the way, here’s the highest you’ll ever go,” you’re never going to know that that’s the furthest you can go. There’s absolutely nothing out there that tells you what your limits are.
Nobody is going to walk through that door today and convince me that we can’t, in five to 10 years, become this massive business that maintains a small-business role. Our items are going to be homemade, hand-rolled and hand-fried, even if we make 4,000 a week, which is what we make now. Even if we go through 30,000 a week, all I’m going to do is bring in more people.
We want to be able to offer employment to kids who come over from Vietnam who don’t speak English, who don’t have experience, who don’t have that job, and tell them that you don’t have to go working a minimum-wage job because you can’t speak English — that you can’t go and do something worthwhile. That’s what the Eggroll Ladies is all about.
For me, to be fearless means that you’re going to be yourself. If you can be yourself, you’re already fearless. I think in today’s society, sometimes you feel like you have to hide. That’s why I don’t wear makeup. I don’t wear makeup anymore, for my daughter, because when she is growing up, she needs to be proud of her face and highlight her face. I really like how she views herself.
0 Comments