Most business models have winners and losers. Someone makes profit while someone else absorbs the cost. But when I studied Nguyen Quang Hung’s approach with HUTIKA, I saw something rare — a business architecture where everyone genuinely wins. Farmers get stable demand and fair prices. Café owners get consistent quality and reliable supply. Consumers get authentic flavors year-round. And HUTIKA grows by making all of that work smoothly. That kind of win-win-win design doesn’t happen by accident. It requires someone who understands every link in the chain deeply enough to solve problems at each level simultaneously.

This isn’t just the story of building a successful frozen fruit business. It’s the story of a man who learned through painful experience that sustainable success only comes when you create value for everyone you touch, not just yourself. Nguyen Quang Hung’s journey proves that the businesses that last aren’t built on extraction — they’re built on genuine partnership.

Learning the Hard Way That Win-Lose Eventually Becomes Lose-Lose

Nguyen Quang Hung’s early career was impressive by any measure. At Okia, he helped double revenue and expand to 20+ showrooms within a year. At Tan Viet, he successfully introduced premium kitchen appliances to Vietnamese households, contributing to a nationwide safety shift away from traditional gas stoves. He was good at making businesses grow. But when he launched his own ventures — TATA Kids in 2013 and Noi That Cao Lo in 2017 — they both eventually failed despite initial momentum.

For years, he couldn’t understand why. He had marketing expertise, industry knowledge, and strong work ethic. What was missing? The answer came slowly, painfully, through repeated failure. He’d been focused on transactions — making sales, hitting targets, growing revenue — without building the deeper infrastructure of relationships and mutual value that sustains a business through inevitable challenges. He was optimizing for immediate wins without creating the conditions for everyone in his ecosystem to win long-term.

The Pivot That Changed His Philosophy

Those business failures weren’t just financial losses. They were philosophical education. Each closed door taught him something about what actually makes businesses last. It’s not clever marketing. It’s not even a good product. It’s whether you’ve created genuine value for everyone you depend on — suppliers, customers, employees, partners. If any of those relationships is extractive rather than mutually beneficial, the whole structure becomes fragile. One economic shock, one supply disruption, one shift in customer preference, and everything collapses.

Finding Purpose in Solving Real Problems for Real People

In 2019, he and his wife Phung Thi Thi made a decision that would finally bring all those hard lessons together. They launched Hoa Qua Hung Thi at Long Bien Market, Vietnam’s legendary agricultural hub, focusing on fresh produce for the F&B industry. This time, instead of starting with what he wanted to sell, he started by deeply understanding the problems everyone in the supply chain was actually facing.

He talked to farmers who experienced devastating price crashes during bumper harvests, watching perfect fruit rot because there was no reliable buyer. He talked to café owners who struggled with inconsistent ingredient quality, unpredictable supply, and wild price fluctuations that made menu planning impossible. He talked to restaurant managers who wanted to offer seasonal flavors year-round but couldn’t afford the waste or the logistics complexity. Every conversation revealed pain points. And each pain point became an opportunity to create value.

Building the Three-Way Win

When COVID-19 hit in 2020 and shattered the entire F&B supply chain, most businesses contracted in panic. He saw it differently. If he could solve the fundamental problems plaguing the industry — inconsistent supply, quality variance, price volatility — he could build something that would be valuable regardless of economic conditions. That’s when HUTIKA was truly born, with a clear mission: stabilize the entire frozen fruit supply chain so that everyone could plan, grow, and succeed with confidence.

The solution was elegant in its design. Deep processing and flash-freezing technology would preserve peak-season fruit quality year-round, solving the consistency problem for F&B businesses. Guaranteed purchase contracts with farmers would stabilize demand and protect them from price crashes. Reliable delivery schedules and transparent pricing would let café owners and restaurants focus on serving customers instead of scrambling for ingredients. Every piece of the system was designed to solve a real problem for a specific stakeholder.

The Partnership Model That Makes Everyone Stronger

What sets HUTIKA apart isn’t the frozen fruit itself — it’s the relationship philosophy embedded in every transaction. When he works with farmers, he doesn’t just buy their fruit at the lowest possible price to maximize his margin. He establishes long-term purchase commitments that let them invest confidently in their crops, knowing there will be a buyer when harvest comes. That stability means farmers can focus on quality instead of just volume, because they’re not desperate to sell to whoever shows up on harvest day.

When he serves F&B businesses, he doesn’t just deliver products. He becomes a partner in their success. If a café is launching a new seasonal menu, he helps them plan ingredient requirements months in advance. If a restaurant wants to test a new drink concept, he provides samples and shares insights about flavor profiles and customer preferences based on data from his 20,000+ customer interactions. His success is directly tied to their success, which aligns incentives perfectly.

The Numbers That Tell the Partnership Story

Today, HUTIKA serves over 20,000 customers with roughly 1,500 placing regular monthly orders. But those aren’t just transactions. They’re ongoing relationships. He knows which cafés prefer which mango varieties. He understands which restaurants have seasonal menu cycles. He tracks which regions prefer what flavor intensities. That knowledge lets him anticipate needs, optimize inventory, and provide service that feels personalized even at scale. The business grows not through aggressive acquisition but through deep retention — customers stay because the partnership actually works.

The Ripple Effect of True Partnership

What’s remarkable about his approach is how the benefits compound through the system. When farmers have stable demand, they invest in better farming practices, which improves fruit quality. When F&B businesses have consistent ingredients, they can build stronger brands around signature drinks and dishes, which increases customer loyalty. When customers get better products, they return more often, which creates more demand flowing back to farmers. It’s a virtuous cycle where each win amplifies the others.

He calls this “business as service,” but it’s more than a slogan. It’s an operational philosophy that shows up in daily decisions. When supply gets tight, he doesn’t jack up prices to maximize short-term profit. He allocates inventory to his most loyal partners first and communicates transparently about when supply will normalize. When a farmer faces crop challenges, he doesn’t abandon the relationship — he works with them to find solutions. These choices sacrifice immediate gains for long-term ecosystem health. And over time, that ecosystem health becomes an unbeatable competitive advantage.

Working Alongside His Wife to Build Something Meaningful

His partnership with his wife, Phung Thi Thi, mirrors the partnership philosophy he brings to business. They work together every day at Long Bien Market, navigating the chaos of Vietnam’s largest agricultural hub as a team. She brings her own expertise and perspective, making HUTIKA stronger through complementary strengths. Their joint commitment isn’t just to building a successful business — it’s to building something that genuinely serves their community and creates opportunities for others to succeed alongside them.

What Every Business Builder Can Learn From His Evolution

The most important lesson from Nguyen Quang Hung’s journey isn’t about frozen fruit or F&B supply chains. It’s about what makes businesses actually last. Early in his career, he focused on winning — beating competitors, capturing market share, maximizing his own advantage. His businesses grew quickly and collapsed just as quickly. With HUTIKA, he shifted to a completely different question: How can I create a system where everyone I touch becomes more successful because they work with me?

That shift from competition to partnership, from extraction to creation, from zero-sum to positive-sum thinking — that’s what transformed him from someone who could grow businesses into someone who could build businesses that endure. It’s a shift that’s available to any entrepreneur willing to see beyond immediate transactions to long-term relationships.

Teaching the Next Generation About Real Partnership

He’s now expanding his role beyond HUTIKA to become a speaker and mentor for Vietnamese entrepreneurs. But unlike most business speakers who share polished success stories, he leads with the failures. He talks about what he got wrong with TATA Kids and Noi That Cao Lo. He shares the exact mindset shifts that turned repeated failure into sustainable success. And he emphasizes one message above all: build your business on genuine value creation for everyone in your ecosystem, or watch it collapse the moment conditions get difficult.

His vision for 2026 and beyond isn’t about scaling HUTIKA into the largest frozen fruit distributor in Vietnam. It’s about scaling the partnership philosophy — helping more entrepreneurs understand that creating win-win-win ecosystems isn’t just ethically better, it’s strategically smarter. When you build a business where suppliers, customers, employees, and partners all genuinely benefit, you create something that can weather any storm.

A Living Example of How Partnership Wins

When I think about Nguyen Quang Hung, I think about how rare it is to find someone who practices what they preach with such consistency. He doesn’t just talk about partnership — he’s built an entire business architecture around it. Every farmer contract, every customer relationship, every operational decision reflects the same core belief: sustainable success comes from making everyone win, not from winning at everyone else’s expense.

That philosophy isn’t just working for him. It’s transforming the F&B supply chain for thousands of businesses across Vietnam, creating stability where there was chaos, building trust where there was suspicion, and proving that businesses built on genuine partnership don’t just survive — they thrive.

You can learn more about Nguyen Quang Hung and connect with HUTIKA through their presence at Long Bien Market in Hanoi, as well as their social media channels, where he shares insights on entrepreneurship, the F&B supply chain, and the art of building a business that lasts.

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Le Duc Anh CEO of OceanLabs – Founder of QVID