1. How did I come up with an idea of selling Pate
While living in Australia for 5 years, I always craved for a simple crusty bread roll filled full of pate instead of filling meat and veggies. Good pate should be smooth in texture, with pork evenly spread over the surface. It should be slightly pink with white spots of pork fat and seasoning well with peppers and other spices. However, it is easy to find pate in Australia like the ones back in Vietnam. I knew Vietnam had some really good canned Pate. However it might be restricted to bring into Australia.
Originally, my ideal came up with Asian groceries online where I source unique products from Vietnam that are easy, not convenient for people to cook and eat but also have to be authentic as well. I didn't plan to sell pate but just wanted to try and test the reaction of the market first. My first target customer was to the Vietnamese community in Australia. Just a random post on Vietnamese community FB group and I didn't expect it to go viral. But the post hit more than 140 likes within a day. My private messages went crazy within 10 mins of people wanting to secure the goods. My whole body shook as I did not expect anything like that and I only had 15 cans to sell. I started to panic and reply to their messages. I quickly calmed down and started taking pre-orders to estimate how the number of cans in demand. I placed a large order for next days, however some logistic issue were delayed 2 weeks until the good would arrive. We sold out 300 cans within 1 day and still could not keep up with the demand. We continually ordered more stock and people kept coming back to us with 10-20 cans each order. So far, we have sold more than 2000 cans of Pate within 2 months.
2. What is the meaning behind our brand name "PateMe"
Ordinally I came up with an idea of "Mê Pate", " Mê" in Vietnamese means obsessed with something and when it is written in English it should be "MePATE" and it should be easy to pronouce for foreigners as well. However, one day when my partners said the name another way like " PateMe". It sounded not too bad either and we finally came up with this name for our brand. "PateMe" similar to feed me, feed me with alots pate or " Me" could me a bread and you want to fill with a lots of Pate. Absolutely another way to demonstrate how us passion and my obsession with Vietnamese cuisine, especially Pate.
