Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Mai Vang. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Mai thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea

I actually started off just selling eggrolls to raise money to pay my medical bills.

One day in 2014 I woke up and found that my hearing was totally gone. I started seeking medical advice and saw many professionals but my hearing would not return and my medical bills were starting to pile up. I started selling eggrolls from my house as a way to raise some money to pay off some of my medical bills. The eggrolls were so popular that I decided to roll them to raise money for other people too. So in May of 2015, I rolled about 14,000 eggrolls for a few different fundraisers. Because of the popularity of the eggrolls and the amount I was rolling, I decided to get a food license and trailer so that I can also sell them when I’m not making them for a fundraiser.

The community started calling me the “Eggroll Queen” so I just adopted that name for my business. to build the trailer, I submitted a food trailer plan to the state and once approved we started building. We started off with just a trailer bed and built the whole food trailer up from scratch. I had my brother and husband’s help in building the trailer.

When we first started, it was so much work. Everything was done by hand, all the Cabbage had to be chopped by hand, the meat had to be grounded, and the eggrolls stuffing had to be mixed by hand. We were even rolling on the truck as we were receiving orders. Now, we have machines to help take care of those time consuming hard labor and we roll all of our eggrolls before selling.

Mai, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My whole business started from a negative event, when I woke up one day and totally loss my hearing. Eggrolls have been my saving grace. It gave me a purpose again, made me useful, and I felt useful. I was so busy with eggrolls, I didn’t have time to drown in sorrow and negativity.

When we first started, our menu was pretty big but as time passed, we found that the most popular food items were the eggrolls and fried rice so we shortened our menu so that we can be more efficient and reduce the waiting times for filling orders.

I have always been business-minded. I started off as a kid helping my parents sell vegetables. As I grew older, I dove into other businesses and ventures but I will say none has given me the biggest headaches or rewards as Eggroll Queen. When I hear about how much people love the eggrolls or how far people drive just to get some eggrolls, it warms my heart and reminds me why I am in this.

The one thing that sets me apart from others is the size of my jumbo eggrolls.. It’s so big that it uses two eggroll wrappers and can fill up your stomach pretty quick.. I am so proud to be known as the “Eggroll Queen” and so thankful for the community for helping me get to this point.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

In early 2018, while heating up the fryers my trailer some how caught on fire and burned down. I had to find another truck to build so that I can continue to sell eggrolls. The community stepped up and helped raise some money to help me get back on my feet. This time I opted for a foodtruck. Having the food trailer was nice but it was tiny and required so much work like towing, hooking and un-hooking, and setting up the trailer.

Unfortunately because of our lack of knowledge with trucks, we bought a very old truck and it came with a lot of problems, even till now. It is now sitting in the shop. It has been out of commission since Fall of 2022. We decided to expand our business and opened a brink and mortar called Eggroll Queen Music Café in Falcon Heights, MN. A year or so into that, the pandemic hit and we had to close dining-in. Due to the pandemic, kids were not going to school anymore and we knew that parents were too busy helping their children with distance learning, or had to miss work or quit their jobs to be able to stay home and care for their children. We wanted them to have one less thing to worry about and for all the children to have a warm meal to eat so we started giving out free kids meals in 2020. No questions asked, just come in and pick up meals for your children. In 2021 we opened back up for dining in but it was a little slow to begin with due to the mandated capacity limits for indoor dining. Even with the outpouring of support, we were struggling to stay open.

We learned that owning a brick and mortar was nice and allowed us a kitchen to prep all our eggrolls in but keeping it open was draining our money, so in October of 2021, we closed down the café. Now our focus is only on food trucks. We started a second Eggroll Queen food truck in 2022 so we had two of them going until our first truck went out of commission in the fall. Thankfully our friend Nick Kaufenberg had a food truck that he let us use so we didn’t have to cancel all of the already booked events and jobs.

Recently, our generator and catalytic converter was stolen from our truck. It was devastating but out of that negative event came something positive. Nick came to our rescue again and started a GoFundMe to help raise money for us to purchase a generator. It caught so much attention and love and support from the community the goal was quickly met and went over the goal.

Through all this I am still here, because the community has been there for me and I want to stay open for them. I want to continue to serve and pay it forward.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

I will say social media is so powerful. It can really help you or it can take you down.

Currently my following on Facebook is 15.7k. It was NOT easy to get here but because I could no longer hear, I was constantly on my phone. I found my world so quiet so I started focusing on my social media presence. I communicated to everyone through social media. I threw a lot of promotions through social media and would constantly post and make sure to respond to all messages and answer all questions in a timely manner. The biggest advice I have is to consistently post and respond in timely manner. Slowly, your audience will grow. It also helps to have good food that people love and will share about us with their families and friends.

Contact Info:

• Facebook: facebook.com/eggrollqueen1

Image Credits
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