Bringing Vietnamese Chocolate To The World: Vincent Mourou And Thao Nguyen On Ten Years Of Marou, Faiseurs De Chocolat 

The Watershed Moments

Asking Mourou about the seminal moments in those early days, he reels off a whole catalog - meeting his co-founder Maruta, finding and roasting cacao for the first time, impressing respected chocolate makers with their sample bars at a Hong Kong expo, and opening up their factory just outside of Saigon with the help of revered chocolatier Arnaud Normand. Then came their very first sale to the erstwhile Oasis Deli in Thao Dien, the hiring of chef Stephanie Aubriot, FDA approval in 2018, and of course launching the flagship shop on Calmette Street.

However one of the most pivotal moments was an otherwise unremarkable day in February 2012. That was the day Nguyen Nguyen walked in and asked for a job. She was working in Snap Cafe right next door to Oasis Deli when she saw Marou’s poster on the wall and a newspaper clipping that told their story.

“I just saw that picture of Sam and Vincent amongst the Cacao trees,” she says. “I read that story about the banker and the filmmaker setting off and making chocolate and I was so inspired. That very moment I realized I wanted to work for that company. I wanted to join that adventure.” One week later, she packed in her job and joined Team Marou.

Though today she’s the communications project coordinator, Nguyen has taken on just about every role at the company in her nine years — training and development officer, domestic sales manager, and export manager. It’s befitting of a company that values experimentation and adventure that Nguyen, like many of her colleagues, was able to try out different roles and climb the ranks.

“Thao took care of our very first exports,” Mourou tells us, “This all fell around the same time that we were first getting serious interest from overseas distributors and chocolate fans.”

Her timing couldn’t have been any better. Thanks to her efforts in exporting Marou products, committee members from the eminent Salon du Chocolat in Paris got a taste of Vietnam’s first chocolate, and immediately invited Marou to their prestigious event as a “New Talent in Chocolate.”

To say Marou went down well in Paris would be an understatement. “We ended up in I don’t how many of the main French publications. Our families were in disbelief and so were we!” Mourou remembers, “We were in a taxi one night when I heard that we were in Le Parisien (the leading French daily newspaper). We shouted at the driver to stop, hopped out and went to a kiosk to grab a newspaper. It was a full-page spread… that was extraordinary.”