From a name that means a warm Vietnamese “Hey you,” Anh Ơi Bake Shop bakes cookies that taste like belonging. Founder, Vince Vu, bakes cookies with flavors like Strawberry Corn Milk, Vietnamese Coffee & White Chocolate, and Fried Banana. They ship nationwide and regularly pop up around the Seattle-area with limited quantity drops.
What inspired you to get into foodservice?
“I started Anh Ơi Bake Shop to turn memory into something you could taste… I had worked in tech before, but I realized the only way to tell my story honestly was through food—measured in butter, flour, and sugar instead of spreadsheets.”
What do you love about your business?
“I love that a cookie can be more than dessert – it can be a bridge. Customers taste something familiar and new at the same time, and it sparks conversations about culture, belonging, and identity. The best part is seeing people pause, close their eyes after a bite, and say, “This reminds me of…” That moment makes every long night worth it.”
Most interesting/coolest moment so far?
“At my first popup, I baked 130 cookies thinking I’d have tons of leftovers. Instead, I sold out in under two hours. People lined up not just to buy, but to tell me their own food memories. People even drove nearly two hours across the city because they’d heard “the banana cookie tastes like childhood.” That’s when I knew AO was bigger than me.”
Biggest challenge you’ve had to overcome?
“Scaling up from home baking to a commercial kitchen was intimidating. Learning to manage larger mixers, racks of dough, and big production runs (without losing quality) was the hardest challenge. Suddenly, I wasn’t making a dozen cookies, I was making thousands. But pushing through that transition gave me the confidence that Anh Oi could survive beyond my humble home kitchen.”
Cambro in the Kitchen
“My bake shop runs on about 50 CamSquares Classics containers in 2, 4, 8, 12, and 22-quart sizes. Every ingredient – flour, sugar, chocolate, butter – has its place. When you’re handling hundreds of pounds of ingredients a week, you can’t afford mess or confusion. Cambros make order out of chaos, and that order is what lets me keep scaling while staying true to the craft.”
