TheZealot

Khanh Nguyen got into the restaurant business on a whim, but ZaLat Pizza’s phenomenal success hinges on an astute pizza-only concept inspired by tech startups like Google.

ARTICLE BY RICK HYNUM AND BRIAN HERNANDEZ PHOTOS BY KATHY TRAN

Khanh Nguyen has told his life story about a million times. So it seems anyway, judging by the ongoing blitzkrieg of media coverage earned by his Dallas-based concept, ZaLat Pizza. Fortunately, the story is anything but dull. As a child, he and his family narrowly escaped Vietnam as communist forces took over in 1975. He became a corporate attorney, then a software startup CEO, then the owner of DaLat, a Vietnamese restaurant and bar in Dallas. He even lit the spark, so to speak, that ignited Uber Eats.

But ZaLat Pizza just might be Nguyen’s crowning achievement—and that’s saying a lot. Named one of the “5 Hot Concepts” for 2021 by Nation’s Restaurant News, ZaLat’s first store opened in 2015. Now there are 17 locations around Texas, all of them company-owned, including the latest one that opened in Houston. At least six more are in construction now, and all but one focus exclusively on delivery and carryout.

For Nguyen (pronounced “Nuwen”), ZaLat isn’t just another ghost kitchen concept. “Our entire business model was designed with plans for global pizza domination,” he says. “I’m a natural business guy, especially with my ADD. Whatever I do, I’m always designing for global domination, whether it works or not.”

There’s another mission behind ZaLat, too. Nguyen doesn’t just want to get rich—he wants to make his employees rich, too. And not only the GMs, but the frontline workers and the dishwashers, too. In other words, if Nguyen wins, everybody wins.

The Accidental Restaurateur Nguyen was born in a country in which a very different—and quite literal— battle for global domination once took place. His father was a general in the South Vietnamese army and governor of a province called Dalat (hence his first restaurant’s name). When the U.S. gave up on that war, the North Vietnamese army took over the entire country, and things were about to get ugly. In the midst of a mass, panicfueled evacuation, his dad tried to get the family out of the country by air, but due to a mixup, three of his nine kids couldn’t board the plane. The desperate family headed to the beach and hunkered down for days until a troop carrier ship arrived and took them on. From there, they eventually ended up on a battleship bound for the U.S.

Nguyen didn’t speak a word of English yet, but he had brains aplenty. After getting his law degree and working as a corporate security attorney, he co-founded, along with his brother, a tech company specializing in software for hospitals. After selling off that startup, he found himself with some downtime.

“I call myself an accidental restaurateur,” he says. “I had no intention of going into this business. I was going to start another software company.” But one day he decided to make dinner at home, even though he never cooked. “I made ramen and eggs, but with my ADD, once my passion kicks in, I’m all about it. Every day I researched recipes and cooked a four- or five-course meal for nine months.”

With so much free time, he decided, what the heck, he might as well open a restaurant. “I didn’t know a soul in the industry. I just hired three people off Craigslist who didn’t know how to cook,” he recalls. Nguyen did a lot of the heavy lifting himself, from creating the recipes and running the kitchen to serving guests, tending bar and washing dishes. But DaLat became an instant hit, specializing in pho and other soups, as well as