Ba-Le moves on to its second course - Wichita Business Journal:

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Lam recently launched a bakery brand that he hopess to expand into a concept for anew He’s also beefing up Ba-Le’ss wholesale customer base to includee more hotels, restaurants and And earlier this month, he bought the cavernou s old Weyerhaeuser box plant on Nimitz Highway for $20 He plans to move Ba-Le’s main bakeryy and offices into the space and to rent the rest to othedr restaurants. “I want to make it sort of likeRestaurantg Row,” he said. That’s pretty ambitious talk in the shadow of a especially in the turbulentrestaurant business. Ba-Lew hasn’t been immune; the company recentlgy cut the hours of its80 full-time bakert workers.
To Lam, that just means he has to find more busineses to keep hisemployees busy. “People have told me that a bad economhy is a good time to make said Lam, 51, whose privatelh owned company generated $11 million in revenu e last year. Earlier this the company created the LaTour Bakehouse name to focuxs on healthier and more upscalebakery items, such as multi-grainm breads, granola, sugar-free cookies and biscotti-like It’s a significant shift from Ba-Le’s cheaper noodles-and-wraps fare. “People of Hawaiik think of Ba-Le as just he said.
Ba-Le has two branches: its chainh of 21 franchised Vietnamese-style restaurants, and its wholesalwe business, which sells bakerty items and pre-made sandwiches to hotels and stores. The European name stems from the company’es use of French breads and croissants forits sandwiches. Ba-Le’s biggest customersx include Papa John’s Hawaii — Ba-Le supplies all the pizz a dough forthe chain’s 14 storea — and , which buys up to 2,500 sandwichezs a day for in-flight meals. The company startedf selling some of the LaTourd Bakehouse products online and towholesale customers, including in Kahals Mall.
Lam wants to open threer or four shops on Oahu to carry the LaTour items andsell made-to-order foods including saladds and soups. He also sees the new concept as an opportunity to creats a more traditional franchise chain apary fromthe Ba-Le restaurants. Despite the company’ds success over the past 24 years, Lam admits Ba-Le has struggleed with inconsistent food and service at its There are no set standards or menus and maintaining quality has beenan “When I started opening more and more Ba-Le I didn’t plan to franchise,” he said.
“II was opening them for my family, friends and employees, and it just I feel a little bit unhappy when I hear from customera that one restaurant is not as goodas another.” He said the compan y recently closed a Kapolei store because of inconsistent quality. Ba-Le now has 16 storews on Oahu, four on and one in Kona on theBig Island. Lam operatesz the Ba-Le shop on the campusz in Manoa, while the rest of the storese are franchises owned mostly by relatives andformer employees. Rather than try to reinvent the Ba-Le Lam said it makes more sense for him to startr over withLaTour Bakehouse. He wants to creat e a standardized product line and stored appearance for thenew brand.
“Frokm the first location, it will have to be standardized,” he “They all have to be the follow rules and sell the same I want LaTour to be a moretraditionapl franchise.”