Start a business with kitchen snail products

Updated date: 11/30/2023 05:41:54

DTO - For a long time, grilled snails have been a familiar dish to many people in the Mekong Delta. With his passion and desire to develop a dish imbued with his homeland, Mr. Vo Hoai Phong (born in 2001) - Director of Huong Dong Noi Company Limited (Chien Thang Hamlet, Tan Ho Co Commune, Tan Hong District) has turned grilled snails into a specialty to introduce to tourists from near and far.

Mr. Vo Hoai Phong introduces the kitchen snail product to customers at the 2023 Lotus Land Festival

Mr. Vo Hoai Phong was born and raised in the border area of Tan Hong. Every flood season, he often went to catch snails to earn extra income. After a while, Mr. Phong's family switched to selling fresh snails.

During his time in business and research, Mr. Phong learned about the unique dish made from the kitchen snail. The snail has the characteristic of sleeping in the ground during the long dry season. From then on, people who catch snails put them in bamboo baskets and hang them on the kitchen rack to preserve them for a long time and make them taste better. Even though the snails are hung on the rack for many months, they are still plump, the snail meat is clean and white, and can be processed into many delicious and nutritious dishes such as: grilled, steamed, boiled...

By 2020, Mr. Phong decided to switch from buying and selling fresh snails to making grilled snails. Mr. Phong said: “At first, I experimented by cleaning the snails and putting them on racks, but the finished product was not clean and the success rate was not high. There were many limitations such as only being able to produce a small quantity, and the cost of cleaning the snails before selling... After many failures, I succeeded in creating an environment similar to the natural environment for the snails to lie still. At the same time, I treated the snails to release all the residue in their bodies so that the finished product would be white and clean.”

From the initial success, in 2021, Mr. Phong established Huong Dong Noi LLC to meet the consumption needs of diners near and far. To ensure the quality of the product, Mr. Phong did not hesitate to go to the upstream areas of An Giang and Dong Thap provinces to buy snails. After purchasing, he selected and removed snails with broken shells or too small in size, processed the snails to clean them, then hung the snails on a rack like when encountering drought conditions in nature for at least 3 months so that the product achieved the required quality.

Mr. Phong added: “The product of grilled snails is easy to preserve, and can still be fresh and delicious after about a year. One of the advantages of the product is that the selling price is 3 to 4 times higher than that of normal fresh snails. I continue to produce and find more processing methods to increase the value of the product, and look for more sources of clean snails to better serve customer needs. It is expected that each year, I will sell 50 - 100 tons of grilled snails.”

Mr. Nguyen Van Day - Deputy Secretary of Tan Hong District Youth Union, said: "The model of producing snails in the kitchen style of Mr. Vo Hoai Phong shows creativity to create products with economic value, contributing to solving employment in the locality. In the coming time, the Standing Committee of the District Youth Union will continue to closely follow the programs and plans of the Provincial Youth Union and the district leaders in supporting young people to start businesses and establish careers. At the same time, encourage union members and young people to build an entrepreneurial spirit; gradually meet the need for support and create a favorable environment for young people to compete in creativity, start businesses and establish careers...".

PAGE HUYNH

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