Exploring Life & Business with Yume Tran of Indochine Cuisine

Today we’d like to introduce you to Yume Tran.

Hi yume, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
My husband Jeff and I were IT professionals working in the Bay area. In 2000, we decided to move back to Colorado as my parents and a couple of siblings live in Douglas County. My husband decided that he was tired of his daily drive to work up to Longmont from Parker so he decided to open a Pho restaurant. Well, I am deathly allergic to MSG (among other things like caffeine, food colors (yellow and red), chocolate…) so Pho is not something I normally eat unless I cook at home and I don’t like cooking. We bought over an existing Thai restaurant in Parker and I loved it as I love Thai food. We kept the existing staff. Removed all MSG from their list of ingredients and started to bring in our own dishes that we liked and kept a few of our favorites from the previous menus. We loved our staff then as we happened to help our main cook’s daughter with her brain surgery in late of 2003 so we all became family. That set the tone for our business that we are not just a business. We want our staff to be like a family and we work hard to make sure they set goals and achieve their goals in life. Then in 2007, we were approached by the previous Landlord of Parker Station to move over there. He built everything up for us from scratch and costed so little as he wanted us to be in his building. So, we have been at Parker Station since 2008. We love our guests and the Parker community as well as all surrounding areas like Franktown, Elizabeth, Lone Tree, Aurora, Castle Pines, Castle Rock. We started to focus on gluten-free cooking since 2006 as one of our regulars at that time got diagnosed with Celiacs. It was very expensive to cook with GF soy sauce and other ingredients then (some were not readily available then) but we were determined to do that. Businesses always experience ups and downs and we are no exception but we did very well in Covid and have done well throughout the years because of the love and support of our regulars. Since we focus on gluten-free, in 2022 we started working on gluten-free wrappers because many Celiacs people told us they crave Crab Rangoons (others call them Crab Cheese Wontons). After hundreds of tests and taste tests; we started offering them in 2023. But they were hard to make crispy and light, we offered them in limted quantities per week. Then people started to find out about the “while whale” or “the unicorn” of GF crab Rangoons; we started getting noticed by many Celiacs people. In 2025; one Celiacs influencer who saw a posy on Reddit from someone who posted about us; she came and ordered (our menu is 98% gluten-free) alot. She posted about what she had and everyone found out. We have been super busy keeping up. We have to buy machines and tools to help us keeping up. So, we have learned that we just focus on serving our customers correctly by taking seriously their dietary needs; we continue to be handsomely rewarded with returned businesses and referrals that spread throughout the country.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Like I mentioned, it has not always been a smooth road. We experienced major slowdown in 2008 to 2010 due to the economy and road construction happening right in front of the building. We did not have issues at all during COVID. As matter of fact, our business increased by 30% during COVID and it has not slowed down since.

We came from corporate so we know how to pivot, to do financial planning and putting in processes and procedures for quality control and efficiency. We are a very efficiently operated restaurant. We operate very short hours. We open from 11:30am to 3pm. Then we close from 3pm to 4:30pm for sit-down staff lunch and rest. Then we open again at 4:30pm and close at 8:30pm. Knowing how to control our labor cost, smart menu structure so even though our ingredients cost more due to gluten-free ingredients, we are able to stay profitable and be able to always pay the owners first.

Coming from corporates at high-level positions; I will say that our compensation as business owners cannot catch up like you would be at corporate world at the levels of Directors and VPs, but in returns, we get to run the businesses the way we want. We get to treat our staff how we like to be treated. We were determined to provide benefits that are not common for small business owners to do. We offer 401K and we match up to 4% of their pay into their 401K account. We used to offer Health Insurance but no one really participated so we stopped in 2026.

As you know, we’re big fans of Indochine Cuisine. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
I think I stated previously. Indochine Cuisine Corp is a company that incudes a single location called Indochine Cuisine, a line of sauce called JustYume and a series of cooking demo which we hold at Indochine to show our customers how to cook meals quickly and healthy-ly at home using our gluten-free sauces. My cooking demo and cooking classes are very popular (and I wish I can do more of them but I am super busy). I think one of the major contributing factor to is is because I am very entertaining. People tend to take the classes as an “outings’ with friends and loved ones. I don’t like cooking alot but I am passionate about developing new products like developing our GF dough for our Gf wrappers, GF Tempura flour, GF Baguettes. All of our sauces that we have been using at our restaurant are developed by me. As a restaurant’s Chef; I don’t use food color in our food. We don’t use MSG in our cooking because I personally get sick eating them. So I make our food the way that I can eat/ it is a simple philosophy we have. We are very proud of how we take care of our staff. Especially our young staff. We are very strict with the goals we set for them. Here is an example of how we hire:
1. We have a long wait list of candidates and the typical wait is about 1-2 years.
2. Especially for the younger staff. They tend to come from our guests. These are the children who have been eating at Indochine along their parents for years. As they get to 14 years old, they started letting us know they are interested in joining the team.
3. So we tend to interview them when they reach 14.5 years old and they have to answer 3 questions and that include why they want to work and what their plans are after high school. Once we know that, we will make sure after high-schools, we “kick them out” so they can move onto the next things. For the college kids, we allow them to come back and work during their breaks until they reach Junior level. Then, we don’t want them back so they can focus on getting internship and then will have jobs once they graduate from college. For the older kids who don’t want college then they either need to go onto trade schools or buy a property. I know…that sounds extreme but we believe that only when each of our staff has a serious life-goal then they will be serious about working and improving their skills so they can get more compensation while working with us and preparing them for the next goals.
4. All the kids who work for us who are younger than 30 years-old are expected to address all of us in the company who are older than 30 years-old as Ms. and Mr.. We don’t allow smoking breaks so no one is a smoker.
5. And for people who are full-time and older than 21 years old, they are invited to have a 401K so we can match 4%. For the part-timers; we encourage them and often “persuade” them to open ROTH IRA so that they can start saving for their retirement when they are teenagers and know how to build wealth.

Indochine is a safe place to eat when you have any allergy and a safe place to work because all the kids are respectful, supportive of each other and of each other’s goals.

We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
Success for me isn’t status or numbers on screen – even though I am very good with numbers and building things. This is why we did not have Indochine #2, Indochine #3….although we got hundreds of offers throughout the years from various landlords to open our place in their buildings….

I define success in being useful. I can employ people, mentor people and teach them valuable skills. When I see our staff – while they work for us and after they leave – become wiser, kinder, safer and more capable because I was in their orbit, that is success.

I believe we are successful when we get to chose our work, our pace, travel when we want, build things that matter, step back when we want. I do believe in making great money is important because it buys options (not luxury for its own sake).

Summarize: Build things that outlive me while lifting people around me and having the freedom to keep doing meaningful work on my own terms is success.

Pricing:

• Our menu price ranges from $10 to $38

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.indochine-cuisine.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/indochinecuisineparker
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IndochineCuisine/
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@indochinecuisine