ZaLat Pizza’s phenomenal success hinges on an astute pizza-only concept inspired by tech startups like Google.
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.
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.
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.
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 entrees like pad Thai and ramen dishes. The eatery’s late-night hours drew in Dallas’ service-industry crowd, who needed somewhere to drink and dine after clocking out at work. “We had a service-industry following immediately, which propels us to this day,” he says.
