The first twenty minutes

For the first twenty minutes of our first póp úp, nobody ordered.

The Garage was already busy. Other traders had people in front of them. Five of us stood behind a fully stocked counter — Tân, Hải, Trang, Thảo and Minh — trying not to read too much into the empty space around ours.

Months of testing recipes. Drawing menus. Ordering equipment. Imagining what NgON might look like once it was out in public. Then twenty minutes of nothing.

It is difficult, in that gap, not to wonder whether you have got something wrong.

Then a few people stopped to look. The first orders came through. A few more after that.

Two hours later, everything we had prepped to cover both days was gone.

Before the gazebo

NgON started in Nottingham in late 2025, in conversations between two friends about the food we missed and what Vietnamese food could look like in the city we actually live in.

For a long time that was all it was. Conversations, then recipes.

The beef came from bò né — the hot pan, the onions, the amount of black pepper that reaches you before the first bite. The tofu one took several versions before we stopped adding things to it. The avocado in the chicken bánh mì was not part of a plan. The egg mayo did not feel rich enough on its own, so we tried avocado, and it stayed because it tasted better.

Then came the logo, the menu boards, the packaging, the counter drawings. Design files with no counter to sit on.

Becoming physical

NgON started as a name. On 25 and 26 July, at The Garage in Chilwell, it showed up everywhere at once.

The red-and-white striped gazebo. The handwritten logo, big enough to read across the yard. Hand-drawn artwork across the front of the counter. Menu boards. Red trays. Cups, packaging, a sticker on every bag of bread.

None of it was decoration laid over the top of a food stall.

It was what let people understand NgON before we had explained very much, and that mattered more than we expected. Several people talked to us about the booth before they talked about the food — about Vietnamese food, about Việt Nam, about the team standing in it. The drawings and the colours and the slightly handmade edges did the introduction for us.

That was the point of the branding. Not to look polished for its own sake. Just to make it obvious there were real people behind it.

The first service

Making one bánh mì at home teaches you how you want it to taste. It does not teach you how to make four at once while more orders are coming in.

When three or four landed together, warming the bread became the bottleneck. The fillings were ready. The station waited. One small step quietly took control of the pace of everything else.

Orders went onto yellow sticky notes and down the line.

That is the difference between the two. A service has to keep going while nobody loses track of an order or gets in anyone's way.

What sold, and how fast

The crispy pork belly went first — gone inside the first hour, at £10, as a one-weekend special. The Black Pepper Beef sold out completely. The Mont Blanc coffee was finished within two hours of opening.

We traded to 2pm on the Saturday. On the Sunday we sold out by midday.

We expected the Honey Chilli Chicken Avolcano to do well. We did not expect how much people would take to chicken and avocado together — the thing that began as a fix for a filling that felt thin. Watching that land told us something about the menu NgON is becoming: Vietnamese at the centre, with room for ideas that earn their place.

The pork belly earned its place too. It is on the menu properly now, not as a special.

What the weekend taught us

Service exposes every decision you have already made.

The branding photographed well and it also worked, which is not automatic. The food held up. What needed work were the invisible parts — how we talk to each other mid-service, how responsibilities are split, how much of the station is genuinely ready before the first customer arrives, and how much to prep when your own forecast turns out to be two days short in two hours.

Those things are less visible than a gazebo. They shape how the brand actually feels to stand in front of.

The weekend did not make NgON feel finished. It made the next steps easier to see.

What comes next

For the next one we want the service to move more smoothly and the prep to be more considered. We are also working on small activations — nothing complicated, just ways for people to take part in the stall rather than only order from it.

Nottingham only, for now.

Póp úp #2 is on the way.

And after those first twenty quiet minutes, it was reassuring to learn that people will queue while you work things out.