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When it comes to banh mi, San Francisco’s Bun Mee wants to be the name on everybody’s lips. The fast-casual Vietnamese sandwich chain, which already has four San Francisco locations, just announced plans to expand into a national franchise. They’re also opening a new flagship location in the Marina District later this month.
“Expansion and growth was always part of our strategy, even when I just launched our first [restaurant] on Fillmore Street in San Francisco about 13 years ago,” said Bun Mee founder and CEO Denise Tran. “My dream was always to make banh mi sandwiches part of everyone’s lunchtime vernacular.”
Tran saw an opportunity when she first hatched her business idea back in 2008. While she grew up eating banh mi, the sandwiches had yet to go mainstream. There certainly was no national name dominating the banh mi space — and there still isn’t today. Tran wants to turn Bun Mee into the “Shake Shack of Vietnamese sandwiches,” she said.
Bun Mee serves primarily sandwiches, with options ranging from traditional banh mi (grilled lemongrass pork) to not-so-traditional (crispy fried chicken bun). They also serve chicken pho (Tran’s mother’s recipe), noodle and rice bowls, salads, and Vietnamese iced coffee. Tran opened the first Bun Mee in Pacific Heights in 2011, followed by a second location in the Financial District in 2014. Then, she opened two
restaurants at San Francisco International Airport — the first in 2017, in Terminal 3, and the second in 2019, in Harvey Milk Terminal 1. At that point, she said she was ready to grow even further — until the pandemic hit.
“We were coming out of two amazing years and then COVID hit in 2020 and just threw us for a loop,” she said. “So we spent the last three to four years retooling. I had to build a whole business from the ground up all over again.”
After years spent rethinking their menu and processes to be as efficient and cost-effective as possible, the company decided it was time to expand again. The numbers supported that decision: Recently, Bun Mee has been experiencing double-digit growth, even from 2019 numbers, Tran said. The brand’s two SFO locations grossed $4.6 million and $3.6 million in sales in 2023, and its two other locations have made
more than $1 million in sales each year since 2021, according to a press release.
“If everything worked out the way I want it to, we would be a global brand,” Tran said. “At the very minimum, I’d love to see 50 units in the next five to seven years, and that would be nationally, in the U.S. But we’ve had requests to go into other cities internationally, so if we had opportunities to do that, we would pursue that. So I guess the sky is the limit.”
For now, Bun Mee is concentrating on finding potential franchisees on the West Coast and has already had inquiries in Los Angeles. The company is especially interested in expanding into more airports due to the success of its SFO locations. Bun Mee will also be growing its number of corporate-owned stores across the Bay Area, starting with the new Marina location at 3330 Steiner St., which it plans to open on
Oct. 11. It will also serve as the company’s new headquarters where franchisees will be trained.
Tran said that for Bun Mee’s first three years, staff constantly had to explain to people what banh mi was. Obviously, that’s changed — a point of pride for her. Now, she says it’s time to introduce Vietnamese cuisine to other cities that don’t have food options as diverse as San Francisco’s. “I feel like if you can make it in San Francisco, you’ve got a great shot of making it in other towns,” Tran said. “I feel a lot of pride in being a San Francisco-grown, -tested and -approved brand as we look outside of the bay and continue to grow in other cities.”