How impending pregnancy and motherhood inspired Mary Nguyen to open a healthy fast-casual restaurant

Chef Mary Nguyen — owner of growing Denver-based fast-casual concept, The Olive & Finch — has navigated a career change, gender imbalance in the kitchen as one of America’s first female sushi chefs, and health challenges before and during her pregnancy to get to where she is today. It was while she was trying to improve her diet for fertility reasons that Nguyen noted the lack of fresh and healthy dining options in outside of the fine-dining sphere. Thus, The Olive & Finch — with its all-day menu of eclectic and healthy soups, salads, and sandwiches — was born.

As the daughter of Vietnamese refugees who came to America “with just the clothes on their backs,” Nguyen connected with her Vietnamese roots through a love of food and hospitality. However, she started her professional career in finance just like her siblings did as first-generation American dreamers. In 2001, Nguyen attempted to make the career leap from finance to the culinary arts by juggling three jobs at once to teach herself hospitality (at Starbucks) the art of sushi-making (at Hapa Sushi, where she was the only female chef), and back of house skills with her third job at a restaurant called the Beehive, where she started in the pantry due to lack of experience.

Nguyen’s end-goal was to eventually open her own restaurant.

“Fast-forward a year later, and I had the opportunity to grow with Starbucks and to grow with Hapa, and I decided to go with the latter,” she said. “When I left in 2005 to open up my first restaurant, I left as the first female executive sushi chef in the country…. at the time, I didn't realize how revolutionary it was. I was just doing a job, and I was pretty good at it -- actually a lot better than many of my male counterparts. I was able to move up the ranks because there wasn't this hierarchy that was dictated by your gender or by your race.”

In 2005, Nguyen opened her first restaurant, Parallel 17 (named after the boundary between North and South Vietnam), which sold Vietnamese cuisine with a French influence. Her second restaurant, Street Kitchen Asian Bistro, opened in 2011 and focused on Asian street foods across the continent. However, in her own personal life, Nguyen was facing some challenges in trying to conceive a child, and she decided to adjust her diet, which was hard to do as a chef working full-time, where “family meals” often meant eating rich and indulgent restaurant food every day.

“In Denver in 2012 if you wanted something scratch-made or chef-driven, you had to go to a full-service fine-dining restaurant,” Nguyen said. “But that’s too expensive to do for every meal, and then they’re putting in all sorts of butter and sugar and fat in the food to make it taste good…. So, I decided to open my own restaurant called Olive & Finch. It was very much a passion project: I needed to eat healthy, homemade food in a non-committal environment. I wanted to be able to grab food and go or sit down for a meal with my family.”

While Nguyen went into this project with low expectations that they might “break even the first year,” instead, lines of patrons were out the door when Olive & Finch first opened at the end of 2013, and before long, it was named a best new restaurant by a local Denver magazine and by Zagat.

Shortly after, at the peak of her culinary success, Nguyen became pregnant with twins and suffered from some health complications. She was put on bedrest for the rest of her pregnancy and then had to have an emergency c-section. After giving birth to her two daughters, one immediately had to have surgery and both twins had to recover in the NICU for three months. At that moment, Nguyen realized she was stretched too thin and had to make a choice, so she chose to close her first two restaurants and focus on Olive & Finch.

“Olive & Finch’s brand and concept really resonated with me and gave me the freedom to experiment with different types of cuisine,” Nguyen said. “As an Asian woman, it’s frustrating to be put into this box of ‘you only do Asian food because you're Asian.’ I get that even now 20 years later. But I love what we do: it’s global cuisine for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.... When I was in the hospital with my kids, I realized I wanted to double down on this industry, but not just open a million concepts. I want to be able to put my all into my restaurant.”

In 2017, Olive & Finch opened its second location in Denver and then Nguyen hit another snag in her personal life when one of her twins was diagnosed with retinoblastoma: a form of cancer that develops in the back of the eye. Luckily, her child was able to have surgery to remove the cancer, and now her twins are almost ten years old and are both healthy. However, Nguyen said it was always challenging to juggle motherhood and her career, especially with these ups and downs.

“For those of us in the hospitality industry, we sacrifice a lot,” she said. “But I really believe in what we're trying to do, which is providing great food that's accessible. Nothing on our menu is more than $20, and that includes a hangar steak and a seared salmon… Life happens, and I've been really lucky to be able to juggle all of that and to support a family. There are times when I questioned it, but I always stayed the course.”

In 2019, Nguyen opened her third concept, called Finch on the Fly, which is a wholesale brand, and then in 2019, they started offering to-go products. In 2023, Nguyen opened Little Finch: a day to-night cafe that focuses on coffee and juice in the day and cocktails at night.

“We have plans for more Little Finches and more Olive & Finches,” she said. “What’s important to me is to create a company that isn't just a restaurant brand competing for people's seats: we are a food and beverage brand and I want us to stand the test of time… We are a purveyor of goods and services to those who one don't have the skills or the capacity to make or get chef-driven food.”

Nguyen and her team are in the process of opening four more Olive & Finch and Little Finch locations in the near future.

Contact Joanna at [email protected]