Where It All Started: Mordisko Banh Mi
Updated: Dec 3, 2021
It all started freshman year, we were casually walking downtown from our school and we decided to get some Asian food. We came across some delicious Banh Mis and couldn’t resist the urge to try something new; in San Mateo, our hometown, we noticed there were very few Vietnamese restaurants to choose from. As we started talking to the cashier, Michael, we immediately noticed his charismatic and friendly demeanor. It turned out that he was the owner, and he started telling us the story of Mordisko, how it came to be, and some struggles that they’ve gone through. As Michael expressed his laments regarding technical issues with his Yelp page, we decided to jump in and help.
Whilst embarking on this new project, it made us realize that resources that we find easy to navigate and very accessible, are actually very challenging for many small business owners for various reasons. We sometimes take it for granted, but we have this expertise because we've been around technology for all our lives. However for them, understandably it may not be their first priority to learn the ins-and-outs of it and we could easily help by bringing this easily accessible technology to them. It could help them a lot in the long run and even minor tech- related things are just more difficult because of the very common language barrier. Living in such a diverse community there are so many small businesses owned by immigrants or those who speak other languages. It can also make it so difficult for them to pursue opportunities that they’re passionate about and it’s a barrier that we can easily help them overcome.
During the process working with Mordisko and Michael, the owner, our main goal was to create a website for him that would capture the ambience of his restaurant and commercialize his brand. Our first step was to take professional pictures and we ended up running into several problems. We found that it was actually very difficult to take the photos at an angle that the filling inside the sandwiches showed and looked appetizing. Unfortunately, having a good camera was not enough to take appetizing photos, as we quickly realized that solid lighting, angles, uniformity was also a necessity. All in all, building a website for Mordisko Banh Mi was both integral in successfully creating our other sites.
https://mordisko.wixsite.com/banhmi
