As a kid, a Canadian Michael Harder comically said to his mother that he could sell a million dollar of her cinnamon buns or other good foods by her recipe.

But for Michael, whose Joma Bakery Café booms locally, doing coffee business here is not because of that though. “It was funny to say I did think about selling cinnamon buns and other good foods before buying this business and moving to Laos,” said Michael.

“It is even funnier that I still don't really know how to cook anything,” he said

Michael is a shareholder in ‘Joma’ in partnership with his wife from Thailand, his younger sister and brother in law from Canada. All of them are only early 30's. All of them are only 20’s and early.

Joma, itself produces and sells western styles baked goods that are sold in its bakery café at Pangkham road near Namphou fountain, Vientiane.

The main products of ‘Joma’ were chocolate croissant, coffee, fruits granola yoghurt, bread, sandwiches, pizza and in particular Lao Arabica coffee.

The current ‘Joma’ was formerly known as Healthy &Fresh Bakery in which he bough from his friends in 1999.

Michael explained that his friends had two businesses in Laos and they want to sell one of them to him.

Michael studied business in marketing and management and worked as a production manager of a small factory in Canada before he moved to work in Thailand’s Bangkok ten years ago.  

The owner of the factory where Michael was production manager in Canada was doing a business deal through the phone with the father of his friends who were running Healthy &Fresh Bakery in Laos.

One day during their conversation, the father of his friend mentioned that his son had business in Laos and wanted to sell. Therefore his former boss advised them to talk each other to potentially buy it.  Michael and his three counterparts who shared 25 percent respectively decided to buy it.

But doing bakery and coffee business was not something easy to new young businessmen here.

“Jocelyn and Aun spent many hours trying new recipes and working to improve some of the old ones. Cooking bakery required much trial and error,” said Michael. “In fact Jocelyn almost gave up as it was very frustrated before she found a bagel recipe that worked well,” he said.

Five years after operating business, the old name was renamed as ‘Joma’ which represents the name of four owners; Jonathan and Jocelyn Blair, Michael and Areerat Harder.

Currently ‘Joma’ has a branch in Luang Prabang province and the newest one which was opened in March at Vientiane’s Nongchan village near newly Water Park.

‘Joma’, whose sale is expected to continually increase by 20 percent per year per outlet, sets its goal to have 40 bakery cafés in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand by 2016.

Currently the company employs 100 people, serving over 1,000 customers daily and its main customers are local expatriates, tourists, western people and about 100 Lao customers a day.

This number customer was yet reached what he and his partners set their goal. For Michael this is an initial step like when he thought setting up bakery café nine year ago. Laos is a small and quiet country where he thought he just want to try something here. But it proved a small and calm country does not mean it can block his dream in booming business here.