Cooking with a broken arm is a challenge, to say the least. But Debi Nguyen not only met the challenge, she created something new out of it. In a mountain biking accident she broke her arm, and the cast from wrist to shoulder made it difficult to cook, especially sauces.
So she began buying spices and herbs from all over the world, experimenting with various combinations and using them as rubs.
Debi’s Vietnamese heritage played an important role in the development of her business. While she was born in Vietnam, she was came to the United States when she was 1 year old. Here, cooking gave her mother her start.
“At the beginning, my mother worked very, very long hours, so I was in charge of my brothers and my sister and did the cooking for them,” Debi remembers. “At 9 I started helping out on weekends and in the summer in one of my family’s three restaurants.”
“I wasn’t allowed to use the knives,” she laughs, “but I did all sorts of little jobs and mimicked the chefs. It was good culinary training!”
While Deb Deb’s Rub Rubs are not Vietnamese, Debi’s palate had been educated on Vietnamese cooking, so her rubs had to compete with its intense, complex flavors. Francis Thomas, Debi’s boyfriend, was always willing to try her experiments, “but we threw out quite a few of them.”
Choosing the very best of her creations, Debi and Francis began giving her rubs as Christmas presents. When the requests for more kept coming until they couldn’t keep up with demand, they decided that they had a commercial product.
A trip to Vietnam clinched their decision. “We were there for 3 weeks and then in Thailand for a week. Seeing the way the people cooked, and how much they enjoyed life, we decided that this business was our future.”
“My inspiration comes from the joy of helping people save time and money,” Debi says enthusiastically. “Since there is no need to marinate, and you can’t possibly go wrong with these rubs, a lot of people who never wanted to cook before find our rubs an easy way to start. We not only make them happy, but we make their family happy as well.”
An important component of their business and their lives are Debi and Francis’ contributions to a homeless shelter in San Francisco. “I can’t run a marathon, but I do what I can which is cook,” Debi says. “Bringing pleasure to people brings joy to us.”
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