Before the bakery. Before hundreds of employees. Before a president would share their story. There was a boat, and a family willing to risk everything for freedom and a better future.
Sugar Bowl Bakery co-founder, Andrew Ly, recently looked back on the journey with the same humility and gratitude that have guided him for more than four decades.
The Chance to Begin Again Was Everything
The Ly family fled Vietnam after the war. They crossed the South China Sea crowded onto a small boat with over 100 other refugees. They encountered pirates and a journey expected to take days stretched into weeks. Happy to be alive, the Ly family reached Malaysia in 1978. Andrew and his parents were resettled in California on August 19, 1979. They didn’t arrive with money, connections, or a business waiting for them, but the chance to begin again was everything.
Hope, But Not Much Else
From a cramped San Francisco apartment, the family members took whatever work they could find, as laborers, handymen, seamstresses and house cleaners. Andrew worked as a newspaper carrier with his brother and as a janitor while going to school to learn English. The family lived simply and saved whatever they could.
Five years after arriving in America, the five brothers pooled the money they had saved and put it toward a small bakery named Sugar Bowl, with a sign already in place.
Andrew recalls that first morning. “On our first morning at the bakery, the air smelled like flour and butter, and we all had mixed emotions. My parents, my five brothers, my sister, and her husband were all there with me. We had a lot of hope, but not much else.”
Andrew and one of his brothers had spent the night frying Chinese donuts and baking danish, croissants and muffins to prepare for opening day. “We felt two big emotions at the same time. We were happy and proud to start our own business finally, but we were also terrified that we might fail.” At the end of that first day, they had made about $300 in sales.
More than four decades later, Andrew doesn’t wish someone had photographed one of the company’s biggest successes. He wishes someone had photographed that first day. “I really wish someone had taken a photo of us together in the bakery at that exact moment. If you looked at our faces, you would have seen tired eyes, nervous smiles, and a quiet strength.”
Success Can Look Very Different From a Distance.
Andrew has a memorable way of describing his decades leading Sugar Bowl Bakery:
“For a long time, I had basically been a solo rider on the back of a wild tiger. From a distance, people look at Sugar Bowl Bakery and say, ‘Wow, look at him go, so successful, so brave!’ They respect you because you’re riding a giant tiger. But what they don’t see is me hanging on for dear life, terrified, completely lonely, and sweating bullets.”
“And there was one big problem with getting off. When you’re up there, you can’t just hop off for a break. If you get off the tiger, it eats you.” So Andrew kept riding through disagreements, economic downturns, the financial challenges of 2008, competition, growing pains and COVID. All the while, Sugar Bowl was reaching shelves across the country and around the world.
Eventually, after 35 years, Andrew says, “The tiger became a little friendlier. It calmed down enough that I was actually able to slide off carefully without being eaten alive. Since then, an even better tiger rider from the outside named Joel Feldman, our CEO, has jumped on, and he has been steering the company beautifully ever since.”
The One Thing They Wouldn’t Give Up
What never changed, Sugar Bowl Bakery remained a family-owned business. Andrew says, “Over the years, dozens of outside investors reached out to us to partner, but the family had already decided what they wanted Sugar Bowl Bakery to remain.” Andrew admits the conversations were tempting. "Shoestring financing a growing company over four decades is not easy, and in business we can never say never, but one thing is certain: the moment we take that step, we are sold, no matter what beautiful promises they make. Once you do that, it is no longer a family business.” So, through good years and difficult ones, they chose to keep it family-owned. “Every single time, we made it through because of our humility and our commitment to staying grounded together.”
A Full-Circle Moment
In 2013, the family received recognition they never could have imagined. During a speech near the original San Francisco location, President Obama shared the Ly family’s story. His conclusion was simple: “That’s what America is all about.”
Hope has never required certainty. America didn’t guarantee the Ly family success or promise an easy road. In time, the family that arrived looking for an opportunity began creating opportunities for hundreds of others as the bakery grew.
Andrew was asked what he would say if he could thank everyone who has been part of Sugar Bowl Bakery’s journey over the past 42 years. He said he would look them in the eye, bow his head, and say,
“Thank you for welcoming this immigrant family into your most precious moments. We are eternally grateful to call this country our home, and we bake every single bite to honor the trust you place in us. Our story doesn't belong to our family alone, it belongs to hundreds of employees and partners who work beside us, and everyone who has enjoyed or shared our baked goods over the years. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts."
