In May 2020, after an incident where a customer at Brunswick Vietnamese restaurant-turned-community-hub Shop Bao Ngoc aggressively demanded more pork in their banh mi, owner Ngoc Tran took to Instagram .

“It makes me really sad when people come in and have a go at us because they think our banh mi is ‘too expensive’. Why is cheap food a prerequisite for ‘authentic’ Asian restaurants?” Tran wrote.

“I am well aware you can get a $6 banh mi elsewhere … Are you aware that continuing to insist that that’s how it should be deprives restaurants of generating a sustainable income, or making enough to pay staff? Are you aware that it deprives Asian food of the ability to move away from a ‘second class’ status, or to be recognised for its legitimate ingenuity and complexity?”

The post gained traction and commenters shared stories of undervalued labour and the double standards faced by Asian business owners. While the incident took place in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic when anti-Asian sentiment was particularly high in Western countries, the mentality persists.

Celebrated chef Thi Le of Jeow and Anchovy and her partner Jia-Yen Lee face similar criticism at their Richmond banh mi shop Ca Com , which opened in 2021. Like Tran, the duo took to Instagram last year.

“We cop price-related reviews and comments on a regular basis, both online and in person,” the pair wrote. “Be it what it may, we would like to think that our offering – layout, presentation and price, especially price – [provides] the building blocks, the antecedents for Vietnamese and Asian cuisine to one day be priced equally to their occidental equivalents in Australia.”

Today, many consumers still balk at paying $15 for one of Tran’s banh mi or $17.50 for a pork belly banh mi at Ca Com, while happily shelling out the same amount or more for a sandwich at any number of Melbourne spots including Hector’s Deli, where $17 is the entry level price for a lunchtime sandwich.

But Tran, Le and Lee are part of a new group of Vietnamese business owners who are helping change the mentality around what a fair price for a banh mi is.

“People still think that Asian food has to be cheap,” says Thi Le (no relation to Thi Le of Ca Com), who co-owns Banh Mi Stand with Ai Huynh.

To counter criticism, Huynh and Le are doubling down on transparency, highlighting the quality and labour-intensive processes behind each roll sold. “We haven't spoken enough for ourselves and the new banh mi generation,” Le says. “That’s our priority for this year.”

At Banh Mi Stand’s two locations in the CBD and a third in Fitzroy, most ingredients, from the baguettes to the mayo and chilli oil, are prepared from scratch. The crisp pork banh mi, priced at $16, is made from free-range Australian pork that takes two days to prepare – the meat is dried for 24 hours, then marinated for another 24 – and cooked fresh daily. These are factors that Le says make it impossible to sell $10 rolls (though the shop does offer a roast chicken banh mi for $10.60). Not to mention the fact that Banh Mi Stand pays rent in the city and inner-city suburbs, which significantly impacts pricing.

Labour is another factor. “We pay our staff award rates and treat them well,” says Le. “When you take everything into account, there’s not much profit left at the end of the day.”

While this is a standard all hospitality businesses must maintain, owner-operated establishments still face pressures to keep prices low, often at the expense of fair pay for themselves.

Tran recalls the reluctance to raise prices at Little Pho Tuck Shop, the banh mi stand her mother Hang Vo previously ran in Kew. “There’s a saying in Vietnamese – ‘lay cong lam lai' – which means ‘not much profit, just enough to compensate for the labour,’” she says. “It’s a mindset a lot of first-gen Viet migrants have.”

It took years for Tran herself to unlearn this sentiment before she started paying herself properly and justifying reinvestment into the business. “If I want to make authentic food, people expect me to open a shitty rundown place,” she says. “We all deserve to have nice-looking places.”

At Good Days Hot Bread – a gleaming white-and-wood shop on Sydney Road, Brunswick – banh mi range from $14 to $17. Owner Nam Nguyen has also faced his share of pushback from customers, but he sees fair pricing as the future for Vietnamese-owned eateries.

“To be honest, the price point here is where the average banh mi shop should be at,” he previously told *Broadsheet *. “What they’re doing and what we’re doing is not that different in terms of the amount of work put into it. So I’d like to think we’re opening the doors for them to be able to do this in the future.”

Le of Banh Mi Stand agrees that leading by example and creating transparency around the true value of a banh mi can shift the tide. “It’s not just for ourselves,” she says. “I think we can slowly change something in Melbourne.”