Four values and how they show up every day

Color of Vietnam has four values: Taste First, Small Trials, See It Through and Speak Honestly. They are not slogans on a wall. They are four questions our team asks before every small decision in a day. This piece shows each value in an ordinary working situation, so that candidates can picture how they would work here.

Taste First: the food, then the words

Monday morning is the shared tasting. On the table are three samples of the PLAY Energy Bar 2.0 in orange and cacao, numbered one to three. Nobody is allowed to say this one is fine before biting into it. Everyone tastes, writes their own notes, and only then reads them out.

Sample two looks best: clean cut, even cacao colour. But the aftertaste is more bitter than sample one, and the orange disappears within a few seconds. Taste First means saying exactly that, even though sample two is the version the partner put the most work into. The conclusion sent back: keep the texture of sample two, return to the orange and cacao ratio of sample one.

Taste First has a second meaning: the words on the pack must match the food inside. If the pack says orange and cacao, the bite has to deliver orange and cacao. A beautiful design is not an exception.

Small Trials: one question, one small batch

Someone on the team suggests that the Let's PLAY seaweed rice cracker would be more fragrant with sesame. It sounds reasonable. We do not order new packaging, and we do not debate it all afternoon. We write a question that fits on one line: does roasted sesame in the seaweed seasoning make the cracker more fragrant without covering the seaweed?

That question becomes a small trial at the partner facility: two versions with sesame at two ratios, one without as the control. A week later we taste, write, decide. If the answer is no, we have lost one small batch and one week. If it is yes, we know the exact ratio.

The rule of Small Trials is simple. If the question does not fit on one line, we are not ready to trial. And until we have trialled, we do not scale.

See It Through: own the outcome and the next step

Someone takes on preparing the print file for the red bean rice cracker bag. See It Through starts with defining the outcome: an approved print file, every mandatory label line present, ingredients matching the latest spec sheet, the A brand of Color of Vietnam stamp in its agreed position, and the printer confirming receipt.

Then it means proposing the next step rather than waiting to be told: check every line against the spec, send the proof to the founder, book a date with the printer. When other people are needed, agree who does what and by when. And when something blocks the work, say so early. In this case the shelf life on the label was still waiting for the partner to confirm a test result. The owner flagged it the same day, with two options: wait for the confirmation and then print, or print the unchanged parts first. The work kept moving, and nobody had to ask where it stood.

Speak Honestly: what we know, what we are unsure of, and our mistakes

A situation we have been in: an old version of the nut bar spec sheet was sent to an importer by mistake. We noticed an hour later. Speaking honestly here was one immediate email: we sent the wrong version, here is the correct one, the difference is on this line. No long explanation, no blame. Afterwards, a note in the tracker so that later versions carry a clearer number and date.

The same value applies to the bigger story. Asked which markets we already sell in, we answer with our real stage: preparing for export, no market announced. Asked about certificates, we explain that they belong to the partner facility, what they cover, and that the ISO 22000 certificate is being renewed. What is uncertain gets called uncertain.

Four values in hiring

In an interview we do not ask whether you agree with the values. We ask for four things:

• Describe something you ate this week in words, as precisely as you can. That is Taste First.
• Tell us about a time you tried something small before going big, and what the question was. That is Small Trials.
• Tell us about a task you took on and finished, including the part nobody assigned. That is See It Through.
• Tell us about a mistake you owned before anyone found it. That is Speak Honestly.

The answers do not need to be impressive. We listen to how you tell them more than to the outcome.

If those four situations sound like the way you want to work, the Fresher Product R&D and Marketing Leader roles in Hanoi are open on the Careers page. If you are a partner who wants to know how we work before we start, this piece is the answer, and the Contact page is the next step.