Alex Yates
Creative Director
Vu Thu
Illustrator
Nguyen Hien Trang
Writer
Background
A Bản is a brand that brings its customers in touch with the unique flavors, experiences and people of the Vietnamese highlands. Their expansive brand vision starts with a flagship property, A Bản restaurant, designed and built in 2021. Featuring a menu that celebrates the traditional kitchen of ethnic minority communities from the mountainous north, stunning interiors inspired by tribal designs, and economically transparent partnerships with their many community suppliers, A Bản’s commitment to the highlands is far more than window dressing.
Guests will enjoy dishes featuring everything from spices foraged from mountain forests, fish caught in icy streams, and exotic but essential proteins like wasp larva. While the ingredients and many of the techniques are traditional, A Bản’s head chef, Viet, elevates and innovates in his modern kitchen. He grew up among these communities, and is the perfect guide to lead A Bản patrons on a journey of discovery.

Our Big Idea
A Bản is a brand of bold vision, big ideas and lofty ambition. So, to better connect with its customers, Fourdozen drew on the narrative traditions of highlands communities that A Bản represents and created a content strategy with storytelling at its core. To support that strategy, we convened a writing team that has published more than a half dozen books between them, in Vietnam and abroad.
Our narrative approach naturally included a focus on Chef Viet, a man with a technicolor smile and absolute mastery over his craft. But more than that, storytelling—which is itself central to Vietnamese highland communities—guided everything from menu creation to graphic design. Fourdozen’s in-house illustrator, the mind behind numerous published children’s books, adapted a visual style for A Bản to create a longform comic series that tells the epic story of the highlands. Our menu design is done in newspaper style and includes articles and games.

Results
Fourdozen’s work with A Bản greatly benefitted from the fact that they were deeply engaged with every creative decision, and served as outstanding amplifiers of our content marketing. The A Bản social media properties launched with industry-beating engagement rates, and organic reach that far exceeded their growing followership.
The A Bản restaurant is just the beginning of this story. At Fourdozen, we’re not just partners—we are also fans. We can’t wait to read the next chapter.