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Bean and Tea Leaf, and NYDC are stiff
competition for Vietnamese owned
brands such as Phuc Long, Passio, Effoc
and Urban Station.
These chains serve take-away cof-
fee, but plenty of people still take a seat
inside and linger. The foreign-branded
cafes have more foreign customers
than Vietnamese, although the younger
generation is increasingly being drawn
to such places.
Established chains Trung Nguyen
and Highlands Coffee have their own
ways to take market share. Trung Nguy-
en operates big shops in prime locations
in the central business district with a
diverse menu of drinks and food. High-
lands Coffee was sold by its founder, Da-
vid Thai, to the Philippines-based Jollibee
Worldwide. It now offers lower coffee
prices than before in a bid to attract more
custom. The price for a standard coffee
is now just VND29,000 (around $1.40).
Highlands also serves lots of food, includ-
ing Vietnamese
ph
ở
, Thai and Western
dishes, and canned coffee.
Coffee to go
As office life becomes more de-
manding, it is harder for people to jus-
tify time in a café. With ever more
workers in a rush, more coffee shops
have started offering coffee to go and,
in some cases, sending a kitted-out em-
ployee to prepare it at the customer’s
place of work.
Most of the cafés like Doppio, Pas-
sio, Flash and Cactus that make coffee
on the spot are located in districts 1
and 3 in the heart of Ho Chi Minh City.
Most of their revenue comes from cof-
fee drinkers with no time to sit down
at a table for some leisurely sipping.
These shops also offer a wide selec-
tion of beverages and snacks, and
some of them even have set menus
for lunch.
Pham Nghia used to work as a pho-
tographer for Thanh Nien Newspaper
before he founded the Phin Café busi-
ness. His staff operate mobile coffee
bars on motorcycles. They can either
stand at a crossroads in the CBD or de-
liver. It is easy to recognise the bikes as
on the back of each is a mini bar with
coffee, ice, milk and trays. Call 0919
47 11 88 and a few minutes later a
Phin Café bike will arrive to serve you.
Pham Nghie says the enthusiasm of the
mobile coffee makers is an important
factor in the growing popularity of the
service they offer.
Phin Café uses coffee beans from
Buon Me Thuot in the Central High-
lands province of Daklak, ground and
filtered in true Vietnamese fashion.
The province is also the hometown of
Trung Nguyen owner Dang Le Nguyen
Vu, who is regarded as Vietnam’s cof-
fee king.
The success of the Phin Café mod-
el has not gone unnoticed by competi-
tors who have begun to follow suit.
For example, if you sit around April
30 Park in front of the Reunification
Palace you will be found by a drink
vendor who can bring you a Vietnam-
ese coffee. The vendors there have a
walkie-talkie to accept orders rapidly.
They also provide each coffee drinker
with a small piece of card to sit on to
keep their clothes clean.
It is clear that coffee is an integral
part of the invigorating nature of Ho
Chi Minh City. The dynamism of the
metropolis is exemplified by the ever-
changing nature of its thriving coffee
scene which, it seems, is robust enough
to accommodate the likes of Starbucks
and continue to grow and adapt.
THE COFFEE CULTURE
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