Starbucks in Vietnam
One striking thing in Hanoi is that there are very few Starbucks cafes. This is in sharp contrast to many other Asian countries.
After the US, China, Japan and South Korea have the world’s biggest number of Starbucks stores (7,000, 1,900, and 1,800 respectively). Even Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines have 400-600 stores each. While Vietnam would have only 70 stores. Moreover, the two Starbucks cafes that I entered had very few customers.
How could this be? Casual observation is confirmed by most analyses.
Vietnam has its own deeply rooted local coffee culture, with its own coffee recipes – from egg coffee and coconut coffee to iced or hot coffee sweetened by condensed milk.
In contrast, the Starbucks menu does not really offer the more intense, bitter, and sweet flavours enjoyed by Vietnamese coffee drinkers. Also, Starbucks reportedly sticks to the Arabica coffee bean rather than the stronger flavoured Robusta coffee beans preferred by the Vietnamese. Indeed, Vietnamese coffee is considered, along with Turkish coffee, one of the strongest in the world.
Vietnamese coffee is also usually served in inexpensive, sidewalk cafes and enjoyed for extended periods – in contrast to Starbucks’ hidebound model. And Vietnamese cafes are also quite convivial where you can chat with the local owner – indeed many local Vietnamese cafes are mom-and-pop family operations.
It is true that in the spirit of its glocalisation model (mixing globalisation with local influences), Starbucks has tried to adapt to local tastes by including some Vietnamese recipes – like coconut coffee and sweetened expresso – and even pork sandwiches.
But the gulf between Vietnamese and Starbucks’ coffee cultures seems firmly entrenched. It is enormously difficult for a multinational enterprise like Starbucks to know and adapt to a strong local coffee culture like that of Vietnam.
And Starbucks has more to contend with than Vietnam’s local coffee culture. The Gen Z cohort reportedly has a penchant for bubble tea rather than coffee.
Perhaps the story of Starbucks in Vietnam is just one facet of Vietnam’s ability to chart its own path ahead, despite being surrounded and courted by great powers.