A Saigon youth staple is venturing beyond Vietnam with an ambitious expansion to the United States.
Recently, Phúc Long Coffee and Tea announced on their Facebook page that the brand will open its first store in the US this July. The cafe will be based in Garden Grove, California, though no further details on its exact opening date or location were given.
The choice of location is strategic because, as of 2016, Garden Grove had the second-biggest population of Vietnamese Americans among cities in the US of over 50,000, just behind San Jose. Still, Phúc Long’s menu is very optimized for the palate of young consumers in Vietnam, so it will be interesting to see how the Saigon mainstay adapts their coffee experience for a vastly different demographic.
Phuc Long is not the first Vietnamese cafe chain to make the international jump. In 2018, Hanoi-based vintage coffee chain Cộng Cà Phê opened its first overseas outlet in Seoul and has since expanded to six stores across South Korea and two others in Malaysia.
Phuc Long’s local presence is a little more prolific than Cộng, with 82 locations in Saigon and seven other localities as of June 2021. The cafe chain began in Bao Loc in 1968 as a coffee and tea wholesale supplier. It opened three retail locations in Saigon in the 1980s to sell packaged products, and only officially entered the coffee shop scene in 2012 with the launch of the first Phúc Long cafe in District 7’s Crescent Mall.
In January 2019, the chain officially launched in Hanoi at the IPH building in Cau Giay District, marking what was its 43rd location in the country at the time.
[Image via Facebook page Phuc Long Coffee and Tea]
