A few years ago, Nguyen Thom from Ninh Binh decided to start a business after seeing many sidewalk lemon tea shops attracting a large number of young customers. In the evenings, many streets were often crowded with people sitting and drinking lemon tea. The vibrancy of this model led her to believe it was an accessible business opportunity with relatively low investment costs.

She decided to invest nearly VND700 million to open a sidewalk-style lemon tea shop. The premises were rented in a quite busy street near residential areas and several schools. The capital was mainly used for renovating the space, designing signs, purchasing tables and chairs, a mixing counter, and business equipment.

The shop was arranged with many outdoor tables and chairs in the true sidewalk lemon tea style, targeting young customers who like to gather in the evening. During the initial opening period, the shop attracted quite a lot of customers.

After a few months of operation, the situation began to change. As the sidewalk lemon tea model became popular, more similar shops appeared in the area. The rapid increase in sales points led to increasingly high competition.

Many shops began to lower prices or offer promotions to attract customers. The selling prices of drinks were gradually pulled down, while the volume of customers dispersed among various locations.

The appeal of the sidewalk lemon tea trend also began to fade. Evenings that were once fully booked at many shops became noticeably quieter. As the trend cooled down, the number of customers coming to the shop plummeted.

Because the business model depended almost entirely on a trend, the shop did not have time to build a loyal customer base. When customer numbers fell, revenue was no longer enough to cover operating costs such as rent, staff and materials.

After less than a year of operation, Thom had to close the shop and liquidate most of the tables, chairs and equipment. Total losses were estimated at hundreds of millions of dong.

Trend-driven investment

There are many reasons for lemon tea to become a trend. The cost of these drinks is low, ranging only from VND10,000 to VND20,000 per cup. Furthermore, lemon tea shops are often decorated with a youthful style and a popular sidewalk space suitable for everyone.

Opening a lemon tea shop is also quite simple, not as complicated as business models for milk tea or coffee, which might require investment capital of up to billions of VND. For lemon tea, it only takes about tens of millions to several hundred million VND, while the potential profit is very large.

During the peak period, a lemon tea shop could sell 3,000 to 4,000 cups, with the highest revenue reaching VND30 million a day. Thus, on average, with an initial capital of about VND500 million, one could recover the investment after 2 to 4 months.

Experts believe that following trends is one of the common risks for new entrepreneurs. "Hot" models can bring in a large volume of customers in a short time, but without a long-term development strategy, revenue is often difficult to maintain stably.

The sidewalk lemon tea model actually has a quite short life cycle if it only relies on trend factors. The products are easily copied, and the initial investment is not too large, so the market quickly sees many competitors. When supply increases sharply in a short time, shops often have to reduce prices to keep customers, causing profit margins to narrow.

In addition, many sidewalk lemon tea shops depend heavily on evening crowds or seasonal demand. Without expanding products, building a private brand, or creating differences in experience, this model easily falls into saturation.

Models that depend heavily on market trends usually have a short life cycle. When the market saturates or the trend changes, the number of customers can decrease rapidly.

Experts pointed out that before investing in the F&B sector, entrepreneurs need to carefully evaluate the sustainability of the model, competitive ability, as well as plans to build a long-term customer base. A business idea can start thanks to a market trend, but to survive in the long run, it still needs to be based on a stable operating strategy and a clear differentiation from competitors.

Duy Anh