VietNamNet Bridge - Trung Nguyen Coffee’s owner – Dang Le Nguyen Vu, who is called the ‘Vietnamese Coffee King’, challenged Starbucks to a duel when the US café chain entered Vietnam.

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Trung Nguyen Coffee's Dang Le Nguyen Vu

Nguyen then triggered a public quarrel when he publicly made derogatory remarks about Starbucks’ coffee.

"They (Starbucks) are great at implanting a story in consumers' minds, but if we look into the core elements of Starbucks, what they are doing is terrible. They are not selling coffee, they are selling coffee-flavored water with sugar in it," he said when giving an interview to a Reuters’ reporter while he was in Switzerland.

Vu said he did not believe that Vietnamese would like Starbuck's coffee and said they wanted real coffee with strong flavor. 

Starbucks has opened eight shops in HCM City so far, and four in Hanoi, employing 220 workers.

Patricia Marques, CEO of Starbucks Vietnam, said she was satisfied about the business in Vietnam, saying that Starbucks plans to open many more shops in the two largest cities of Hanoi and HCM City before expanding the chain to other cities.

Hoang Tung, CEO of Pizza Home, an expert in franchise, noted that if considering the number of shops, Trung Nguyen has ‘the upper hand’.

Meanwhile, the expansion of Starbucks chain in Vietnam is ‘not as impressive as expected’. Urban Station has been expanding even more rapidly than Starbucks in the Vietnamese market.

If considering the number of clients, both Trung Nguyen and Starbucks have their own loyal clients. Though Trung Nguyen declares war with Starbucks, they could not be the direct rivals, because the nature of the two products are different and they target different groups of clients.

Local newspapers also commented that the ‘Starbucks phenomenon’ is no longer attractive to Vietnamese. Local customers queued up in front of Starbucks’ shop on the opening day just because they were curious to know how Starbucks’ coffee tasted.

Therefore, “it is still too early to say who is the winner, Trung Nguyen or Starbucks,” Tung commented.

Meanwhile, Starbucks said it did not think they would have to compete with Trung Nguyen or others. Vietnam has 90 million people, a market large enough for many brands and many flavors to develop. As such, the presence of Starbucks just aims to give one more choice to Vietnamese.

Dang Le Nguyen Vu has been nurturing many development plans for Trung Nguyen. He has launched Brain Station Coffee, a take-away franchise café chain, targeting young people who start their business.

When the chain came out in 2014, Vu stated that Brain Station Coffee would be seen in many large cities. However, according to café.net.vn, only one shop exists. It opened in HCM City two weeks ago.



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