Top Vietnamese coffee brand Trung Nguyen opens first US outlet

Vietnamese premium coffee chain Trung Nguyen Legend officially opened its first outlet in the U.S. Friday, following up on its overseas expansion strategy.

The 1,300-square-foot store is located in California’s Little Sai Gon neighbourhood, Westminster city, home to a large number of Vietnamese diaspora.

The store serves filter coffee and espresso drinks using 100% Vietnam-grown Robusta and Arabica coffee beans sourced from Dak Lak province’s Buon Ma Thuot town - the coffee capital of Vietnam.

It also serves egg coffee - a Vietnamese specialty made of egg yolk, sugar, condensed milk, and Robusta coffee.

“We want to bring Vietnamese coffee culture to the US. It’s not just a drink to us, it’s more about sitting down, enjoying each other’s company and building connections with people,” said Jennie Tang, CEO of H&L Wholesale Food Corporation – a distributor of Trung Nguyen’s packaged retail coffee in the US.

The new café is part of Trung Nguyen Legend’s efforts to spread Vietnamese coffee and coffee culture across the world. It is planning to develop 1,000 stores in the billion-strong Chinese market, and 100 in the U.S. It also intends to open coffee spaces in Japan, South Korea, Dubai, France and other countries in Asia and Europe.

Founded in 1996, Trung Nguyen Legend currently operates 110 stores in Vietnam and three outlets in China, where the coffee chain made its international debut in September 2022.

Trung Nguyen Legend also distributes packaged retail coffee to more than 60 countries, including the US, where it has had a presence in supermarkets for over 20 years.

Alongside stocking Trung Nguyen’s G7 Coffee, Legend Instant Coffee and the brand’s other packaged coffee products, the business also distributes packaged retail tea from Phuc Long and a range of sauces, seasonings, dried products, rice and snacks.

H&L Wholesale Food Corporation was established in 2001 with the goal of supplying US households with Asian food and beverages retail products.

In the first eight months of this year, Vietnamese coffee was exported to 38 markets with the highlight being an increase in export prices to a record $3,054 per ton, nearly $700 higher than the same period last year, according to the Vietnam Coffee-Cocoa Association (Vicofa).

During this period, Vietnam shipped 1.2 million tons of coffee, worth about $3 billion.

The country earned $4.06 billion from exporting 1.78 million tons of coffee in 2022, an increase of 13.8% in volume and 32% in value compared to 2021. This was also the first year in history that Vietnam’s coffee export value topped the $4 billion mark.

According to the International Coffee Organization, Vietnam ranked second behind Brazil in terms of coffee export market share from February 2021-January 2022.