Starbucks won’t kill coffee in Hanoi

If I’m honest I’m not especially fond of any of the big brand behemoths that may or may not be coming to whichever big Asian city near you.

People queuing up to do online reviews of a Burger King in Hanoi remind me of that old Peter Kaye sketch about family holidays where they find Kellogg’s Cornflakes in a Spanish supermarket and buy them to see if they taste the same. Funnily enough those reviews can be divided roughly in two: It’s the Same! and It’s Not the Same (Typical Vietnam!).

That said next up is Starbucks in Ho Chi Minh City which means inevitably they’ll end up in Hanoi before too long.  Before we proceed, check out this fantastic blogged snapshot of local coffee providers for some context.

Over Christmas in the UK I avoided Starbucks, opting for the UK-based Costa, mostly because of the widely publicised at the time Starbucks’ tax avoidance. On a recent trip to Hong Kong though I visited every day. My boycott, it turns out, was pretty half hearted but a reasonable relfection of my don’t-love-em but don’t-care-enough-to-hate-em attitude to the brand

With that scene set, what of Starbucks coming to Vietnam?  Will it kill the local coffee scene?

I doubt it.

People talk of how the high street coffee shops killed independent outlets in the UK but frankly pre Starbucks there were very few local cafes making even a half decent coffee. Hanoi is a little different. There is already a coffee culture.  Seeing as it was the French who introduced the bean that became your caphe sua da does it make much difference if the Americans now popularise the latte?

When I first worked here, less than a decade ago, women just didn’t drink coffee.  Now I watch my two fellow comms team members arrive at work clutching takeouts. If coffee was a culture it’s now become a craze.

Recently I noticed the bizarre, if very sweet, The Note Coffee appear by the lake in the centre of town.  Beyond the provision of very decent coffee it also has a baffling post-it note subtext.  Providing coffee is old hat, you have to have a gimmick too.

But in Hanoi it’s not just about the number of places you can buy coffee but also the different types.  Italian espresso, egg coffee, yoghurt coffee, sticky rice coffee, fair trade and the ubiquitous caphe sua da. Frankly the fact that the world is going nuts for coffee is good news for Vietnam rather than the other way around. There can be few other places offering such a diverse array of the stuff. On a lovely day, when you can sit outside at pavement cafes, Hanoi is a like a gaint caffeine theme park.

Starbucks will settle into Vietnam in much the same way as McDonalds and Subway fade into the food scene in KL.  There was such a massive diversity of food there that the big American brands became another layer amongst many. In the end they’ll only remain if they’re wanted.

So I doubt it’s bad news for The Cart, or Cong Caphe or Oribberry.  Possibly worrying for Highlands and the lesser Starbucks clones of Gloria Jean’s and the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf.

At Christmas, alongside a 30 kilo coffee machine, myself and my wife also carried back a huge box of takeout coffee cups (decent ones with lids and ripple walls). To buy such a thing in Hanoi would mean ordering 30,000 of the things that would fill half our house – takeout coffee culture is growing but obviously in its infancy.

That said, when my wife set up The Cart a few years back, the desire to do a half decent espresso meant they opted for Italian beans.  But the quality and diversity of Vietnamese coffee continues to grow and that may change in the not too distant future.

Starbucks won’t fail but I don’t think it will kill the coffee scene either. If anything it’s all about to get even more interesting.