2026.03.27
Vietnam's F&B (food and beverage) market surpassed about VND 688.8 trillion (about USD 27.3 billion) in 2024, recording strong growth of 16.6% year on year. It is projected to reach about USD 27.4 billion in 2026, with some forecasts putting it at USD 36.9 billion by 2027 (CAGR 9.7%).
On the numbers alone, this looks like a "huge opportunity." But looking squarely at what is happening in this market right now reveals a picture that is far from optimistic for Japanese food and beverage companies.
The brands pushing most aggressively into Vietnam's F&B market are Chinese. Mixue Ice Cream & Tea already operates 1,304 stores across Vietnam, making it the country's largest fresh beverage brand. It is Mixue's second-largest overseas market after Indonesia's 2,667 stores.
At Mixue Vietnam's franchisee conference held in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi in November 2025, about 700 prospective franchisees gathered, and 93 new store contracts were signed on the spot. If the word "invasion" sounds like an exaggeration, compare it against this figure: Japanese brands have only entered Vietnam with 19 brands in total, nationwide.
Luckin Coffee is also accelerating its expansion into Southeast Asia, and entry into Vietnam, following Singapore and Malaysia, is becoming a real possibility. What characterizes the Chinese players is a three-part model: low prices, rapid rollout, and a digital-native approach.
A view often heard from people at Japanese companies is that "Chinese brands are low quality, so even if they sell well in the short term, they won't last." But I think this optimism is dangerous. The advantage of Chinese brands is not built on low quality — it rests on structural strength.
1. Cost Advantage: A single Mixue ice cream cone costs about VND 10 thousand (about 60 yen), less than one-tenth of an equivalent item at Starbucks. This price is not a case of "cheap and low quality" — it is achieved through low-cost raw material sourcing from China and an automated operating system. Vietnam's Gen Z (about 34% of the total population) is highly price-sensitive, and their loyalty to brands that are "tasty and cheap" is stronger than one might expect.
2. Speed of Digital Adoption: Chinese brands are native users of platforms such as TikTok and Zalo. Having come through fierce competition at home, they have accumulated overwhelming know-how in digital marketing and live commerce. as detailed in Vietnam's TikTok usage, in today's Vietnamese market, a brand that doesn't go viral on TikTok is close to "invisible."
3. Flexibility in Franchise Expansion: Chinese brands are proactive about delegating authority to local owners, keeping decision cycles short. Local partners can act without going through fine-grained approvals from headquarters. It is not unusual for these brands to expand to tens or hundreds of stores within one to two years of entering the Vietnamese market.
In a 2025 survey of Japanese companies operating in Vietnam, JETRO found that 30.8% cited "Chinese companies as a major competitor" — a sharp rise from 24.6% the previous year. This figure covers all industries, but in the F&B sector, which consumers encounter every day, the impact is even more direct.
The same survey also found that 48.2% of companies said "hiring has become difficult," citing competition for talent with Chinese companies as a main cause. Chinese companies offer competitive salaries to local talent and are actively hiring staff fluent in Vietnamese, English, and Chinese.
This is not limited to the F&B market, but for F&B companies it means competition with Chinese companies has begun on two fronts at once: market share and talent acquisition.
Only about 19 Japanese franchise brands currently operate in Vietnam's F&B market. Chateraise (sweets) and Hachiban Ramen are among the leading names. In 2025, Nisshin Seifun Welna (part of the Nisshin Seifun Group) expanded its products into 2,500 stores, and its presence in the ingredients and raw materials space is steadily growing.
Overall, though, when looking at franchise and restaurant chains as the axis, Japanese brands' share of the Vietnamese market is small compared with Singaporean (about 27% of the market), South Korean, and Chinese brands.
Why has Japanese expansion lagged? The reason is that "commitment to quality," which looks like a virtue on the surface, comes as a trade-off against speed, cost, and flexibility.
Trying Too Hard to Protect the Brand's "Soul": Japanese restaurant and food companies tend strongly to align quality standards, operations, and taste recipes with home-country benchmarks. They are cautious about delegating authority to franchise partners, which significantly slows down the pace of expansion. While a Chinese brand builds 300 stores in two years, a Japanese brand may take five years to reach 30.
Pricing That Is Out of Step With Consumers: as detailed in Vietnam's Gen Z strategy, pushing the logic that "Japanese quality equals high price," without understanding young consumers' purchasing power and values, risks losing the target audience.
Going head-to-head with the Chinese brands' low-price, high-speed model is not a wise move. The strength of Japanese brands lies in an image of "clean, safe, authentic Japan," and the challenge is to solve the speed and cost problems while making the most of that.
Flagship stores should protect brand value by emphasizing the authenticity of a genuine Japanese experience. At the same time, design a simpler product line as a "mass-market version," under a separate brand or line name, that can be rolled out through local franchising. Chateraise is a leading example of this direction — delivering Japanese-quality Western confectionery to the middle class in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, while building presence through youth-targeted marketing on TikTok.
One of the advantages Japanese brands hold in Vietnam is an image of "clean, healthy, and authentic." Leveraging this strength while developing locally adapted products using Vietnamese ingredients (coffee beans, kumquat, rice flour, and others) can create a unique position of "Japanese technique × Vietnamese ingredients."
For example, Vietnam's Café Culture"Japanese-style coffee made with Vietnamese-grown beans," combining that with Japan's precise roasting and blending techniques, could be a differentiator that Chinese brands lack. Product lines pairing it with condensed milk in a "Vietnamese style × Japanese quality" format are also worth considering.
Rather than outsourcing viral content, build a system where Vietnamese staff can create and post content as part of their daily work. What the Japanese F&B brands that use TikTok most effectively have in common is "delegating operational authority to local staff." A headquarters approval process does not fit TikTok's real-time speed. On Vietnamese TikTok, content such as "Japanese staff reacting with surprise at a local store" or "showing the transparency of Japanese-quality manufacturing processes" tends to earn high engagement.
The fundamental reason Chinese brands move fast is that local decision-making authority is large. Building a system where a local manager can decide on pricing, promotions, and franchise contracts can lift the pace of expansion by a full level. A decisive gap in market responsiveness opens up between Japanese companies, where "we'll check with headquarters" is the most common answer, and Chinese companies, where "we'll decide today" is the norm.
Food & Hospitality Vietnam 2026, held in Ho Chi Minh City on March 24-26, 2026, drew 400 exhibitors from 36 countries and an estimated 17,000 visiting buyers — once again demonstrating the international attention Vietnam's F&B market is drawing.
Over the next five years, this market is likely to polarize between "low-price, high-speed franchises from China" and "premium, experience-driven brands from Japan and Europe." The middle ground, squeezed between Chinese and South Korean brands, will find it harder to survive.
For Japanese companies, the question is not "whether to enter" but "at what position, and at what speed." Whether you feel it is "already too late" or "there's still time" upon learning that Mixue has 1,304 stores will determine the outcome of the next five years.
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