Trending Food Businesses in 2023

In the year Quy Mao 2023, the domestic market witnessed a trend in food businesses following social media trends with a variety of exotic dishes, mainly imported from abroad.

Upon their launch, these dishes created a craze with many young people crowding and queuing for hours to buy. Business owners quickly started selling these dishes to increase their revenue.

Roasted soil milk tea

Recently, roasted soil milk tea, originating from Yunnan, China, has been appearing heavily on social media in November 2023. Many milk tea shops in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City quickly jumped on the trend to serve this drink. Some even opened new shops solely dedicated to this drink.

During the trend’s peak, the shops sold around 150-180 cups of roasted soil milk tea daily, but now it has decreased to only a few dozen cups per day.

The main ingredients for making milk tea are various herbal leaves such as jasmine, orange, mulberry, osmanthus, blue butterfly pea, longan, caterpillar fungus, medlar, red apple, chrysanthemum, and rose… imported from China.

Salted coffee

Salted coffee was the first trend in 2023, originating from Hue and having been around for nearly 10 years.

At that time, mobile coffee shops selling only salted coffee and selling 200-300 cups per day appeared on major roads such as Pham Van Dong (Thu Duc District) and No Trang Long (Binh Thanh District). Coffee shops in Ho Chi Minh City also added this item to their menu.

Salted coffee is made by adding salted cream on top of milk coffee. The salty, creamy layer enhances the taste of the coffee. Each cup of salted coffee costs around 20,000-25,000 VND.

The most famous at that time was Salted Coffee Chu Long, a man who started his business and unexpectedly succeeded in his twilight years. However, there were still mixed opinions about Chu Long and the actual owner behind this coffee chain.

Chicken and bamboo shoot salad

Chicken and bamboo shoot salad is a long-standing specialty in Lai Thieu (Binh Duong) that unexpectedly went viral on social media in April 2023, coinciding with the bamboo shoot season (from April to June), quickly creating a food trend.

Out of curiosity, many people rode motorcycles, and even hired taxis, to travel tens of kilometers from Ho Chi Minh City to Binh Duong just to taste this dish.

At that time, the price of fresh green bamboo shoots increased to 100,000-130,000 VND/kg, while peeled bamboo shoots reached 500,000-650,000 VND/kg.

A portion of chicken and bamboo shoot salad for 2-3 people cost 230,000 VND, and for 3-4 people cost 320,000 VND.

However, this dish has been forgotten and no longer appears on the menu of the restaurants that used to serve it.

Soursop tea

Also in April, soursop tea caused a buzz among many diners, especially on major roads such as Quang Trung (Go Vap District), Pham Van Dong (Binh Thanh District), and Phan Dang Luu (Phu Nhuan District). Young people crowded and queued to buy this drink.

Notably, many young people braved the sun, rode motorcycles from Ho Chi Minh City to Long An just to buy soursop tea from a popular TikToker named “Vy Anh”. At that time, each cup was sold for 20,000 – 35,000 VND.

Korean cheese ball cakes

In August, the trend of Korean cheese ball cakes flourished. Over 10 mobile vans appeared on major roads such as Phan Van Tri (Go Vap District), Vinh Hoi Street (District 4), and Ho Tung Mau Street (District 1).

In addition, some large supermarkets like E-Mart (Go Vap District, Thu Duc City) also sold these cakes and attracted long queues of customers waiting to buy them.

Korean cheese ball cakes are a popular snack originating from Korea. The cakes have a diameter of about 10cm, a golden crust with patterns mimicking a 10 won coin, an eggy cheesy flavor, and a stretchy cheese filling that can be pulled for meters when heated.

In Vietnam, these cakes are sold for around 35,000 VND each. At the peak of the trend, many places could sell from 1,000 to 2,000 cakes per day, earning 3-5 million VND in just a few hours.

Hand-squeezed lemon tea

After the Korean cheese ball cake trend died down, hand-squeezed lemon tea, which originated from China, was introduced to Vietnam and first appeared in Hanoi before spreading to Ho Chi Minh City. The tea recipe is quite simple, using basic ingredients such as tea, fresh lemon, sugar, and ice…

According to the business owners, the lemons used for this drink are Guangdong lemons (China), which have a fragrant aroma and less water content compared to Vietnamese lemons, also known as perfume lemons.

Instead of squeezing the lemons like oranges, the sellers mix the lemons with ice and then squeeze them by hand using a plastic pestle to extract the fragrant essential oils for the tea.

A glass of hand-squeezed lemon tea costs 25,000 VND, and during the height of the trend, mobile shops and stalls sold an average of 400-500 glasses per day.

Which trends are still present?

According to observations, most trends only peak for 1-2 months before fading away. The mobile shops selling trendy products on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City also quickly disappear, except for salted coffee, which is still “alive” in the food market.

Hoang Tung, an expert in the F&B industry, states that the trend-based dishes imported from abroad to Vietnam have not met the 7 criteria of a food item, such as price, packaging, repeat frequency, coverage… so it’s understandable that they disappear from the food market.