KUALA LUMPUR (Oct 7): Scalability and consistency remain key challenges for many F&B franchises, making it crucial to carve out a niche, says Radius Khor, co-founder and managing director of Kee Nguyen Vietnam Coffee.

“Everyone keeps thinking coffee is coffee. But for us, our business is Vietnamese coffee; we are still running in our own niche Vietnamese coffee lane. Instead of competing with other coffee shops, I see it as building a community of coffee drinkers,” he said during the panel session titled The Growth Engine: Turning Unique Concepts into Market Leaders at the Alliance Bank BizSmart Business Conference 2025, held on Tuesday (Oct 7). 

Having a niche proved pivotal for Kee Nguyen, which started their journey by selling coffee out of a car boot when it was on the verge of shutting down.

Khor and his business partner soon discovered that the Malaysian market strongly favoured a flavour profile that was both strong and sweet, which is a hallmark of Vietnamese coffee that “really hit the taste buds” of local consumers.

“When we first went viral on Twitter back in 2020, we were only selling about five cups a day. That single viral moment brought us back to life,” said Khor, describing it as an overnight success.

Although there were challenges in the beginning, Khor said the team managed to emulate the essence of Vietnamese coffee while tailoring it to Malaysian taste buds.

“We then realised Malaysians really love this particular coffee. What we offer here in Malaysia now is exactly what my co-founder and I experienced in Vietnam; we just brought it back here and copy-pasted,” he said.

Additionally, Khor explained that Kee Nguyen operates as a coffee machine-less brand. At its outlets, customers will not find traditional coffee machines. Instead, the company’s specific grinding method performs about 70% of the complex brewing process in advance, leaving only 30% of the preparation to be completed on-site.

“This approach allows us to maintain strong quality control remotely; the margin for error at the outlets is very small,” he said. 

“It’s a model that works perfectly for licensing and franchising and it’s every franchisee’s dream because preparing our coffee is as simple as making a cup of Milo.”