Milano Coffee

Opening a Café on Your Front Porch? How Milano Coffee Vietnam Scaled to 2,500 Stores with ZERO Liabilities and ZERO Royalties. Founded by Vietnamese entrepreneur Lê Minh Cường in 1996, he entered the coffee business selling coffee beans B2B in HCMC. In 2011, he opened his first store in the Gò Vấp District of HCMC and sold pure drip coffee for $0.60 per cup. It was so successful that customers began asking how they could open a shop. With a startup cost of $4,000. Local franchisees usually converted their homes into cafés (to pay $0 rent), while Cường provided all the equipment and beans. PE firm Maestro Equity Partners invested in Milano Coffee and scaled them to 2,500 stores, streamlined their B2B processes and built a 2,000-metric-ton annual roasting plant. Today the Milano Coffee remains the Largest Coffee Chain by Store Count with Stores Across All Provinces in Vietnam.