Customers at the first The Coffee House Signature store, which opened recently in HCM City. — VNS Photo Thu Ngan

The Coffee House, a Vietnamese-owned café chain, on Thursday announced plans to open its first store outside Viet Nam this year.

Many markets are under company’s consideration, but the first should be China or Indonesia, the company said.

Vo Duy Phu, the company’s marketing director, explained the choice by saying the Chinese market is rather similar to the Vietnamese one.

Expanding abroad is a means for the company to achieve its target of taking Vietnamese coffee to the world.

The Coffee House on Thursday also announced that it has started brewing the Arabica coffee it began to plant in Viet Nam three years ago at all its stores.

It recently opened the first The Coffee House Signature outlet in HCM City’s District 1.

According to CEO Nguyen Hai Ninh, the company now has a 33ha farm in Da Lat with a capacity of around 200 tonnes per year.

The yield should be 250 tonnes this year and jump to 400 tonnes by 2019, he said.

In future the company plans to grow many high-quality Vietnamese and global coffee varieties, he said.

Coffee House grew strongly last year and now has a total of 80 stores nation-wide that serve over 40,000 customers a day.

Last November it opened six Ten Ren’s Tea stores under a franchise agreement.

Earlier this year the company acquired the coffee business of Cau Dat Farm. — VNS