The Vietnam F&B market in 2026: how big it is, who already wins it, and what a foreign chain should read first

Most entry decks for a restaurant, café or drinks chain in Vietnam carry a market-size slide. It usually shows one large figure in dong or dollars, a growth rate, and a source in small type. The figure differs from deck to deck, often by more than the revenue a new entrant could hope to reach in five years.

That gap is not an error in any one deck. Vietnam’s food-service market is measured by at least three different bodies, each counting something different. This piece sets out what each figure measures, what the market looks like underneath the total, and which numbers a foreign chain should actually build its plan on.

A note on scope: F&B here means eating and drinking out, in restaurants, cafés, street stalls and through delivery apps. Packaged food and drinks sold in shops are a different market with different trackers, covered in the Vietnam FMCG market.

How big is Vietnam’s F&B market? Three answers for 2025

At a round VND 26,000 to the dollar, the three figures run from about US$26 billion to about US$32 billion. All three are quoted correctly in someone’s deck. They are not three estimates of the same thing.

The statistics office figure is the largest because it includes hotels and other accommodation in a single line; its published tables do not separate the two. It made up 12.0% of total retail sales of goods and consumer services in 2025.

The iPOS.vn figure comes from an annual report produced with Nestlé Professional, with data reviewed by the research firm VIRAC. It counts about 329,500 food-service outlets in 2025, up 2.0% on the year before, and is the only one of the three that publishes an outlet count alongside revenue.

The Euromonitor figure comes from its “Consumer Foodservice in Vietnam” report, released in March 2026. Euromonitor’s own pages were not accessible for this article; the figure is quoted from the summary published by its authorised reseller.

Why the growth rates disagree

The bigger difference is in the growth rates. The statistics office reported accommodation and food services revenue up 14.6% in 2025, and up 16.7% in the first nine months of 2026, with the third quarter alone up 19.4%. The iPOS.vn survey shows food service up 5.5% in 2025 and 6.55% in the first half of 2026.

Three things explain most of the gap:

• Accommodation. The official line includes hotels. In the first nine months of 2026, the fastest growth was in Da Nang (21.7%), Quang Ninh, Khanh Hoa and Hue, all above 20%: places where tourism does much of the work.
• Prices. The official figures are at current prices. Eating out of home was one of the faster-rising items in the consumer price index in 2025, up 3.81%.
• Method. The official series adds up reported revenue; the iPOS.vn report surveys operators. A survey of outlet owners in a market where most outlets are small is better at describing operators than at measuring a total.

Even within one series, check before splicing. iPOS.vn’s first-half 2025 release reported more than 50,000 outlets closing and the count down 7.1% on 2024; its full-year release for the same year reports the count up 2.0%. The two releases are not reconciled in public. Use growth rates from one release at a time, and never subtract one source from another to estimate a segment.

A market of independents

Underneath every total is the same structure: a very large number of small operators. In the iPOS.vn report for 2025, as reported by Bao Dau Tu, independent outlets took 91.7% of food-service revenue and chains 8.3%, up from about 7.3% a year earlier. The outlet count barely moved: about 329,500 at the end of 2025 and about 329,200 in the first half of 2026, while revenue in that half rose 6.55% to VND 432.7 trillion.

Growth was uneven. About 43% of outlets surveyed for the first half of 2026 reported lower revenue than a year earlier. Food outlets did better than drinks outlets: 25.64% of food outlets grew, against 15.82% of drinks outlets.

Chains are a small share of revenue, but they are not small. In fast food, Q&Me counted 1,022 outlets in 2025, up nearly 12%, led by Lotteria with 222 and Jollibee with 213, followed by KFC with 172 and Pizza Hut with 118. The report noted that the two leaders grew outside Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi.

For a foreign chain, this structure matters in two ways. The competition for a given meal is mostly an independent shop with low costs and a loyal neighbourhood. And the chains that already operate at scale have spent years building supply, sites and brand in the provinces as well as the two largest cities.

Coffee and tea: the most crowded counter

If there is one category where foreign brands should expect to arrive late, it is coffee and tea. Momentum Works’ “Coffee and Tea Chains in Southeast Asia 2026” report, as reported by VnExpress International and Viet Nam News in March 2026, put Vietnam’s chain market at about US$1.34 billion in 2025: about US$725 million in coffee chains and US$617 million in tea chains, the third largest in the region.

The leaders are domestic or long established:

Starbucks reached 150 stores more than a decade after opening its first in Ho Chi Minh City. Café Amazon, Thailand’s largest coffee chain, closed all 12 of its Vietnam outlets in November 2025 after five years.

The price structure is also visible in the data. In the iPOS.vn report for 2025, drinks costing VND 35,000 or more accounted for 57.58% of drinks spending, and in the first half of 2026 the share of diners spending less than that per drink fell from 41.64% to 29.44%. The report reads this as diners paying for space and experience, which is what most foreign chains sell. They are already buying it from someone.

Delivery apps: a two-platform market

Momentum Works estimated Vietnam’s food delivery GMV at about US$2.1 billion in 2025, up 19%, with ShopeeFood and GrabFood holding about 48% each and beFood about 4%, according to VietnamFinance’s report of the study. GMV here counts only orders completed through the apps. A NielsenIQ survey of one week in April 2025 measured something else, the share of orders, and found ShopeeFood at 56%, GrabFood 36% and beFood 8%. Both can be right if ShopeeFood’s orders are smaller on average.

Two points matter more than the shares.

The cost of the channel is not published. We found no standard commission rate for Vietnam published by any of the three platforms. Tuoi Tre reported in July 2025 that restaurants commonly complained of 20% to 30% per order, before advertising fees. That is what merchants say, not a rate card, and terms for a chain are negotiated. A plan should carry the negotiated rate, the advertising and voucher budget inside the app, and the order value after discounts as three separate lines.

Discovery is moving into the apps. Momentum Works’ regional report for 2025 describes food discovery becoming “content-led, voucher-driven and algorithmically curated”, inside the apps and on short-video platforms, and merchants becoming more dependent on the platforms as a result. A foreign chain launching on delivery is buying placement in a feed, not just a courier.

The rules that shape F&B marketing

Most F&B advertising in Vietnam follows the general advertising law, covered in Vietnam’s advertising law in 2026. Two specific rules matter for this category.

Food. Under Decree 15/2018/ND-CP, only certain foods need their advertising content registered before use: health supplements, medical and special-diet foods, and nutrition products for young children. Ordinary restaurant food does not. A replacement decree issued in 2026 was suspended, and Decree 15 remains in force until the amended food safety law takes effect.

Alcohol. The Law on Prevention and Control of Harmful Effects of Alcohol and Beer, in force since 2020, bans advertising of drinks of 15 degrees or more, and bans promotions for them. Beer and lower-strength wine may be advertised with limits: no radio or television advertising between 6pm and 9pm, no advertising in cultural or sports programmes, no outdoor advertising other than the seller’s own signboard, nothing aimed at people under 18, and, under the implementing decree, an age check before online content is shown. A bar, pub or restaurant concept built around spirits has to plan its marketing without advertising its main product.

A worked example: three launch channels, two ways of ranking them

The figures below are invented for illustration. They show why the cheapest way to get a first visit is not necessarily the cheapest way to get a customer who comes back.

A foreign café chain opens its first store in Ho Chi Minh City and spends on three channels in the first two months:

Ranked by cost per first order, the creator videos look worst, at twice the cost of delivery. Ranked by cost per returning customer, delivery is the most expensive channel, and that is before the per-order commission merchants report paying. The creator videos move from last to second.

Neither ranking is the final answer. The point is that the second one needs data the first does not: a way to recognise the same customer on a second visit, through a membership programme, an order account or a code, set up before the launch rather than after it.

What to check before putting a figure in an entry case

Before any of these numbers goes into a board paper, six questions settle what it can support:

• Does it include accommodation? The official series does.
• Is it a survey or a statistic? Surveys describe operators well and totals less well.
• Current prices or real? With eating out among the faster-rising price items, the difference is several points a year.
• Which cities? National totals blend the two largest cities with provinces where the chain may never open.
• Which price tier? A premium café competes for the part of drinks spending at VND 35,000 and above, not the whole market.
• Which channel? Dine-in, takeaway and delivery have different costs and different customers.

The number the plan needs is narrow: spending in the chain’s price tier, in the districts it will open in, through the channels it will use. That number is rarely published. It is usually built from the published totals, platform data and a small amount of primary research, for one product line at a time.

Where the figures in this article come from

• National Statistics Office, socio-economic reports for 2025 (5 January 2026) and the first nine months of 2026 (3 October 2026): accommodation and food services revenue, its share of retail sales, growth by city, and the consumer price index for eating out.
• iPOS.vn and Nestlé Professional, food-service market report (“Báo cáo thị trường Kinh doanh Ẩm thực tại Việt Nam”) for 2025 (8 April 2026) and for the first half of 2026 (9 September 2026), with data reviewed by VIRAC; first-half 2025 release (October 2025). Chain and independent shares as reported by Bao Dau Tu, April 2026.
• Euromonitor, “Consumer Foodservice in Vietnam” (March 2026), via its authorised reseller’s summary.
• Momentum Works, “Food Delivery Platforms in Southeast Asia” (January 2026), with Vietnam figures as reported by VietnamFinance; “Coffee and Tea Chains in Southeast Asia 2026” (March 2026), as reported by VnExpress International and Viet Nam News.
• NielsenIQ delivery survey (April 2025) and Starbucks’ 150th store, via Tuoi Tre News; delivery commissions, via Tuoi Tre (July 2025); fast-food outlets, Q&Me via The Investor (May 2025); Café Amazon, VnExpress International (November 2025).
• Jollibee Foods Corporation, second-quarter 2026 results; Masan, Phuc Long results via CafeF.
• Law 44/2019/QH14 on alcohol and beer, Decree 24/2020/ND-CP, and Decree 15/2018/ND-CP on food safety.

The figures in the worked example are illustrative.

Where this work stops

MWY does not choose sites, design menus, cost recipes, negotiate with suppliers or run advertising, and takes no commission from delivery platforms, agencies or anyone else.

Building the market figure for one product line, in its price tier and cities, is Vietnam Market Research. Turning it into an entry plan, with the order of channels, the delivery terms that govern promotion and a 90-day launch plan, is Go-to-Market Strategy. For the wider sequence of entry decisions, see Vietnam market entry.