Vietnamese Iced Coffee Is the Drink of Summer—and Beyond
Three West Coast entrepreneurs are modernizing the rich, frosty favorite in surprising and delicious ways.
Thomas J. Story
Vietnamese iced coffee (cà phê sữa đá) is everything you’d want in a summer drink. Made with strong coffee and sweetened condensed milk served over ice, it’s roasty, fortifying, creamy, refreshing, and unforgettable. While it’s everywhere in its home country, in the United States it’s never quite gone mainstream. But a trio of California companies is looking to flip that on its head, with a focus on high-quality ingredients, modern brewing methods, and adaptations to American ways of coffee-drinking.
“I want a Vietnamese coffee that I could sell in Whole Foods” is how Debbie Wei Mullin recalls the beginnings of her company, Copper Cow Coffee. “It has to be organic, it has to be no chemicals or artificial ingredients. And people laughed at me—they were like, ‘That doesn’t exist.’” That spurred Mullin, a former World Bank consultant, into action: She found a co-op in Vietnam’s Dalat region growing organic Robusta beans and began producing condensed milk with dairy from California cows. Mullin bypassed the phín—Vietnam’s traditional mug-top metal filter—in favor of one-cup pour-over packets and put the condensed milk in single-serving tubes (way less messy than a can).
