Today we’d like to introduce you to Anh Bao.
Hi Anh, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
My family and I moved to America from Vietnam in 2005. I was 11 which is such a fortunate age to be exposed to the culture shock I experienced when I first moved here. I was fully immersed in a whole new world while hanging tight to my Vietnamese roots. I’ve been in the service industry pretty much all my life. From working at my family’s coffee shop in Da Lat, Vietnam to opening my own now. Coffee in Vietnam is very much less about grab and go like most shops here in America, coffee is deeply ingrained into Vietnamese culture as a social aspect. Coffee shops in Vietnam is commonly opened very late into the day, as these shops are often mediums for friends, coworkers, business talks, couples etc
If you’re in Saigon, you see several coffee shops on each block. We just want to emulate the Vietnamese cafe experience here in Austin. We try to be as authentic as we can to Vietnamese coffee.
Both of our robsuta and arabica is sourced directly from Lam Dong.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Definitely not a smooth road. I expected a challenge opening this shop but I grossly underestimated the hoops we had to jump through.
We were paying rent for several months due to construction delays.
Unexpected tariffs causing price increases that we didn’t account for.
Matcha suppliers stopped selling to us because of the exponential increase in demand for matcha.
Definitely such a stressful experience trying piece everything together while it felt like everything was working against you.
Not to mention just small micro problems popping up along the way, our A/C went down at one point unexpectedly, our brand fridge gave out couple days before open.
I still have PTSD from those months haha
As you know, we’re big fans of đậm coffee bar. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
đậm means strong/bold/flavorful in Vietnamese, typically to describe a coffee.
We are a modern Vietnamese style cafe specializing in Vietnamese coffees and matcha.
We are so proud of our most prized possessions which is our robusta bean and arabica that are sourced directly from Lam Dong. We are so so proud to be located here in Central Austin and having the opportunity to showcase the Vietnamese cafe culture to this beautiful city.
Our coffee is strong, the matcha is bold, the jasmine green tea is sourced directly from Vietnam as well.
Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
Unapologetically vietnamese.
We actually reached out to a local cafe in Saigon asking them to let us work in their cafe, free of charge, just so we can really grasp what day to day feels like in a Saigon cafe. We learned how the locals drank and what they expected from a local cafe.
One of the hardest challenge for us was adapting to Americans’ expectations while trying to stay authentic.
We quickly realized that Vietnamese coffee at its core, is not a big drink due to its caffeine strength. As Americans are so used to big 20 oz lattes, we knew it was going to be a challenge serving something so small, and at the beginning we did get a push back as to why our drinks, to America’s standard, was not big enough.
But in order to stay authentic, we had to stay true to what we know is authentic.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: damcoffeebar
- TikTok: @robustapapi
