Highlands Coffee: One Change, 16 Billion VND Saved
- Hieu Do
- Aug 13
- 5 min read
Updated: Aug 19
Introduction: Why This Story Matters in 2025
The F&B industry in Vietnam has been riding turbulent waves in recent years.
By 2025, rising rental cost, raw materials, labor cost, delivery platform commissions and intense competition have forced many restaurant and café owners to decline their margin from 22% - 7% of revenue (report by InsightAsia).
For small and medium-sized F&B businesses (SMEs), every penny counts.
Amid these challenges, a fascinating case from Highlands Coffee shows how a tiny, almost invisible operational tweak can translate into massive financial impact — without cutting quality or hurting the customer experience.
If you’re running an F&B SME, this is a lesson you can’t afford to miss.
Reference: Vietnambiz
Highlands Coffee Story: One Change, 16 Billion VND Saved
Highlands Coffee was founded in 1999 in Hanoi by Vietnamese-American entrepreneur David Thai — and has since grown into one of the largest F&B chains in Southeast Asia. Today, it operates nearly 700 stores in Vietnam and over 50 locations in the Philippines, supported by its own large-scale roasting and production facility.
As part of its ongoing efforts to streamline operations and optimise costs, Highlands Coffee introduced a small but effective change: it simplified its cup design, replacing a 4-color printed logo with a single-color version.
The new logo still retains the brand’s key visual elements — two concentric ovals and the three symbols of mountains, plains and river — but follows a more minimal and modern design. The previous colour scheme (red, coffee brown and earthy brown) was reduced to a single red tone on a transparent background.
This seemingly minor change reduced printing costs by around 100 VND per cup, which — across 600+ stores and daily sales of 500–800 cups per store — translates into an estimated annual saving of 16,000,000,000 VND (~$640,000 USD).
The most impressive part?
Brand recognition remained intact. Customers still instantly recognised Highlands’ cups — and the experience of drinking their coffee didn’t change one bit.
Why This Matters for F&B SMEs
Highlands Coffee is a giant in Vietnam’s café scene, but the principle behind their savings applies perfectly to smaller businesses — perhaps even more so.
Here’s why:
1. Small savings compound over time
Cutting 100 VND from a single cup seems negligible.
But when multiplied by tens or hundreds of thousands of units, the savings become life-changing for a small business.
For SMEs with smaller scale, a “100 VND saving” could still amount to tens of millions of VND annually — enough to fund new equipment, marketing, or staff training.
2. Optimization beats cost-cutting that hurts quality
Highlands didn’t make their coffee smaller, cheaper, or lower quality.
They optimized the back-end process — keeping the customer value untouched while reducing waste in operations.
For F&B SMEs, this is critical: you can’t compete by making your product worse; you win by making your processes smarter.
3. Continuous improvement is a survival strategy
Instead of waiting for one big breakthrough (e.g., relocating, completely changing the menu), SMEs can adopt a continuous improvement mindset—regularly auditing micro-costs such as packaging, energy use, portion sizes, and supplier terms.
Over time, a series of small, consistent optimizations often delivers greater total savings and efficiency gains than a single drastic change.
This mindset is relevant not only in F&B but in any organization striving for high performance.
How to Apply the Highlands Method to Your F&B Business
As a CEO or founder of an F&B SME, you can’t just copy Highlands’ exact move — your cups, brand, and suppliers may be different. But you can apply their thinking process:
Step 1: Identify high-volume, low-value processes
Ask yourself:
What do I purchase or use in huge quantities?
Does each unit carry a small cost that might be reduced without affecting quality?
Examples:
Packaging: cups, lids, straws, boxes, napkins
Consumables: sauces, seasonings, garnish items
Utilities: electricity for signage, refrigeration scheduling
Step 2: Calculate the per-unit saving
Don’t underestimate small numbers.
Even 50–100 VND saved per item could add up to millions per month.
Example calculation:500 cups/day × 30 days × 100 VND saved = 1.5 million VND/month→ Over 12 months = 18 million VND/year from one small tweak.
Step 3: Test before full rollout
Do a small pilot at one or two locations.
Measure customer feedback — is the change noticeable? Does it affect experience?
If there’s no negative impact, roll it out chain-wide.
Step 4: Build a “cost optimization culture”
Make it part of your team’s mindset to spot waste and inefficiency.
Reward staff for ideas that save money without hurting the brand.
Review suppliers annually to renegotiate terms or explore more efficient materials.
Final thoughts
Some SMEs focus solely on growing revenue, while overlooking gradual cost leakage in their day-to-day operations. In reality, if operational inefficiencies remain unaddressed, higher revenue may simply scale up the waste.
The Highlands Coffee example shows that proactive operational adjustments — even small ones — can generate significant savings, regardless of market conditions.
In the current F&B climate, consistently identifying and acting on these opportunities can become a real competitive advantage.
If you’re exploring similar improvements, here are a few F&B cost-optimization moves to consider:
Switch to seasonal menus – Reduce food waste by stocking only what’s in season and in demand.
Bulk purchase with neighbouring businesses – Combine supplier orders with nearby operators to access wholesale pricing.
Conduct energy audits – Turn off unused equipment during off-peak hours and transition to energy-efficient lighting (e.g., LED).
Offer reusable packaging incentives – Encourage customers to bring their own cups/containers by offering small discounts.
Upskill your staff – Regular training improves process efficiency, service consistency and on-site problem solving.
Your “100 VND per Cup” Awaits
You might not sell 160 million cups a year like Highlands Coffee, but you absolutely have a version of their “100 VND per cup” in your business.
The question is: will you find it and fix it before your competitors do?
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Founded in 2024, SOSP Consulting Group is a research-backed Operations Consulting firm that helps businesses in Vietnam streamline processes, optimize costs, and scale with confidence. We deliver process improvement projects for key business stages:
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