Carré Express: A new Chapter for Café Carré

Within roughly one month we redesigned and adapted the spaces, built the operations, hired and trained the teams, tested products, organized suppliers and launched both locations. Honestly, we are still in the middle of refining everything. Menus are evolving, products are being adjusted, branding is still being updated and operations improve almost daily right now, but seeing both stores finally open last week still felt like a very proud moment for our team.

What became interesting throughout this process was that it forced us to think more clearly about what Café Carré actually is, and also what it is not.

Café Carré was never just about coffee. It was always about creating atmosphere, emotion and lifestyle. A short trip, depending on the location, to the inspirations from Paris to St. Tropez. Our own interpretation of European café culture, reimagined for Vietnam.

The idea was always to create places where people actually want to spend time. Long brunches, meetings, dates, working on a laptop for two hours, sitting outside in the sunlight drinking coffee or matcha, enjoying desserts, people watching, slowing down a little. That emotional and aspirational side is still very much the core of Café Carré.

But at the same time, we also started realizing over the past year that not every location, customer behavior or business opportunity should become a full Café Carré.

Someone grabbing a quick coffee, ordering delivery or buying a dessert during shopping behaves very differently from somebody spending two hours at a terrace café. Yet many hospitality brands try to force all those moments into one identical concept.
That usually creates confusion > Carré Express was born.

At the beginning of this year we started experimenting with smaller format kiosks in high traffic environments with more focused menus, compact operations and slightly more accessible pricing. We soft launched the idea through our Carré Express Kitchen first, which initially started as a delivery kitchen on Grab. That phase actually became very important because it allowed us to test products, portion sizes, pricing, packaging and customer demand before scaling into physical outlets.

Today the kitchen acts both as our delivery hub and as the operational backbone for the stores. This is where we freshly bake and prepare many of our products daily, from homemade sourdough bread and sandwiches to wraps, salads, açaí bowls, desserts and drinks. It is also where most of our R&D happens at the moment.

What makes Carré Express exciting for us is that it allows a completely different energy and customer experience without damaging what Café Carré stands for.

– Café Carré should feel emotional, escapist and lifestyle driven.
– Carré Express should feel faster, younger, more urban and more experimental.

Not like a cheaper Café Carré, but almost like another expression within the same universe.

The design language reflects that too. Café Carré is warmer, softer and calmer, while Carré Express is sharper, more graphic and slightly edgier with more stainless steel, aluminum and stronger visual elements. Operationally it is also a very different model because smaller format beverage and dessert concepts can potentially scale much faster with smaller footprints, lower staffing requirements and stronger repeat purchase behavior.

Strategically, this separation simply makes more sense to us long term.
Café Carré builds emotional brand value and identity.
Carré Express builds frequency, scalability and daily transactions.

And honestly, Vietnam feels like an incredibly exciting market for this right now. Café culture is deeply embedded here, aesthetic driven concepts perform well, younger consumers are extremely trend aware and delivery behavior is massive. At the same time, malls and retail environments increasingly want differentiated concepts instead of generic chain experiences.

We are also aware that concepts that look visually attractive can expand too quickly before the systems behind them are truly ready. So for us, the next 12 to 18 months are probably less about aggressive expansion and more about refining the foundation properly. Operations, staffing systems, procurement, quality control, margins, design modularity and consistency will matter far more than simply opening more stores quickly.

Seeing the first Carré Express locations operating after such a short turnaround felt incredibly rewarding. Very grateful to the team that made this happen and excited to keep building this ecosystem further.