Coffee, Culture and Cars Combine at Chloé Cà Phê in Sacramento

All images courtesy of Chloé Cà Phê + Roastery.

With a Porsche or some other ritzy vintage car usually parked inside, a new coffee shop in Sacramento, California, called Chloé Cà Phê + Roastery is seeking to develop similar high-end appreciation for Vietnamese coffees. 

Located in Midtown, Chloé Cà Phê serves traditional espresso-based drinks alongside specialty drinks that incorporate traditional Vietnamese flavors. One example is the Shaken Phở Americano, which combines espresso with a house-made syrup steeped with charred cinnamon, cardamom and star anise.

The menu also showcases less common coffee types — such as fine robusta, THA1 and Liberica — as well as the progressive agricultural and post-harvest techniques being adopted by a new generation of Vietnamese coffee producers.

“These farmers and producers that we work with, they’re no-names, but that doesn’t mean they have bad product,” Chloé Cà Phê Co-Founder Charley Phung told Daily Coffee News. “There’s an explosion of specialty coffee happening in Vietnam in the last two or three years, and we’re working with the pioneers.”

Charley Phung with daughter Chloé.

Phung said that numerous producers within Chloé’s supply chain are multi-generational family farms in which the youngest generation has returned from universities overseas to implement more modern farming and post-harvest processing techniques, while expanding new frontiers of quality in Vietnamese coffee. 

Phung and his wife Crystal Huynh-Kim celebrated the grand opening of Chloé Cà Phê in March after previously running a mobile truck that served Vietnamese dumplings. The coffee brand is named after the couple’s daughter. 

Crystal Huynh-Kim with Chloé.

“We take her on the sourcing trips back to Vietnam so that she could see where I grew up and experience our culture. Chloé’s with us every step of the way,” said Phung. “For our dumpling business, we traveled a lot. There was a time last year where I was in Texas for seven weeks and I didn’t get to see her. When I came home, she didn’t recognize me. That really kind of broke my heart, where I was like, man, what am I doing all this for?”

Now firmly rooted in Sacramento, the couple added potted plants throughout the spacious shop to reflect the lush coffee landscapes of Vietnam. Tan pendant lamps recalling traditional Vietnamese nón lá hang from the exposed industrial ceiling. 

A massive Liberica tree.

Outside of coffee, Phung has worked in the automotive industry for Porsche, Audi and other companies. He continues as a brand strategy consultant for Porsche Vietnam while also seeking to elevate the appreciation of Vietnamese coffee to be on par with the high-performance, luxury-oriented cars.

“At one point my [Porsche] budget was $20 million a month for marketing, so I know how to spend money. But when it’s your money in your business, you have to spend it more wisely, right?” said Phung. “We have a $30,000 [La Marzocco] KB90, but the lights are from IKEA.”

Baristas in the shop use equipment installed on a 22-foot quartz bar on wheels and can be moved outside for events. Beneath the La Marzocco espresso machine, sinks and rinsers are three 20-gallon tanks refilled throughout the day with reverse-osmosis filtered water.

The system simplified both the buildout and permitting processes, dramatically lowering the costs of getting started, according to the company. 

“We want to see more people in coffee be able to get started without having to have a ton of money behind them,” said Phung. “We want to see a lot of people do well. Given the right knowledge or the right information, they could start a shop without having to plumb everything in so aggressively and having to wait for the city.”

Behind the 2,800-square-foot cafe is another 800-square-foot space dedicated to green coffee storage, with a Roest sample roaster and a cupping area. Phung drives more than an hour each week for production roasts on Loring machines at Bay Area CoRoasters in Berkeley.

Phung said Chloé Cà Phê sources and imports all of its green coffees directly, leveraging connections in the logistics industry Phung made through the Porsche Club of Vietnam. The company is also selling Vietnamese green coffees to other roasters. 

Phung said that within five years, he hopes to open a roastery within a much larger space. 

“We all grew up literally in poverty,” Phung said. “Where I was born, we had no electricity in my house. Our whole goal as people who’ve come from nothing is that we can show that Vietnam is in the modern era. We’re doing the best that we can to show that Vietnamese coffee belongs at that level.”

Chloé Cà Phê + Roastery is located at 2521 Jazz Alley in Sacramento. 

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