Thái Mậu Group / Cơm Gà Đông Nguyên

Overview

Cơm Gà Đông Nguyên enters its 80th year, having started as a small roadside eatery. After a long period of investment in modern equipment, it moved into a growth phase and replicated into a chain: Cơm Gà Đông Nguyên - Phú Mỹ Hưng, DONDON - Thiso Mall and Parc Mall.

Context & challenge

When you replicate a traditional Chinese-style chicken-rice model across many outlets, the hardest problem is no longer taste or price - both already set by the original recipe - but consistency. Consistency of food quality across branches, of the service experience, and even visual consistency: space, identity, layout. One off-key store can make the whole brand look unprofessional. The faster the model expands, the greater the pressure to keep every touchpoint “identical as one.”

That challenge landed just as the domestic F&B market entered one of its harshest shake-outs in years. In the first half of 2025 alone, more than 50,000 food-and-beverage outlets nationwide closed, cutting the national store count by about 7.1% versus end-2024, to around 299,900. In the two engines, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, the drop even exceeded 11%. Earlier, a 2024 survey showed nearly 60% of outlets reported falling revenue, with only about 25.5% holding steady.

Pressure came from every side: consumer spending recovered slowly, people dined out less often, while operating costs climbed - electricity, water and materials alone rose 5.73%, and food prices over 4%. Many brands, even well-resourced names, had to shrink or exit the market.

Amid all that, the task grew even thornier. The team had to standardize and scale a model demanding great precision - and do it right in the middle of a downturn, when nearly every store's revenue was under pressure and margins kept thinning.

What I did

• Reviewed all sales and customer data from the last 2-3 years to find growth levers.
• Redesigned Cơm Gà Đông Nguyên's brand identity to reach younger and international customers.
• Revised and retrained processes and the in-store customer experience.

Results

• Chain-wide growth of 15% versus the same period in 2024.
• Launched a new brand, Tiệm Mì Đông Hỷ, that made waves on social media and in the Chinese-food community.
• Drew a large wave of young and new customers, and notably tourists from Japan and Taiwan.