Vietnam's ground-coffee standard sets a caffeine floor of 1.0% by mass, and the packets that Đắk Lắk prosecutors sent for testing in 2022 and 2023 came back between 0.0021% and 0.23% (Viện kiểm sát nhân dân tỉnh Đắk Lắk, 17 October 2023, checked 15 September 2026). The recipe the defendants described was 70% soybean, 10% corn and 20% coffee, with industrial butter, caramel colouring, salt, fish sauce and coffee flavouring added — and some batches with no coffee in them at all.
That is not the ordinary bag in a Ho Chi Minh City souvenir shop, and this article is not saying it is. It is the reason the question "who roasts this?" is worth asking at the shelf, because the label alone will not answer it, and because the country's coffee standards are voluntary documents rather than rules a shop has to meet.
Vietnam grows one of the world's largest coffee crops and grows it almost entirely as robusta, which our Hanoi article checks against USDA's production table. This one stays on the consumer side: what the law makes a packet tell you, what the grade words mean, what the geographical indications certify, and the sequence to run before you pay.
This guide covers packaged roasted and ground coffee bought in Vietnam. It does not cover café drinks, instant three-in-one mixes, or the import rules of your home country.
What must the label say?
Vietnamese label law fixes a short list of items that must appear on a packet of food, and the list is narrower than most buyers assume. Decree 43/2017/NĐ-CP as amended by Decree 111/2021/NĐ-CP requires the label of goods circulating in Vietnam to show, in Vietnamese: the name of the goods; the name and address of the organisation or individual responsible for the goods; the origin of the goods, or the place where the last processing stage was carried out if origin cannot be determined; and the further items set out in Annex I according to the type of goods. For thực phẩm — food — Annex I adds quantity, date of manufacture, expiry date, ingredients or quantitative ingredients and nutritional value, warning information, and instructions for use and storage (Nghị định 111/2021/NĐ-CP, signed 9 December 2021, effective 15 February 2022, checked 15 September 2026).
The table below takes that list one line at a time and separates the claim the law actually compels from the claim buyers read into it.
| What the law requires on the pack | What it tells you | What it does not tell you |
|---|---|---|
| Name and address of the responsible party | A contactable legal person who answers for this product | Whether that person owns a roaster, or bought the coffee finished |
| Origin of the goods (xuất xứ hàng hóa) | Where the goods originate, or where the last processing stage happened | Where the beans were grown, or in which province they were roasted |
| Ingredients (thành phần) | Which materials are declared to be in the bag | The true proportion of coffee unless a quantitative figure is given |
| Quantity (định lượng) | Net weight of the contents | Nothing about grade, species or roast |
| Date of manufacture and expiry date | When the producer says the pack was made | Whether the roast date and the packing date are the same day |
| Warnings, storage and use instructions | Handling the producer considers necessary | Any independently verified quality claim |
Two absences on that table are the point of the whole article. There is no legal requirement to name the roaster, and there is no legal requirement to state the robusta-to-arabica ratio. A brand can be a marketing company that commissions roasting elsewhere and comply fully, because the decree asks who is responsible, not who did the work.
What do the grade words mean?
Most of the words on a souvenir coffee bag are not defined by any Vietnamese national standard for roasted coffee. The two standards that govern what you are buying, TCVN 5250:2015 for roasted coffee and TCVN 5251:2015 for ground coffee, contain no grades, no cultivar names and no origin categories at all. The grade vocabulary that circulates on packaging belongs to the green-coffee standard, which stops at the point the beans are roasted.
| Term on the packaging | What it actually denotes | Standard or marketing |
|---|---|---|
| Robusta / Arabica (cà phê vối / cà phê chè) | Coffea canephora and Coffea arabica, the two species TCVN 4193:2014 keeps apart | Defined for green coffee only |
| "Grade 1", R1, A1, screen 18 | Green-coffee quality classes in TCVN 4193:2014, coded as species letter, grade number and screen number | A defined green-coffee class, not a roasted-coffee class |
| Cà phê rang | Roasted coffee under TCVN 5250:2015; sound beans, defects, fragments, moisture, ash, foreign matter | A defined standard with no caffeine test |
| Cà phê bột | Ground coffee under TCVN 5251:2015; caffeine not less than 1.0%, water-soluble extract not less than 25% | A defined standard with a compositional floor |
| Cà phê hòa tan nguyên chất | Pure instant coffee under TCVN 12459:2018, extracted from roasted beans by water alone | A defined standard with an authenticity reference |
| Moka, Culi, "chồn", "rang mộc" | Not defined in any of the four standards read for this article | Marketing |
TCVN 4193:2014 applies to green coffee, separates arabica from robusta, and sorts lots into Hạng 1, Hạng 2 and Hạng 3 using codes that combine a species letter, a grade number and a screen number — A1 18a and R1 18a are the first entries in its classification table. It was drafted by the agriculture ministry's processing department together with a commodity inspection company, and published by the Ministry of Science and Technology (TCVN 4193:2014, foreword and clause 4.1, checked 15 September 2026).
That standard matters to your bag in one specific way. TCVN 5250:2015 requires that the raw material for roasted coffee conform to TCVN 4193:2014, and TCVN 5251:2015 requires that the raw material for ground coffee conform to TCVN 5250:2015 (TCVN 5250:2015 clause 4.1 and TCVN 5251:2015 clause 4.1, both checked 15 September 2026). The chain runs green coffee to roasted coffee to ground coffee, and at every link the input is defined as coffee. What none of the three standards contains is a clause permitting, limiting or naming any additive. They are silent on butter, flavouring and colouring rather than allowing them.
The ground-coffee standard is the one with teeth. TCVN 5251:2015 sets fineness — not less than 30% by mass passing a 0.56 mm sieve and not more than 15% retained on a 0.25 mm sieve — moisture not more than 5.0%, caffeine not less than 1.0% by mass, water-soluble matter not less than 25% on a dry basis, and ash insoluble in hydrochloric acid not more than 0.2%. Caffeine is measured by HPLC under TCVN 9723:2013 (ISO 20481:2008). By contrast, TCVN 5250:2015 for roasted beans sets only sound beans at not less than 92%, defective beans not more than 5.0%, fragments not more than 3.0%, moisture not more than 5.0%, total ash not more than 5.0% and foreign matter not more than 0.3% — and no caffeine test whatsoever.
The pure instant standard goes furthest of the three. TCVN 12459:2018 defines cà phê hòa tan nguyên chất as a dry, water-soluble product extracted entirely from roasted coffee beans by physical means using water, and its normative references include TCVN 9702:2013 (ISO 24114:2011), Instant coffee — Criteria for authenticity (TCVN 12459:2018, clauses 2 and 3.2, checked 15 September 2026). A reproduction of its physico-chemical table gives caffeine of not less than 2.0% on a dry basis, free glucose of not more than 2.46% and total xylose of not more than 0.45% (Dữ liệu pháp lý reproduction of TCVN 12459:2018, checked 15 September 2026). Sugar markers of that kind exist precisely because cereals and sugars are the cheap way to bulk out soluble coffee.
Is the caffeine floor enforceable?
A Vietnamese national standard is not a law, and this is the single most useful thing to understand about the numbers above. Article 23 of the Law on Standards and Technical Regulations states it in one line: "Tiêu chuẩn được áp dụng trên nguyên tắc tự nguyện" — standards are applied on a voluntary basis — and a standard or part of one becomes mandatory only when a legal document or a technical regulation cites it (Luật 68/2006/QH11, Điều 23, in force 1 January 2007, checked 15 September 2026).
So a roaster in Ho Chi Minh City is not obliged to meet TCVN 5251:2015. What changes the position is the act of declaring. Decree 98/2020/NĐ-CP, signed 26 August 2020 and effective 15 October 2020, defines counterfeit goods to include goods with at least one quality indicator or basic technical characteristic reaching 70% or less of the minimum specified in the applicable technical regulation, or in the quality standard registered, declared or printed on the label and packaging (Nghị định 98/2020/NĐ-CP, Điều 3 khoản 7, checked 15 September 2026).
That is the mechanism the prosecutions run on. The Đắk Lắk procuracy's notice records that the seized packs "công bố có hàm lượng cafeine đạt tối thiểu 1%" — declared a caffeine content of at least 1% — on their packaging, and that laboratory examination returned 0.08% to 0.23%, more than 70% below the declared figure and below the standard, which under the regulations made them counterfeit goods.
What has actually been prosecuted?
Two official announcements name products and give measured results, and both are worth reading in full rather than paraphrased. The People's Procuracy of Đắk Lắk province published a crime-prevention recommendation on 17 October 2023 stating that between 1 January 2022 and 31 July 2023 provincial authorities took up six matters bearing signs of the offence of producing and trading counterfeit goods in the form of ground coffee; the provincial police investigation agency opened six cases against seven defendants under Article 193 of the Penal Code, the procuracy indicted two cases against three defendants, and courts tried two cases against three defendants, with seized goods valued at more than VND 3.5 billion.
The same notice sets out the detail. Packs branded Lozio coffee and Việt Hoàng coffee, produced in Hòa Khánh commune in Buôn Ma Thuột, declared ingredients including Arabica, Robusta, Moka and Catimor while the working mixture was soybean, industrial butter, caramel colouring chemicals, salt, fish sauce, coffee-aroma chemicals and a small quantity of real coffee beans; examination found caffeine of 0.08% to 0.23%. A separate consignment of Nhật Nguyên and Tân Nhật Nguyên packs, traced to a branch of Tân Vĩnh Kỳ Company Limited in Bình Chánh district in Ho Chi Minh City, declared caffeine of 1% to 2%, and testing returned 0.0021% to 0.11%.
The Ministry of Public Security published a second case on 6 February 2026. An Giang provincial police reported seizing, at a facility producing ground coffee labelled Văn Quý 7777, 79.5 kg of packaged product, 158 kg of roasted coffee and several tonnes of roasted and flavoured corn and soybean, along with 600 kg of sodium cyclamate sweetener and 1,260 kg of caramel colouring; testing by the provincial technical standards, metrology and quality centre detected no caffeine in the coffee samples, which the announcement states was sufficient basis to determine the product counterfeit (Bộ Công an, 6 February 2026, checked 15 September 2026). The facility operator admitted selling roughly 10 tonnes at VND 50–60 million per tonne.
Those brand names appear here because official announcements name them. They are not a statement about any other brand, and no aggregate figure exists for how much of the coffee on sale in Vietnam is adulterated. The Đắk Lắk procuracy's own framing is that state management of ground-coffee production had at times and in places not been effective, and that products of "some large, long-established brands in the province" had reached consumers — a sentence that names nobody and cannot be used to name anybody.
What do the coffee marks certify?
Vietnam protects coffee under geographical indications, and the Buôn Ma Thuột one is older and narrower than most shoppers expect. Green Buôn Ma Thuột coffee was registered as appellation of origin No. 00004 by Decision 806/QĐ-SHTT of 14 October 2005, converted into a geographical indication registration certificate by Decision 1575/QĐ-SHTT of 11 May 2020, and amended by Decision 939/QĐ-SHTT of 5 April 2021 (Cục Sở hữu trí tuệ, published 12 May 2021, checked 15 September 2026).
The 2021 amendment is the part that matters to a buyer. Until then the GI covered green coffee only; the office's notice records that the "aroma" and "taste" indicators were removed from the green-coffee specification because those characteristics only exist after roasting, and that roasted beans, ground coffee and pure instant coffee were added so that consumers could reach the product more easily. The specification quoted for roasted and ground Buôn Ma Thuột coffee is caffeine of 2.02% to 2.47% and total sugars of 1.16% to 3.28%; for pure instant, caffeine of 2.02% to 3.6%.
The geographical area is a named list of communes and wards rather than a province. The notice lists sixteen communes and wards in Buôn Ma Thuột city, seven in Buôn Hồ town, two in Buôn Đôn district and further districts beyond, all in Đắk Lắk. It also records local practice that forms part of the specification: only robusta is planted, shade trees must cover at least 20% of the plantation area, cherries are picked at not less than two-thirds ripeness, drying runs to a moisture content of about 12–12.5%, machine drying must not exceed 75°C, and roasting is carried out between 195°C and 225°C.
A second coffee GI is much newer. The Intellectual Property Office issued Decision 636/QĐ-SHTT on 10 October 2025 granting geographical indication registration certificate No. 00147 for Lâm Đồng coffee, managed by the province's Department of Agriculture and Environment, covering arabica and robusta as green beans, roasted beans and ground coffee (Cục Sở hữu trí tuệ, published 11 November 2025, checked 15 September 2026). The same office's listings show further coffee GIs for Mường Ảng and Khe Sanh.
Here is what a GI does not do. It certifies that a product meeting a published specification comes from a defined area; it does not certify that the company selling it roasted it, does not audit any individual roaster's day-to-day output, and does not attach to the words "Buôn Ma Thuột" printed decoratively on a bag by someone with no right to use the mark. A place name on packaging is a claim. The GI is a register behind that claim, and the two are not automatically connected.
Who publishes their own roasting?
Very few Vietnamese coffee companies publish anything that would let you verify they roast, because very few of them are listed and obliged to file. Vinacafé Biên Hòa is the clearest exception. Its 2024 annual report lists three production and branch sites the company operates — its head office and plant in Biên Hòa I Industrial Park in Đồng Nai, the Biên Hòa II Coffee Factory branch in Long Thành Industrial Park in Đồng Nai, and the MSI branch in Tân Đông Hiệp A Industrial Park in Bình Dương — and records its registered activity as the production of coffee, tea and food products, with quality systems named as FSSC and BRC (Vinacafé Biên Hòa, Báo cáo thường niên 2024, checked 16 September 2026). The same document records the company's history as a soluble-coffee manufacturer: a second plant with a design capacity of 800 tonnes of instant coffee a year completed around 2000, and a third at Long Thành with a capacity of 3,200 tonnes a year, begun on 15 December 2010 and running an instant-coffee line from the second quarter of 2013.
That is one company, and reading its filing tells you what it owns rather than what any given bag on a shelf contains. For most of the brands a visitor encounters in Ho Chi Minh City no comparable document exists, because they are privately held and publish no audited facility list. This article did not find a public register of licensed coffee roasters in Vietnam, and no official source located here allows a shopper to look up whether a named brand owns a roaster.
The absence is the finding. There is no consumer-facing lookup that resolves a Vietnamese coffee brand to a roasting facility, and the party named on the pack is the party the law makes responsible, not necessarily the party that applied the heat.
How do you check at the shelf?
Checking a bag of coffee in Ho Chi Minh City takes about a minute and needs nothing but your eyes and the printed label. Work in this order, because each step is cheap and the later ones only matter if the earlier ones pass.
- Turn the pack over and find the Vietnamese-language label. Decree 111/2021 requires the mandatory content in Vietnamese. An English-only tourist wrapper with no Vietnamese panel is a compliance gap before anything else is considered.
- Read the responsible party line. You are looking for a company name plus an address. Note that this is who answers for the product, not necessarily who roasted it, and that a brand with only a district-level address and no factory reference has told you nothing about production.
- Read the ingredient list, not the front of the pack. Under Annex I of the decree, food must declare ingredients. "100% cà phê" or "cà phê rang xay 100%" is a testable claim. A list that includes bơ (butter), hương liệu (flavouring), chất tạo màu (colouring) or caramel is a different product from the one the front panel is selling, and it is legal — but you now know what you are buying.
- Look for a caffeine figure. For ground coffee the national standard floor is 1.0% by mass. A declared figure gives regulators something to measure; no figure removes that hook entirely. This is the single most informative number a Vietnamese coffee pack can carry.
- Prefer whole bean where the choice exists. Roasted beans are visually verifiable in a way powder is not, and every prosecuted case in the official announcements read for this article involved cà phê bột — ground coffee — because ground product hides its inputs.
- Check whether a place name is a GI claim or decoration. If a pack says Buôn Ma Thuột or Lâm Đồng, the GI specification behind those names covers roasted beans and ground coffee and is administered provincially. Decoration carries no specification, and there is no consumer lookup that resolves the difference on the spot.
- Check the dates and the weight. Date of manufacture, expiry date and net quantity are all mandatory. A missing date is not a small omission; it is an item the decree lists.
Stop treating the shop as the credential and start treating the printed panel as the credential. A stall near Bến Thành, an airport duty-free shelf and a specialist roastery in District 1 are all bound by the same decree and all equally capable of selling an honestly labelled product or a poorly specified one. What separates them on the shelf is how much the label is willing to commit to.
Buy the pack that makes testable claims. A declared caffeine percentage, a full ingredient list, a named responsible party with a real address and a whole-bean format together give you four things a regulator or a court could act on. A pack with a mountain photograph, an English slogan and no numbers gives you none, and it is entirely legal.
And accept the version of the answer the evidence supports. Vietnam produces an enormous quantity of coffee, has standards that describe what roasted and ground coffee should be, and prosecutes people who sell soybean as coffee. What it does not have is a way for you, standing in a shop, to find out who roasted the bag in your hand. Until that exists, the label is the only witness available, and reading it properly is the whole of the method.
What could not be verified?
Several things this article would have liked to state could not be confirmed, and naming them is more useful than estimating them. No official figure exists, or was found, for the share of coffee on Vietnamese retail shelves that is adulterated or that fails TCVN 5251:2015. The enforcement record is published case by case; the rate is not published at all, and any percentage in circulation should be treated as unsourced until it names an agency and a year.
The full classification table of TCVN 4193:2014 could not be read. Every reproduction located placed the grade table behind a paywall after its first row, so this article reports the standard's scope, foreword, definitions and the structure of its grade codes, but not the screen sizes and defect counts attached to each grade. The moisture limit and the complete grade matrix are therefore not stated here as verified figures.
The physico-chemical table of TCVN 12459:2018 was read only in a commercial reproduction, not in a government-published copy, so its caffeine, glucose and xylose limits are reported with that qualification. The two standards quoted in most detail here, TCVN 5250:2015 and TCVN 5251:2015, were read as full PDFs and their figures are quoted directly from the standards' own tables.
The Intellectual Property Office's own site could not be reached over a normally configured connection on 15 September 2026 because its certificate chain is incomplete; the pages cited were retrieved by supplying the missing intermediate certificate. The Ministry of Industry and Trade's market-surveillance portal and the Food Safety Authority's site did not resolve at all from either network used, so no market-surveillance announcement from those bodies is cited.
Nothing could be verified about which company roasts any particular brand other than Vinacafé Biên Hòa, and no public register of coffee roasters was found. No source read here states that any major Vietnamese coffee brand contracts out its roasting, and no source read here states that any of them does not. That question, which is the one in this article's title, has no public answer for most of the market — which is itself the most useful thing a buyer can know before choosing a bag.