A burger meal in Vietnam (burger + fries + coke) costs $3, while a roast pork banh mi (sandwich) costs $0.5 and in $1 you could get a whole Vietnamese lunch meal.
The incomes (most people earn less than $500 monthly) are low but eating out is very popular, e.g. most people eat breakfast not at home but at a food stall on their way to work or school.
So, burgers work out too expensive to sustain this culture of regular eating-out.
Reason 2: Burgers are not fast enough
Based on global standards, most American burger outlets have certain space and layout requirements and thus open in large supermarkets, tourist destinations, shopping complexes etc.
So, people have to park, go to a burger outlet, queue up for ordering and then wait for food.
On the other hand, almost every street in major cities has various street-food stands, where you can leave your bike right next to a food-stand and get your meal in under a minute.
E.g. for Pho,
the vendor can pour the soup from a
,big pot simmering over low heat,
add solid ingredients and serve you in seconds.
Reason 3: Burgers are not meant for sharing
Vietnam war had left Vietnam a very poor country and even the richest couldn’t afford 3 meals a day; that made the already-existing culture of food-sharing even more pronounced.
Today, it is common for people to just have their individual rice bowls, and meat or fish is taken from a communal dish, then dipped into common fish sauce & then transferred to individual rice bowl.
And burgers are not naturally meant for sharing and many consider this a huge deterrent – Pizzas don’t have such constraints and can part-explain Pizza Hut’s success (it has a foreign-food market share of over 20%, while McDonald’s & Burger King together are less than 5%).
Reason 4: Late entry
Vietnam opened its economy in mid-1980s and by mid-1990s, food franchising was allowed; KFC (US), Jollibee (Philippines) & Lotteria (Japan) entered the market between 1997-2005, so Burger King (2011) & McDonald’s (2014) were late to enter an already crowded food market.
It took 7 years for KFC to open 10 restaurants and today KFC has 130+ stores, but people don’t go their for ‘fast & cheap food’ but for a special-occasion-experience & air-conditioning to beat the heat; McDonald’s & Burger King may also succeed one day but so far their performance has been underwhelming.
