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For fans of the bold flavor and caffeine buzz of Vietnamese iced coffee who don’t have time to linger in a cafe or prepare the beverage at home, Little Green Cyclo’s ready-to-drink canned coffees offer a convenient – and award-winning – solution.
In 2021, Little Green Cyclo’s canned classic cà phê sữa đá (Vietnamese iced coffee with sweetened condensed milk) won the Speciality Food Association‘s sofi Award for best new product in the ready-to-drink coffee and tea category, the first Vietnamese brand to win that honor, according to the company. In 2022, it won again, this time for the Brisbane-based company’s vegan coconut mocha variety, making Little Green Cyclo the first to win back-to-back in the same category.
This month, Little Green Cyclo, founded by CEO Monica Wong and executive chef Quynh Nguyen, debuted two new ready-to-drink coffees: ube and sparkling passion fruit, joining the classic, plant-based coconut, coconut mocha and black varieties.
The sparkling passion fruit flavor is Wong’s personal favorite, she said. The team spent almost three years perfecting the formula, working on balancing the coffee and fruit tastes in the bubbly format. Nguyen is partial to the ube, inspired by one of the bestselling beverages at Little Green Cyclo’s Brisbane bistro – the ube latte – with the sweet, vanilla-like taste of the ube complementing the strong flavor of the Vietnamese coffee.
The ready-to-drink coffees can be found at more than 500 locations, mostly in the Bay Area, including at many Peninsula markets such as Sigona’s, Draeger’s Market, Piazza’s Fine Foods, Robert’s Market, The Market at Edgewood, Real Produce International Market and The Willow’s Market, to name a few. The company also offers whole-bean coffee, sourced from small farms in the Vietnamese central highlands.
Since 2010, Little Green Cyclo has also been serving up Vietnamese food and specialty lattes and teas to the Bay Area, first via a food truck, then via the brick-and-mortar bistro, which opened about seven years ago. That space, housed within a biotech complex, was closed during the pandemic, as most of its business is from serving breakfast, lunch and coffee to tenants of the area, who were no longer coming into work in large numbers, but it’s been open for a little more than a year now. The company also offers catering, and has catered for high profile businesses including Apple, Google and Meta.
Little Green Cyclo’s Brisbane bistro closed during the pandemic but is now open again during weekdays and for weekend pop-ups. Courtesy Little Green Cyclo. 
Little Green Cyclo’s bistro is located in Brisbane. Courtesy Little Green Cyclo. 
This spring, Little Green Cyclo is adding ube and sparkling passion fruit varieties to its line of ready-to-drink Vietnamese coffee, joining classic, black, plant-based coconut and plant-based mocha options. Courtesy Little Green Cyclo. 
Little Green Cyclo’s Brisbane bistro closed during the pandemic but is now open again during weekdays and for weekend pop-ups. Courtesy Little Green Cyclo.
The bistro is only open during weekdays, so Wong and Nguyen have recently embarked on a new way to utilize the space during the weekends: partnering with other Bay Area brands they admire for pop-up events.
“Quynh and I have always wanted to work with a lot of the local brands that we’ve met over the years,” Wong said. “This has been on our minds for some time. We want to have something for people to try out, to be introduced to: Here’s their food, here’s who they are.”
They kicked off the new series with an event in mid-April, partnering with Happy Moose Juice, followed by a weekend with vegan-dumpling brand Sobo, then a pop-up featuring Brazilian treats by Cafe de Casa. In May, they’ve welcomed a canelé pop-up from Menlo Park’s JiWoo Bake and events with Match Point Brewery and Red Boat Fish Sauce. The weekend of May 17-18 was dedicated to celebrating the launch of their new products, and food from Silgaban, a Korean meal kit service, was be featured on May 24.
While the weekday bistro menu features long-running Little Green Cyclo favorites such as garlic noodles and banh mi, the weekends are Nguyen’s chance to experiment and play with the menu, offering fusion dishes such as Saigon Wagyu beef hot dogs with Vietnamese coleslaw, Chinese sesame fried chicken grilled cheese sandwiches and Japanese milk bread egg sandwiches.
“We’re taking these traditional hot dogs and grilled cheese sandwiches and adding a big Asian influence to make it … we think a little better,” Wong said with a laugh. “A bit more elevated; lots of different flavors are going on.”
Nguyen has also developed specialty beverages for the weekend menu, including a Vietnamese coffee with mango sticky rice (topped with Nguyen’s housemade mango ice cream) and a “tamarind twist” Vietnamese coffee drink topped with roasted peanuts, based on a popular Vietnamese iced beverage.
Wong noted that the pop-up menu changes frequently, and the dates and times are “fluid” too, to allow for flexibility. The team is also considering offering some tasting menus with pre-sale ticket purchases, she added.
The pop-ups have helped not only introduce Little Green Cyclo customers to other local brands but have also helped raise its own profile in its own local community, drawing in cyclists and folks looking for some weekend activities and refreshment.
“People who live in Brisbane didn’t even realize we were there because they think that whole area is just the marina and these biotech companies,” Wong said.
The partners are excited to continue the pop-ups for the foreseeable future.
“I will keep adding different fun things,” Nguyen said. “I’m thinking of introducing different food from different regions of Vietnam. We’ll come up with something fun every week.”
Little Green Cyclo, 2000 Sierra Point Parkway, Brisbane; bistro open Monday-Friday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.; weekend pop-ups typically open Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. but days and times can vary. Instagram: @lilgreencyclo and @coffeelgc.
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