The debut of the Nguyen family’s GA.RA marks the deepening of a global trend in the Bay Area
By Paolo Bicchieri
Feb 17, 2026
SF GATE—Three generations of one Vietnamese American family have opened garage businesses in Sacramento. Grandma and grandpa started selling Vietnamese pork sausages known as cha lua out of their garage upon arriving in Northern California. Then, their children started a very different business, Comtek Computer Systems, and sold hardware to computer companies from their home. Then, the youngest Nguyens followed in their footsteps with a home-based coffee roaster and cafe.
GA.RA is the handiwork of Daniel, Kasmira, and Thomas Nguyen, and its pays direct homage to that family history. Fittingly, “gara” is Vietnamese slang for garage. First debuting in February 2025 out of Daniel’s garage masquerading as a cafe, GA.RA is about to go legit: The Nguyens will debut the physical space for the business at 2424 Telegraph Ave. in Berkeley on Tuesday.
The opening marks the next iteration of an evolving and highly dynamic trend in specialty coffee in the Bay Area: specialty Vietnamese cafes, especially those outside San Jose. Long slept-on, Vietnamese drinks made with the country’s Phin dripper — a metal filter that slowly produces a strong brew — have gained traction in the 2020s. The cafes in the U.S. are also not just for viral-friendly drinks: They’ve overlapped with the resurgence of “third space” culture, especially for young Vietnamese Americans.
Such was the inspiration for the Nguyens. Their menu at GA.RA will reflect drinks they found on a pivotal trip to Vietnam. There will be oolong-laced Mekong teas, for instance, alongside milky Phin-pulled cà phê. On the fresher side, there’s a Southern Vietnamese-inspired kumquat hibiscus cold brew. The classic Vietnamese coffee on the menu is mixed with sweetened condensed milk, then poured over ice. Modern, now-pan-Asian ingredients pandan and ube star on the menu, and salted cream tops are available, too.
Vietnam is known for robusta beans, but as the often more favored arabica has become further endangered, more cafes than ever are turning to robusta. This includes GA.RA, where the drinks primarily rely on robusta, known for its darker, more bitter profile. And that coffee actually comes from the Nguyen family back in Vietnam: It’s grown in Buôn Ma Thuột for the GA.RA roasting business and gets shipped to Daniel, who plans to continue roasting the beans in Sacramento.
There’s a robust food menu for the cafe, as well: Think broken rice breakfast bowls with pork, lemongrass chicken banh mi sandwiches, nuoc mam chicken wings and steamed pork char siu bao.
The Nguyens decided now was the time to give their business a go after a climactic trip to Vietnam in 2023. The three were living their own lives at that point: Daniel was a software engineer in Sacramento, Kasmira is still working as a nurse, and Thomas lived in New York and worked as a video producer. They decided to survey the country from north to south: Starting in Hanoi, the three siblings traveled together to Ho Chi Minh City. Along the way, they reconnected with family members and visited Da Nang in Central Vietnam where their mom grew up. It made them feel like they could bring those flavors and vibes to Northern California.
“The coffee culture over there is huge,” Thomas said. “We basically ended up falling in love with that aspect of our culture.”
Vietnamese coffee is a roughly 150-year-old tradition; Vietnam saw its first coffee crops in 1857 thanks to the French occupation. Now, it produces the most coffee in the world behind Brazil, according to a report from the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization in 2025. In fact, record-high coffee prices around the world in 2025 were impacted by a 20% reduction in coffee from Vietnam due to drier-than-usual weather from 2023 to 2024.
A boom in Vietnamese specialty coffee has hit the West Coast hard in recent years. The new guard arguably began with Kimberly Dam’s Portland Cà Phê, her influence moving through the Rose City. In Seattle, Aroom and Phê showcased the country’s salted coffees and cream tops. Trung Nguyen Legend, the world’s largest Vietnamese coffee business, finally began expanding to the United States in the 2020s; Southern California and Portland, Oregon, mark two of its three cafes in the country so far.
In the Bay Area, the explosion of high-quality Vietnamese coffee began in San Jose. That makes sense: San Jose is home to the second-largest population of Vietnamese Americans among U.S. metropolitan centers, per the Pew Research Center. Lacàphê and Hết Sẩy are both undeniable presences. Little Green Cyclo also arrived in Brisbane, with Nâu Coffee the most recent pop-up foray in San Francisco.
Berkeley made the most sense for the siblings. Thomas lived in the city from 2018 to 2022. The hope is for GA.RA to add to this boom of activity; he pointed to fellow Berkeley newcomer Binge Coffee House as inspiration.
Mostly, the business is a way to get closer as a family. “It’s like a passing of the torch,” Thomas said, “and this whole venture is our way of honoring that history and our parents, our grandparents, and kind of trying to do something to the same extent as siblings.”
Editor’s note: This story was updated at 1:45 p.m., Feb. 17, to correct Thomas Nguyen’s name, as well as a menu item.
