Cake Bar brings Vietnamese flavors to downtown Syracuse

SYRACUSE — When Duyen Nguyen immigrated in 2012 from Vietnam to the United States, she thought she would end up working in New York City as a designer. Instead, she ended up working at a tea room in Syracuse.

Fate, it seems, had other plans for her, and Nguyen soon realized the need for places in Syracuse for young people to hang out that weren’t bars. Couple that with missing the coffee shops of Vietnam, Nguyen put the two together to open Cake Bar, a local bakery and bubble tea shop.

“The whole business plan is to bring a whole Vietnamese coffee culture to Syracuse,” she says. Many coffee shops in Vietnam are open around the clock, and they serve much more than coffee. “You go there to eat a dessert, hang out with friends, and drink a coffee,” Nguyen says.

With an idea and a business plan in hand, she knew Salt City Market would be a great place to test the waters. Cake Bar opened there in January 2021, serving up treats that Nguyen first whipped up for friends and family after missing her favorite treats from home.

“We bring a lot of Asian flavors,” she says. Many of her desserts are less sweet than their American counterparts and feature flavors such as taro, fresh fruits, and seasonal flavors such as persimmon.

The response to Cake Bar was a bit more positive than Nguyen expected, and it wasn’t long before she felt the confines of the small space in Salt City Market, where vendors rent stalls.

She had plans to open a larger location down the road but ended up revamping her plans and opening a 2,400-square-foot second café at 252 West Genesee St. in August 2022.

The second, larger location allowed Nguyen to expand her menu to include some savory items in her menu. She pairs the treats with various teas and Vietnamese coffee in flavors beyond the traditional strong coffee lightened with condensed milk that people might be familiar with. Other options include taro, coconut, frozen, and even egg coffee. She’s already at work expanding her menu even more in the West Genesee Street café and has equipment on order that will allow the business to serve breakfast sandwiches.

“That was a surprise for me,” Nguyen says of having to open a second site a little over a year after opening the first. Her original plan was to use the first year to learn all the ins and outs of running her business and begin marketing it more in the second year. However, with the additional location, the second year in business became a second year of learning in the new café.

“Now this year, we try to advertise for the store,” she quips.

Another surprise for Nguyen was realizing she now employs 17 people — and she’s still hiring more. Adding more staff members is a bit of a dilemma though, she says, because if she adds any more employees to the kitchen, she may need a third, even larger location.

Her kitchen is full right now of team members baking treats and cooking food for the café and with others baking catering orders.

“I’m kind of happy that customers love our stuff,” Nguyen says. And it’s not just young people like she originally expected. At both locations, her customers span generations, and it’s not uncommon to have whole families stop in.

Putting it all together is a labor of love for Nguyen. “Everything I want to do for my business is to represent Vietnam,” she says. “It actually makes me love my country more.”

Cake Bar’s Salt City Market location is open Monday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. offering a limited menu of bubble tea, cakes, cookies, and cupcakes.

The West Genesee Street café is open daily from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. with a full menu of coffee, bubble tea, pastries, dessert, and breakfast items.