Coool café

A founder story

A coffee habit became a life project.

It started with a coffee habit. It became the project that taught me how to ship, listen, travel, and keep going.

Long HuỳnhPleiku, VietnamFounder, builder, coffee wanderer
A collage of coffee places, travel, and the people behind Coool Café.
A life that keeps moving between cafés, coastlines, code, and conversations.

First month after launch

1,990

people found the product.

Where they came from

26

countries, before the map was even close to finished.

The current state

Still cooking

One person, a growing map, and plenty left to learn.

Before the product

Coffee was already part of the landscape.

I grew up in Pleiku, where coffee was not an exotic hobby. It was part of the daily rhythm around me. At university I studied Food Engineering, and beverages became a place where science, culture, and small changes in process met.

Travel gave that interest another direction. As a digital nomad, I started using cafés to understand new cities. I was not only looking for a table and Wi-Fi. I wanted the drink, the room, the people, the odd details, the feeling that made a place worth remembering.

Before some trips, I spent more time searching for a good café than choosing where to sleep. That probably tells you enough.

“Uống cà phê, ngồi tỉ tê.” Drink coffee, sit down, and let the conversation wander.

Long Huỳnh sitting in a café during a meal and field visit.
A café can be a meal, a workplace, a meeting, and a way into a new city.

The problem I kept having

Maps tell you what is nearby. They do not always tell you what is worth the detour.

Google Maps is useful. It is also a little hit or miss when you are looking for a place with a point of view rather than the nearest result. Search intent, keywords, business profiles, popularity, distance, ads, and personalisation all shape what rises to the top.

I wanted a layer that could bring good coffee, beautiful rooms, hidden gems, and the places with a real sense of character back into view.

The first versions

I learned by breaking things in public.

The first version was rough. Café data moved through improvised scripts and spreadsheets. I tried AI tools while learning how to build the interface. I broke databases, Docker, Nginx setups, and more than one piece of confidence.

An early Coool Café product concept showing the map, city list, and café detail view.
An early product direction: city discovery, the map, and a café detail.
A laptop open beside coffee equipment while Long Huỳnh works in a café.
The actual office was often whichever café I was trying to understand.
Long Huỳnh working with a barista while building Coool Café.
Building the product from inside the places it was made for.

AI helped with some of the work. It did not remove the need to understand the work.

Every broken page pushed me closer to the real lessons: inconsistent place data is hard, preprocessing matters, search intent changes page structure, and a shipped product teaches more than a perfect prototype.

Read the longer build story

Field notes in motion

The story keeps rolling.

Cafés became my offices, classrooms, and doorways into unfamiliar cities. Every counter added another small piece to the product.

Espresso, one cup at a time.

A green espresso cup and a glass of ice beside a garden window.
An espresso cup beside sunglasses, a pipe, and a small jar on an outdoor table.
A black espresso cup and water on a wooden table facing a café window.
A white espresso cup catching sunlight on the edge of a brass table.
Specialty coffee served in a ceramic cup with a Mae Jantai origin card.
A specialty coffee tasting served in a celadon goblet with an origin card.
Two green sensory cups comparing curved and tulip shapes.
Espresso and water served on a wooden tray beside an old café stool.
A white espresso cup in a dark café room with blue chairs.
A black espresso cup and water in a bright industrial café.
A hand holding a small white espresso cup above a wooden floor.
A brown espresso cup on a table facing a café espresso machine.
Espresso in a blue illustrated ceramic cup on a white saucer.
A Lavazza espresso cup with a gold spoon on a steel tray.
Espresso in a red cup beside an open café window.
Black coffee in a small floral ceramic cup near a bright window.
A Langbiang Zanya coffee tasting with a cup and glass carafe.
A white espresso cup and a steel water cup on a café table.
A blue ceramic espresso cup beside a laptop and a glass of water.
Espresso in a decorated Italian cup on a wooden table.
An espresso cup beside a laptop overlooking a shopping centre.
An espresso beside a bag of Lao coffee with a barista behind the counter.
A small blue espresso cup on a long wooden café table.
A red espresso cup beside a laptop in a windowed café.
An espresso cup served on a red wooden board beside a tea counter.
A black espresso cup with a red espresso machine in the background.
A white espresso cup served beside a bag of coffee beans.
A blue espresso cup and an amber glass of water on a steel tray.
A hot cacao drink served beside cacao pieces and a bag of Vietnamese chocolate.
An espresso cup with a small cookie on a wooden tray.
An espresso beside a pink tasting card for a special coffee blend.
Espresso in a purple ceramic cup on a small wooden tray.
An espresso cup at a white counter displaying individual pastries.
A white espresso cup in strong afternoon sunlight.

The cafés that made the idea real.

A brick-walled coffee bar with coffee sacks, espresso equipment, and a barista.
The Still Corner café storefront glowing at night.
A red-walled vintage café bar with pendant lights and a wooden counter.
A café interior with records, books, lounge seating, and wooden tables.
A warm wood-panelled café with a teal service counter and baristas working.
A garden-facing café bar with pour-over brewers and a barista preparing coffee.
An open industrial café counter with grinders, brewers, and a street view.
A two-storey café viewed from above, with a central bar and tables below.
Two people smiling beside the espresso bar at Kafe in LAB.
A colonial-style café lounge with chandeliers, books, and small tables.
A weathered heritage building surrounded by trees and tropical plants.
A wooden café balcony with bar seating overlooking a green forest.
A rustic wooden coffee house in the hills with an old jeep outside.
A bright wooden café interior with large windows, plants, and shared tables.
A modern coffee bar with award trophies and a sculptural white espresso machine.
A small patterned coffee cup on a concrete café counter beside an espresso machine.
The Suriyon Old Town coffee counter with grinders, menus, and an espresso machine.
An eclectic concrete café with warm pendant lights, shelves, and a barista.
A two-storey café and roastery viewed from above, with a long central bar.
The exterior sign of Ing Coffee and Roasters on a corrugated metal building.
A glass-fronted café with motorcycles parked outside and a small seating area.
A wooden Laos café with a long bar, tall stools, and handwritten menus.
A bright café and bakery with arched windows, espresso equipment, and a pastry case.
A dark listening-room café with a wood ceiling, speakers, records, and lounge chairs.

Then people showed up

The map became a conversation.

After the first launch, travellers and nomads started asking what I was building. People I met in Thailand, Vietnam, and elsewhere would look at the product, suggest a café, and ask when their city would appear.

Some messages came from Latin America, Europe, Australia, and the United States. The data was still concentrated in Southeast Asia and Asia, and the preprocessing was still a one-person job, but the curiosity travelled farther than I expected.

That changed the product. It was no longer only my private map for finding coffee. It had become a small invitation for other people to help describe the places they cared about.

A Coool Café analytics dashboard showing visitors, page views, sessions, session duration, bounce rate, and LCP.
An early analytics snapshot. The numbers mattered, but the messages mattered more.

The part that changed me

Coool Café changed the way I travel.

I began staying longer in places. I would find one café I liked, return every day, and let the work become an excuse to notice the people around it.

A social post showing a selection of cafés visited during a trip through Thailand.
A trip through Thailand, told partly through coffee counters.
A large collage of surfing, travel, food, people, and cafés from a long road trip.
Surf trips, long roads, strange meals, good coffee, and the people who kept giving feedback.
The Coool Café Chiang Mai page showing café cards, filters, and a map.
The map keeps changing as the places and the questions change.

In Vũng Tàu and Mũi Né, I met two café owners named Phúc. They invited me for coffee, food, and long conversations, then gave me feedback on the thing I had made.

The product stopped being only a screen. It became a reason to walk into a place, ask a question, and stay long enough to understand it.

A café owner named Phúc preparing coffee with a guest at the counter.
Phúc, behind the counter and inside the work.
A café owner named Phúc sharing a meal during a long conversation.
The kind of welcome that turned a product visit into a real friendship.

What I know now

Every café is a small piece of culture.

One country can contain many coffee cultures. One city can contain many ideas about what a café should be. I have seen a pour-over served in a champagne glass, a barista in his seventies, rooms built from discarded objects, and places that feel like tiny works of art.

That is why I do not want Coool Café to be only a database of pins. The data matters. So do the stories, the atmosphere, the work of the people who make these places, and the small details that make you want to come back.

SEO taught me how people find pages. Coffee taught me why they remember places. Product work keeps teaching me to listen.

Why it still exists

Coool Café is my ongoing piece of work.

The data can still be incomplete. Bugs still hide in corners. The product is still being shaped by places I have not visited and people I have not met yet. That is part of the point.

I want to keep looking closely, building honestly, and making it easier for someone to find a café that gives them a good cup of coffee and a good conversation.

Explore Coool CaféRead the build story