Hanoi Restaurant Chain Closes High-Rent Location
Hanoi restaurant chain Quán Nhậu Tự Do closed its location at 8 Lê Đại Hành Street on November 9, 2026. Its founder said customer traffic remained steady, but monthly rent had risen to about VND 385 million in 2025, making the site an inefficient use of funds.
Nguyễn Mạnh Tuấn, founder and CEO of restaurant chain Quán Nhậu Tự Do, announced that its location at 8 Lê Đại Hành Street in Hanoi closed on November 9, 2026. It was the brand’s third location and had frontage on three sides. According to the brand’s website, the two-story site covered about 700 square meters and could accommodate up to 350 customers.
Quán Nhậu Tự Do’s location on Lê Đại Hành Street in Hanoi had frontage on three sides.（VietVance）
Nguyễn Mạnh Tuấn said monthly rent already exceeded VND 200 million when the company began leasing the site in 2018. The landlord then raised the rent by 10% every two years; monthly rent exceeded VND 300 million in 2024 and rose to about VND 385 million in 2025. He said customer traffic remained steady, but at the current rent, the returns no longer justified the cost, and the location had broken even in recent months.
The founder said the company initially chose the prominent site to build brand awareness. Now that the brand has opened more locations in Hanoi, he believes continuing to pay high rent to maintain that visibility is no longer an effective use of funds. Under the original plan, the brand would lease the site for seven years and would not renew the contract when it ended.
Nguyễn Mạnh Tuấn also said the site would be handed over to a coffee brand. He believes restaurant businesses need to continually assess the performance of their locations and operating models and adjust promptly as costs and market conditions change. This is his assessment of how to run a business in the industry, not a statistical conclusion about rents or profitability across Hanoi’s restaurant market.
Source: VietVance
