In the mid-1970s, actress Tippi Hedren was doing volunteer work for the humanitarian NGO Food For The Hungry, and got to visit a Vietnamese refugee camp in order to check which marketable skills could be taught to the women in order to help their integration in US society (imagine refugees being seen as an economic asset rather than a security threat!). Unexpectedly, the women she spoke to were fascinated by her polished fingernails and requested to be taught how to do manicure. Hedren arranged for her personal manicurist to provide the training, and long story short, most nail salons in the US are now managed by Vietnamese people.
But what if due to some mishap, Hedren hadn't been able to visit the camp? What marketable skill might the Vietnamese refugee women have defaulted on? @Sijie Liang over on FB gave a brilliant answer: coffee. Indeed, a legacy of French colonialism is that the Vietnamese have taken to drinking coffee, and they prepare it in a number of flavorsome ways. So in a TL where Vietnamese nail salons aren't a thing, one may instead have seen Vietnamese coffee shops open in California in the 1970s and then take the rest of the country by storm, probably preempting the rise of Starbucks and its derivatives.
Instead of a venti latte, your urbanite on the go would order a ca phe sua da or a ca phe trung.
But what if due to some mishap, Hedren hadn't been able to visit the camp? What marketable skill might the Vietnamese refugee women have defaulted on? @Sijie Liang over on FB gave a brilliant answer: coffee. Indeed, a legacy of French colonialism is that the Vietnamese have taken to drinking coffee, and they prepare it in a number of flavorsome ways. So in a TL where Vietnamese nail salons aren't a thing, one may instead have seen Vietnamese coffee shops open in California in the 1970s and then take the rest of the country by storm, probably preempting the rise of Starbucks and its derivatives.
Instead of a venti latte, your urbanite on the go would order a ca phe sua da or a ca phe trung.