Wendy’s Co, the third-biggest US fast-food chain, added goose-liver pate and truffles to burgers as it invests as much as US$200 million on a return to Japan two years after leaving the country.
The Japan Premium sandwich sells for ¥1,280 (US$16) at Wendy’s in Tokyo’s Omotesando luxury shopping area, the first of a targeted 100 shops. “We think the fast-food market here is ready for something different,” Ernest Higa, chief executive officer of Wendy’s Japan LLC, said in an interview at the restaurant’s opening on Tuesday.
Wendy’s is re-entering Japan under a plan to expand outside the US, where it got 92 percent of revenue last year, after posting losses in six of the past eight quarters. The Dublin, Ohio-based chain is focusing on the world’s second-biggest fast-food market first as it looks for operating partners in China and Brazil.
Photo: Bloomberg
“Japan is the most important of the three to me, because we are actually selling burgers here today,” Darrell van Ligten, international division president, said in an interview in Omotesando.
The company expects to eventually expand to about 700 restaurants in Japan, compared with about 3,300 for McDonald’s Corp’s local unit, the nation’s biggest fast-food burger chain.
Wendy’s ended a 30-year run in Japan in 2009 after its partner Zensho Holdings Co declined to renew the agreement, saying it would focus on building its main Sukiya chain of beef-bowl restaurants.
“Our partner had a pretty significant business which was their primary focus,” van Ligten said. “Given the size of the different businesses, Wendy’s wasn’t as much of a focus area as we would have liked it to be.”
In coming back to Japan, the burger chain is counting on its premium menu to lure customers in a “very, very competitive” environment, Higa said.
Wendy’s menu pits it against Japanese rivals, including Mos Food Services Inc’s Mos Burger in terms of taste and Lotteria Co, which has a ¥1,800 Matsuzaka beef burger, for premium items.
However, Japan’s outlook for slow economic growth adds to the pressure on Wendy’s to find a new niche in the industry.
The Bank of Japan last week said the economy’s rebound from the March 11 earthquake has come to a pause, lowering its evaluation for a second straight month because of the local currency’s strength and a cooler global expansion.
McDonald’s Holdings Co Japan forecasts sales of ¥304.5 billion this year, a third straight annual decline and 25 percent less than 2008 revenue.
“With the economic situation, you need to bring something that is unique and exciting,” Higa said.
The “new fashion” of high-end fast food will give the chain what it needs to thrive, he said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”