A growing number of local food and beverage operators are planning to list on the local bourse to raise capital for building brand awareness and accelerate their pace of expansion.
The four-day Taipei International Chain and Franchise Exhibition closed yesterday at the Taipei World Trade Center, with various exhibitors showing interest in launching initial public offerings (IPO) in Taiwan in the near future.
La Kaffa International Co Ltd (六角國際事業), which operates bubble tea chain Chatime (日出茶太) in Taiwan, China, Southeast Asia, Australia and the US, expects to list on Taiwan’s GRETAI Securities Market in the second half of this year.
La Kaffa, which runs about 800 tea houses globally, debuted on the Emerging Stock Market (興櫃市場) in December at NT$168 per share. The company’s shares closed at NT$176 on Wednesday, stock exchange data showed.
Meanwhile, the company aims to accelerate its expansion in the US and Japan this year by cooperating with strong strategic partners.
“We hope to build up principles for franchising through our experience in the US,” La Kaffa president Eddie Chang (張國強) told the Taipei Times on Thursday.
The experience may further help the company create a set of standard operating procedures (SOP) to deal with its franchising business elsewhere in the world, Chang added.
La Kaffa has been authorizing a sole agent in the US, expecting the partner to help the company accelerate its expansion there over the next five years.
The company aims to raise its number of tea houses in the US to 300 in the next five years, from its current nine stores.
The company also has established a joint venture in Japan with a Japanese company, with La Kaffa holding a 70 percent stake. It expects to launch 50 tea houses in the new market in the next five years.
OCOCO International Co Ltd (億可國際飲食), which operates about 1,200 Coco Fresh Tea & Juice (都可茶飲) outlets worldwide, is also looking to accelerate its expansion in the US and Europe this year.
The bubble tea chain said it would this year start offering overseas franchise opportunities for interested individuals to extend its coverage, hoping to increase its stores to more than 1,500 by the end of this year.
OCOCO president Jonathan Lin (林家振) said he expects the company to list on a global major securities market next year, with the Taiwan Stock Exchange remaining one of his favorites.
“We hope that listing on a global major bourse could raise the company to the next level, making more outstanding overseas partners interested in cooperating with us,” Lin said.
Apart from the two bubble tea chains, Super-Mill Enterprises Co Ltd (超秦企業) — which operates more than 1,000 breakfast outlets under the brand My Warm Day (麥味登) — also plans to list on Taiwan’s GRETAI Securities Market in 2015.
Super-Mill vice president Allen Chou (卓靖倫) said the company is looking to expand My Warm Day to an all-day-restaurant brand in the next two years, while upgrading about 100 of its direct-selling stores.
The company has also encouraged its franchise stores to extend their operating hours to at least noon, to help carry out My Warm Day’s brand concept, Chou added.
Super-Mill, which also provides meat products to wholesalers, saw its revenue reach NT$2.6 billion (US$86.88 million) last year, showing growth for the 10th consecutive year, company statements showed. It expects sales to grow 8 percent this year to NT$2.8 billion.
Taichung reported the steepest fall in completed home prices among the six special municipalities in the first quarter of this year, data compiled by Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) showed yesterday. From January through last month, the average transaction price for completed homes in Taichung fell 8 percent from a year earlier to NT$299,000 (US$9,483) per ping (3.3m²), said Taiwan Realty, which compiled the data based on the government’s price registration platform. The decline could be attributed to many home buyers choosing relatively affordable used homes to live in themselves, instead of newly built homes in the city’s prime property market, Taiwan Realty
The government yesterday approved applications by Alphabet Inc’s Google to invest NT$27.08 billion (US$859.98 million) in Taiwan, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement. The Department of Investment Review approved two investments proposed by Google, with much of the funds to be used for data processing and electronic information supply services, as well as inventory procurement businesses in the semiconductor field, the ministry said. It marks the second consecutive year that Google has applied to increase its investment in Taiwan. Google plans to infuse NT$25.34 billion into Charter Investments Ltd (特許投資顧問) through its Singapore-based subsidiary Fructan Holdings Singapore Pte Ltd, and
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
FORESEEABLE CONSEQUENCES: New technology always comes with new innovations by the iniquitous in exploiting users for financial gain or more nefarious ends Artificial intelligence (AI) “agents” say they can save users time and energy by automating tasks, but the growing power of systems such as OpenClaw is putting cybersecurity experts on edge. Powered by a wave of hype, OpenClaw today says it has more than three million users worldwide. The system allows users to create so-called agents, tools based on a large language model (LLM) such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Anthropic PBC’s Claude, that can carry out online tasks. “We’ve moved from an AI you could talk with via a chatbot to an agentic AI, which can take action... the threat and the risks are
RSS