The Tai Tong Food & Beverage Group (TTFB, 瓦城泰統集團), which operates three restaurant chains with nearly 60 outlets in Taiwan, yesterday announced its first restaurant in Shanghai will open next month, saying it plans to expand the number of Chinese outlets to 10 by the end of next year.
SIXTIETH RESTAURANT
The Shanghai restaurant is a Thai Town Cuisine outlet (瓦城泰式料理), located in the Reel Department Store (芮歐百貨) and will target customers between 25 and 40 years old with an average transaction per customer of between 100 yuan (US$16.4) and 150 yuan (US$24.6).
“This will be the group’s 60th restaurant globally,” group chairman Charles Hsu (徐承義) told a media briefing.
Hsu did not specify a sales target for the new restaurant. Citing experience in Taiwan, he said a Thai Town restaurant in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義) could generate sales of NT$50 million (US$1.7 million) to NT$60 million (US$2.03 million) annually.
The group operates restaurants under three brands: Thai Town, Very Thai Restaurant (非常泰) and 1010 Hunan Cuisine (1010 湘辣料理).
It plans to launch future outlets in China in Shanghai, Nanjing and Suzhou, with a special focus on East China.
“Most of these restaurants will be located in department stores or shopping malls, in line with the group’s successful operation in Taiwan,” Hsu said.
The group has been preparing its expansion plan in China for the past year, having already invested NT$10 million in Shanghai thus far, he added.
The group will unveil its fourth brand in Taiwan in the first quarter next year, with a goal to expand a total of 30 restaurants under its four brands annually.
BIG 100
The expansion across the Taiwan Strait will help increase the number of the group’s restaurants worldwide to 100 by the end of next year.
The group’s consolidated sales for the first nine months totaled NT$1.72 billion, up 17.78 percent from a year ago, company data showed.
Shares of TTFB dropped 0.73 percent to close at NT$273 on the GRETAI Securities Market yesterday.
Taiwan’s rapidly aging population is fueling a sharp increase in homes occupied solely by elderly people, a trend that is reshaping the nation’s housing market and social fabric, real-estate brokers said yesterday. About 850,000 residences were occupied by elderly people in the first quarter, including 655,000 that housed only one resident, the Ministry of the Interior said. The figures have nearly doubled from a decade earlier, Great Home Realty Co (大家房屋) said, as people aged 65 and older now make up 20.8 percent of the population. “The so-called silver tsunami represents more than just a demographic shift — it could fundamentally redefine the
Businesses across the global semiconductor supply chain are bracing themselves for disruptions from an escalating trade war, after China imposed curbs on rare earth mineral exports and the US responded with additional tariffs and restrictions on software sales to the Asian nation. China’s restrictions, the most targeted move yet to limit supplies of rare earth materials, represent the first major attempt by Beijing to exercise long-arm jurisdiction over foreign companies to target the semiconductor industry, threatening to stall the chips powering the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. They prompted US President Donald Trump on Friday to announce that he would impose an additional
China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空) said it expects peak season effects in the fourth quarter to continue to boost demand for passenger flights and cargo services, after reporting its second-highest-ever September sales on Monday. The carrier said it posted NT$15.88 billion (US$517 million) in consolidated sales last month, trailing only September last year’s NT$16.01 billion. Last month, CAL generated NT$8.77 billion from its passenger flights and NT$5.37 billion from cargo services, it said. In the first nine months of this year, the carrier posted NT$154.93 billion in cumulative sales, up 2.62 percent from a year earlier, marking the second-highest level for the January-September
Asian e-commerce giant Shein’s (希音) decision to set up shop in a historic Parisian department store has ruffled feathers in the fashion capital. Anger has been boiling since Shein announced last week that it would open its first permanent physical store next month at BHV Marais, an iconic building that has stood across from Paris City Hall since 1856. The move prompted some French brands to announce they would leave BHV Marais, but the department store had already been losing tenants over late payments. Aime cosmetics line cofounder Mathilde Lacombe, whose brand was among those that decided to leave following