Taiwanese teashop company La Kaffa International Co (六角國際事業) is expanding into restaurants, teaming up with a Japanese firm to offer what it is calling “the most authentic” Japanese pork chops in Taiwan.
La Kaffa’s first Wagokoro Tonkatsu Anzu restaurant — the brand owned by Japanese company ATOM Co — opened in Taipei yesterday. A second one is scheduled to open later this week, and is to be followed by another six to eight this year and 20 to 30 more over the next three years.
There is great potential in Taiwan’s pork chops market, which is estimated at nearly US$100 million annually, La Kaffa president Henry Wang (王耀輝) said at yesterday’s opening ceremony.
“This is a milestone for the company,” Wang said.
The restaurant opening came on the 10th anniversary of the founding of La Kaffa’s successful Chatime teashop chain.
The chain now has outlets in 80 cities in more than 25 countries and regions, and if the partnership with ATOM Co works out well, the companies will expand their restaurant business further, Wang said.
ATOM president Toshiki Hanada said plans are already under way for the two companies to open a Wagokoro Tonkatsu Anzu restaurant in Shanghai, China, in June.
The restaurant chain, which incorporates the Japanese word for pork chops, tonkatsu, has been in Taiwan for almost eight years, but ATOM said its sales agent has not been delivering the authentic brand flavor.
When the contract with that agent expires next year, its five restaurants in Taiwan will be closed, ATOM said.
To distinguish its restaurants from the five originals, La Kaffa has added “Ginzu” to their names: “Wagokoro Tonkatsu Ginza Anzu.”
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
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day