Tai Tong Food & Beverage Group (TTFB, 瓦城泰統集團), which operates six restaurant chains including Thai Town Cuisine (瓦城泰式料理), yesterday said it is to launch its seventh brand by the end of this year.
“The new brand featuring Southeast Asian flavors is in line with TTFB’s multiple-brand strategy,” chairman Charles Hsu (徐承義) told a news conference in Taichung, adding that the company plans to launch another five new cuisine chains before 2020.
TTFB plans to increase its domestic outlets from 104 to 125 by the end of the year, including increasing the number of Thai Town Cuisine branches from 60 to 65 and Very Thai Noodles from 21 to 28, Hsu said.
The restaurant operator also plans to add two or three outlets of Rice Bar (時時香), its sixth brand, which was launched in January, he said.
Given a saturated market in the nation’s major cities, the company is eyeing second and third-tier cities to avoid stiff competition, he said.
TTFB is also planning to increase the number of outlets in China from five to 11 by the end of this year and is hoping to expand its footprint in the US market within the next three years, he said.
“There are more than 6,000 Thai-style restaurants in [the US], but the majority of them are locally owned enterprises,” Hsu said, hinting at potential opportunities in this sector.
To help maintain food quality across its multiple restaurants, the company said it has secured land for its planned global innovation and logistics center in Taoyuan’s Jhongli District (中壢).
The facility, which is expected to cost more than NT$400 million (US$13.23 million) in total investment, is to start construction by the end of the year.
TTFB’s first-quarter net profit was NT$87.6 million, edging up 1.23 percent from the same period last year, with NT$3.77 in earnings per share, company data showed.
First-quarter gross margin was 52.83 percent, up from 51.45 percent a year ago, but operating margin slipped to 10.45 percent from 10.58 percent.
Revenue last month gained 8.51 percent year-on-year to NT$326.17 million, bringing total revenue in the first four months of the year to NT$1.37 billion, up 5.69 percent from a year earlier.
TTFB shares were unchanged at NT$249 in Taipei trading yesterday, beating the benchmark TAIEX, which edged down 0.44 percent to 9,969.45 points.
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
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six