La Kaffa International Co Ltd (六角國際事業) — which runs seven food and beverage brands in more than 50 nations, including bubble tea chain Chatime (日出茶太) — posted a record high monthly revenue of NT$209.05 million (US$6.83 million) last month, supported by its two new restaurant chains.
The figure translates into an 18.8 percent increase from a year earlier, lifting cumulative revenue in the first half of the year to NT$1.1 billion, a 12.4 percent increase from same period last year, the firm said in a statement.
La Kaffa attributed the strong performance to its two brands introduced in Taiwan in the first half, Tan Yu (探魚) and Osaka Ohsho (大阪王將).
“[Aided by the two new restaurant chains], revenue generated by restaurants makes up half of the firm’s total revenue, compared with 30 percent last year,” spokesman Adam Lu (盧廷當) said by telephone yesterday.
Revenue from tea stores contributes nearly 50 percent, a decrease from last year’s 70 percent, company data showed.
Lu said that La Kaffa has no plans to launch high-priced restaurants, citing fierce competition in the domestic restaurant industry.
“We would rather put our efforts into developing more restaurant chains with affordable prices, as the demand for low-priced food is less likely to be affected by the volatility of business cycles,” he said.
The firm’s best-known franchise restaurant brands include Japanese pork loin restaurant chain Wagokoro Tonkatsu Anzu (銀座杏子日式豬排) and Duan Chun Zhen Beef Noodles (段純貞牛肉麵).
La Kaffa plans to open 10 Osaka Ohsho stores in Taiwan by the end of this year, in a bid to increase revenue contribution from restaurants and further diversify its product portfolio.
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