The nation’s two leading convenience store operators — Taiwan FamilyMart Co (全家便利商店) and President Chain Store Corp (PCSC, 統一超商) — yesterday unveiled new prepared food lines in a bid to seize growing business opportunities.
At a news conference yesterday, FamilyMart launched new oden items featuring authentic Japanese flavors and high-quality ingredients as part of the firm’s efforts to increase winter food sales.
FamilyMart has spent more than NT$30 million (US$966,61) on renovating its oden products, which are expected to bring revenue of NT$1 billion per year, chairman and chief executive Yeh Jung-ting (葉榮廷) said.
The firm’s strategy for its oden business focuses on unprocessed ingredients, such as boiled eggs and vegetables, as Taiwanese customers have become more aware of food safety issues in recent years, FamilyMart said.
Besides improving quality, the nation’s No. 2 convenience store chain said it is developing a more precise marketing strategy by using big data to analyze customer behavior and promote popular items.
“We hope to lift the revenue contribution of the prepared food business to 30 percent in 2020 from 21 percent,” Yeh said.
Meanwhile, PCSC said it hopes to differentiate itself by introducing a new line of steamed foods, including oden, sweet potatoes and pig’s blood cake (豬血糕).
The company, which has more than 5,000 outlets nationwide, is to sell the steamed items at 500 stores by the end of this year and 2,000 stores next year, it said in a statement.
PCSC is to allocate more research and development resources to steamed products — such as turnip cake (蘿蔔糕) and steamed dumplings — based on customer preference surveys, the statement said.
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