Restaurant chain operator Wowprime Corp (王品集團) yesterday launched its 17th brand, Mu Viet (沐越), eyeing growing local demand for Vietnamese cuisine.
“We found that Taiwanese are embracing authentic Southeast Asian cuisine and the Vietnamese food market has yet to become saturated [compared with Thai food],” a Wowprime official said by telephone.
It cost nearly NT$20 million (US$670,241) to develop Mu Viet, Wowprime’s first Southeast Asian food brand, the official said.
The company is known for its Western-style brands, led by Wang Steak (王品台塑牛排) and Tasty (西堤), but it has over the past few years begun developing Asian food brands, while shifting its focus from high-priced restaurants to low or mid-range eateries.
Earlier this year, Wowprime introduced Taiwanese street food brand Ma Lao Da (麻佬大) to the local market.
Customer expenditure at Mu Viet is expected to be about NT$500 per person, the company said.
Wowprime said it plans to open three or four Mu Viet outlets in Taiwan next year, adding that same-store sales of the Vietnamese food brand are likely to reach between NT$4 million and NT$5 million per month.
Following a multi-brand strategy, the company said it also aims to launch three new brands in Taiwan and two in China next year, without elaborating.
In the first three quarters of this year, Wowprime’s net income rose 41.17 percent year-on-year from NT$284.16 million to NT$401.15 million, with earnings per share up from NT$3.69 to NT$5.21.
Gross margin improved from 49.52 percent to 50.04 percent over the period, while cumulative sales totaled NT$11.96 billion, a 2.84 percent decline from NT$12.31 billion in the same period last year, which the company attributed to fewer outlets because of its restructuring plan.
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