Restaurant chain operator Wowprime Corp (王品) yesterday unveiled a new spicy hot pot brand, aiming to seize opportunities in the nation’s NT$5 billion (US$169.92 million) hot pot market.
Chin Huajiao (青花驕), the company’s 18th brand in Taiwan, plans to serve spicy hot pot featuring tongue-numbing flavors and peppers directly imported from Chongqing, China.
“We think the growth momentum of the whole hot pot market has not yet peaked [despite intensifying competition in Taiwan],” a Wowprime official said at a media gathering in Taipei.
The company plans to open three or four Chin Huajiao outlets in Taiwan this year after spending nearly NT$25 million on its first new store located on Taipei’s Zhongshan N Road.
Customers are expected to spend about NT$650 per person at Chin Huajiao, higher than average purchases at the group’s other two hot pot chains, 12 Sabu (石二鍋) and Hokkaido Konbu Hot Pot (聚北海道昆布鍋), Wowprime said.
Same-store sales of the new brand are likely to reach between NT$8 million and NT$10 million per month, the company said.
Wowprime, which follows a multi-brand strategy to maintain its long-term profitability, plans to launch a Japanese Izakaya brand in the Chinese market by the end of this month, as well as two additional new brands in Taiwan and one in China in the second half of this year, the company said, without elaborating on this year’s outlet expansion plan or capital budget.
Wowprime on Wednesday posted an annual decrease in cumulative revenue of 1.79 percent for last year, as slower sales dragged down profit in the domestic market, a company statement said.
Revenue decreased from NT$16.11 billion in 2016 to NT$15.82 billion last year, with Taiwan operations falling 4.08 percent to NT$8.96 billion and China sales increasing 1.36 percent to NT$6.86 billion, the company said.
However, Wowprime saw sales increase 1.47 percent year-on-year to NT$3.85 billion in the fourth quarter, ending five consecutive quarters of decline, it said.
The company attributed the improvement to a restructuring plan that aims to tap into the emerging casual dining market by launching mid-priced brands, such as CooK BEEF (酷必), Ma Lao Da (麻佬大) and Zha Beef (乍牛).
Taichung-headquartered Wowprime, which runs a total of 21 brands, operates 266 outlets in Taiwan and 150 in China, company data showed.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by