Gourmet Master Co (美食達人), which owns the bakery and coffee chain 85oC (85度C), on Friday opened its second new store of the week in California as the chain expects to increase the pace of new operations in the US market.
The latest store — the chain’s sixth in the US — is located in Gardena in the Greater Los Angeles area. Customers were seen lining up outside the store as early as 8am, before the official opening at 10am.
Stephanie Peng, a manager of Gourmet Master’s US operations, said the completion of a central kitchen in September, which can supply between 30 and 50 outlets, will allow the chain to open new stores at a faster pace.
The chain recently entered the northern California market after opening a store in Newark, southeast of San Francisco, on Nov. 15. Another store in Garden Grove in southern California is scheduled to open next month.
Peng said the firm, which expanded into the US in 2008, plans to open 15 new stores next year.
Meanwhile, Chung Ching-ju (鐘靜如), head of marketing of the Taiwanese chain, said the performance of existing US stores has boosted Gourmet Master’s confidence in the North American market.
With a back office and equipment in place, Chung said the chain will also consider expanding beyond the US’ West Coast.
In Taiwan, the firm has more than 700 85oC outlets. The chain also has stores in China and Australia, according to its Web site.
The government yesterday approved applications by Alphabet Inc’s Google to invest NT$27.08 billion (US$859.98 million) in Taiwan, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement. The Department of Investment Review approved two investments proposed by Google, with much of the funds to be used for data processing and electronic information supply services, as well as inventory procurement businesses in the semiconductor field, the ministry said. It marks the second consecutive year that Google has applied to increase its investment in Taiwan. Google plans to infuse NT$25.34 billion into Charter Investments Ltd (特許投資顧問) through its Singapore-based subsidiary Fructan Holdings Singapore Pte Ltd, and
Micron Technology Inc is a driving force pushing the US Congress to pass legislation that would put new export restrictions on equipment its Chinese competitors use to make their chips, according to people familiar with the matter. A US House of Representatives panel yesterday was to vote on the “MATCH Act,” a bill designed to close gaps in restrictions on chipmaking equipment. It would also pressure foreign companies that sell equipment to Chinese chipmaking facilities to align with export curbs on US companies like Lam Research Corp and Applied Materials Inc. The bill targets facilities operated by China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings’ planned acquisition of Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations has yet to enter the formal review stage, as regulators await supplementary documents, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday. Acting FTC Chairman Chen Chih-min (陳志民) told the legislature’s Economics Committee that although Grab submitted its application on March 27, the case has not been officially accepted because required materials remain incomplete. Once the filing is finalized, the FTC would launch a formal probe into the deal, focusing on issues such as cross-shareholding and potential restrictions on market competition, Chen told lawmakers. Grab last month announced that it would acquire
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
RSS