President Chain Store Corp (PCSC, 統一超商), the nation’s largest convenience store operator, yesterday introduced its new lines of food products for spring and summer as it announced cooperation with Japan’s Miyasaka Jozo Co, which produces sake and miso.
The company is aiming to take advantage of the Japanese company’s expertise in producing shio koji, an ingredient fermented in salt, to use as a healthier flavoring option for food products sold in its convenience store chain.
“We observed that the public is craving healthier food, especially after the food safety crisis in Taiwan,” PCSC marketing group chief Tony Hsieh (謝蓮塘) told reporters, citing both Japan and the US’ 7-Eleven chains having introduced healthier food items.
Shio koji is used as an alternative to salt in PCSC’s products, including cold noodles, soup, boxed meals, fried noodles and rice balls, which are to be released sequentially to the market starting from yesterday.
The company’s fresh food sales, including its flagship item, City Cafe coffee, accounted for 26 percent of its revenue last year, Hsieh said.
“Excluding City Cafe sales, food product sales last year rose to NT$28 billion [US$864.68 million], amounting to about 16 percent of PCSC’s revenue last year,” he added.
“We hope the shio koji dishes can spur a double-digit percentage growth in our fresh food services’ revenue this year,” PCSC fresh food department director Michael Kuo (郭慶峰) said.
PCSC on Monday reported that its sales last month increased 6.99 percent annually to NT$17.3 billion, with aggregate revenue last quarter rising 6.76 percent year-on-year to NT$51.51 billion.
The company attributed its growth last month to a surge in pre-orders for Children’s Day and Mothers’ Day items, as well as a 20 to 30 percent rise in fresh food sales and a 10 percent sequential gain in City Cafe sales, PCSC said.
Meanwhile, Taiwan FamilyMart Co (全家便利商店), the nation’s No. 2 convenience store chain, last week reported that its revenue last month increased 4.27 percent annually to NT$4.72 billion, with consolidated sales last quarter increasing 5.52 percent to NT$14.11 billion from a year ago.
FamilyMart said that sales growth last month was mainly driven by its fresh food products, which gained 10 percent from the same period a year ago.
New items launched last month include Hong Kong cuisine products, the company said on Monday.
FamilyMart expects to see growth momentum this quarter to be driven by light food items such as cold noodles, salads and orders for Mother’s Day’s cakes, the company said.
UNCERTAINTIES: Exports surged 34.1% and private investment grew 7.03% to outpace expectations in the first half, although US tariffs could stall momentum The Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) yesterday raised its GDP growth forecast to 3.05 percent this year on a robust first-half performance, but warned that US tariff threats and external uncertainty could stall momentum in the second half of the year. “The first half proved exceptionally strong, allowing room for optimism,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said. “But the growth momentum may slow moving forward due to US tariffs.” The tariff threat poses definite downside risks, although the scale of the impact remains unclear given the unpredictability of US President Donald Trump’s policies, Lien said. Despite the headwinds, Taiwan is likely
When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea. Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, Georgia, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews. “When I was a child, this was only my mum’s workplace. Only later I realized that it was something big,” she said. Now, the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin
UNIFYING OPPOSITION: Numerous companies have registered complaints over the potential levies, bringing together rival automakers in voicing their reservations US President Donald Trump is readying plans for industry-specific tariffs to kick in alongside his country-by-country duties in two weeks, ramping up his push to reshape the US’ standing in the global trading system by penalizing purchases from abroad. Administration officials could release details of Trump’s planned 50 percent duty on copper in the days before they are set to take effect on Friday next week, a person familiar with the matter said. That is the same date Trump’s “reciprocal” levies on products from more than 100 nations are slated to begin. Trump on Tuesday said that he is likely to impose tariffs
READY TO BUY: Shortly after Nvidia announced the approval, Chinese firms scrambled to order the H20 GPUs, which the company must send to the US government for approval Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) late on Monday said the technology giant has won approval from US President Donald Trump’s administration to sell its advanced H20 graphics processing units (GPUs) used to develop artificial intelligence (AI) to China. The news came in a company blog post late on Monday and Huang also spoke about the coup on China’s state-run China Global Television Network in remarks shown on X. “The US government has assured Nvidia that licenses will be granted, and Nvidia hopes to start deliveries soon,” the post said. “Today, I’m announcing that the US government has approved for us
RSS