Evolution Capital expands in run-up to AEC

 

Evolution Capital, which owns Domino’s Pizza, Coffee Bean & |Tea Leaf, and Kyochon franchises |as well as other independently |branded restaurants, currently |operates 61 retail outlets in Thailand and Cambodia, including 20 Domino’s, 17 Coffee Beans and six Kyochons (a Korean-style fried-chicken restaurant).

Singh said combined sales were projected to top Bt600 million this year, up from about Bt400 million in 2014, as new stores have been added.

“We want to be a regional player in food not only in Thailand and Cambodia, but also Laos and Myanmar, where we will be opening new stores to benefit from the AEC, a combined single market of more than 600 million consumers. We plan to launch Domino’s Pizza outlets in Myanmar this year and open the first Kyochon store in Laos next year. By the end of this year, we will have six Domino’s Pizza outlets in Cambodia.

“In addition, Mr Jones’ Orphanage, a non-franchise local brand of a unique dessert restaurant, has expanded into the international market with outlets in Thailand and Japan. We also plan to open Mr Jones in Malaysia, Indonesia and Myanmar.”

Other local brands in Thailand are Maggie Choo’s, Clouds Bar, Fat Gut’z Saloon, and Bangkok Betty.

“Altogether, our target is to have a total of 95-100 outlets of both franchise and non-franchise stores in Thailand and abroad by end of this year. For 2016, the target is to add another 40 outlets.

“We also explore M&A [merger and acquisition] activities to grow our food business [in addition to organic growth]. Recently, we raised Bt360 million from a rights issue to finance our business expansion,” Singh said.

“In Cambodia, we found that the market is vibrant, with our Domino’s Pizza store setting the franchise’s world record in terms of weekly sales in excess of $100,000 per week recently. Better pizzas, especially in terms of freshness, have set us apart from [the] competition.

“We have now opened two Domino’s Pizza outlets in Cambodia through a joint venture with a local company. We are pleasantly surprised to get a good feedback there. For Cambodian consumers, 60 per cent of our sales come from dining in restaurants and 20 per cent from home delivery, compared with 60 per cent from home delivery and 30 per cent from dining away from homes in Thailand.“I think pizzas have become a world food with strong growth potential in Asean countries. Like Thais, Cambodians prefer seafood pizzas, so the eating habit is similar.

“The key success factor for international food brands is the brand promise of PSI, or good product, service, and image. In the global pizza market, Pizza Hut is the largest franchise, with about 14,000 stores, while Domino’s has about 11,000 outlets worldwide.

“For Domino’s in Thailand, a quarter of our sales come from the online ordering platform for home delivery. To boost this segment, we’ll launch a mobile app for ordering shortly. 

“For Kyochon, we think it’s a healthy menu as far as fried chicken is concerned. However, we’ve not considered any Japanese food franchise yet,” he said.