Food Passion Co, the operator of Bar-B-Q Plaza, Red Sun and Charna restaurants, has set its sights on going beyond the restaurant and food business to make its business more stable and sustainable in the longer term.
Chataya Supanpong, the company's chief executive, said after the company had already built its infrastructure for two years to overcome the pandemic, and the Covid-19 situation had got better, the company has set its business vision based on three strategies: going beyond dine-in business; going beyond Thailand; and going beyond the food industry.
"With lessons learned from the pandemic, we have expanded via various channels from take-home, delivery, gas station, social commerce, social network as well as opening our own restaurants both in and outside shopping malls," said Ms Chataya.
"We have also expanded our restaurant business beyond Thailand through a franchise system to Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam."
In addition, she said the company has diversified into the educational business by opening Food Passion Learning Centre and Food Passion Training Centre to develop people as its staff and outsiders to support the country's food industry.
According to Ms Chataya, the company plans to allocate 600 million baht to expand its business next year compared to 160 million baht investment this year.
In 2023, the company plans to open 30 new restaurants under all brands in Thailand with 25 branches slated to be in the Gon Express format and the remaining five restaurants for Bar-B-Q Plaza.
Moreover, it plans to renovate 50 existing restaurants with new designs to enhance customer experience.
The company will also open only a pop-up store of Red Sun Korean restaurant in the Siam Square area while having no plans to open a new store for Charna, its healthy food restaurant.
According to Ms Chataya, 40 dine-in restaurants will be upgraded to become "digital stores" while half of all restaurants under Passion Food Group will be cashless stores. At least 60 restaurants will use robots to provide services to customers.
Currently, Food Passion operates 202 restaurants, 172 restaurants of which are in Thailand comprising 148 Bar-B-Q Plaza restaurants, 15 Red Sun Korean food outlets, eight Gon Express eateries and one Charna restaurant.
The remaining 30 restaurants are in Malaysia, Indonesia and Cambodia.
The company expects the number of its restaurants to reach 270 in 2025. Of the total, 23 will be in Thailand and 47 will be in Southeast Asia including 27 restaurants in Malaysia, nine in Cambodia and four in Indonesia.
All overseas expansion will be under the franchise format.
The company expects its sales to reach 4.5 billion baht in 2025, up from an estimated 3.5 billion baht this year.
It reported sales of 3.8 billion baht in 2019, down from 2.28 billion baht in 2021 and 2.79 billion baht in 2020.
