Thailand-based foodservice chain Five Star Chicken, which has close to 240 outlets in India, is planning to add another 10-15 outlets every month. Sanjeev Pant, Sr. Vice President – Food Business at CPF (India) Pvt. Ltd., is optimistic about targeting a total of 300-400 outlets by the end of 2015. Targeting locations in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, after which the company will be focusing on tier I cities like Hyderabad, the chain’s primary audience are consumers in the age group of 15-35 years.
Tier II towns such as Cochin, Calicut, Mangalore and Mysore, Coimbatore and Salem will be prime target locations, according to Pant. “Since we are targeting the youth, most of our branding involves a lot of youth elements, a lot of fun music, we do a lot of social media, events, college fests that help us get close to our audience through a lot of BTL activations,” he adds.
Five Star Chicken, which operates only as a take away format in India, is also exploring the idea of online delivery in India.
Pant notes that Indians have started eating out/ ordering in more often and that is a trend that will keep intensifying. “Indians typically spend a lot of time on the road travelling to work. This is why online shopping industry is picking up; everybody prefers home delivery. Having said that, the eating out consumption is still very low in India compared to global standards. An average Indian would eat out 3-4 times a month, whereas in Thailand, people eat out 10 times in a month and so is the case in China. In the US, it is 15 times per month.”
Five Star Chicken is one of the subsidiary food companies and brands of The Charoen Pokphand Foods (CPF), a Thai multi-national conglomerate with over $10 billion business in agro-industry & food in many countries across the world.
By Roshna Chandran
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