Jumbo Seafood making a splash in beyond home borders
Singapore based company, seafood restaurant chain Jumbo Group has plans on expanding beyond home borders but, the local food and beverage business is not rushing the process. Jumbo Group’s chief executive Ang Kiam Meng said the company’s overseas strategy involves the “need to be very focused.” Being a conservative company, Jumbo Seafood dedicated a year of studying overseas markets before deciding on Shanghai.
The successful seafood restaurant chain revealed that they will again be expanding overseas— this time, to Vietnam.
Humble Beginnings
The Jumbo Group’s Seafood Story first began in 1987.
The father of the current chief executive, along with investments gathered from nine friends, started this restaurant. What started off as a humble shop at East Coast Seafood Centre, soon became a thriving business with outlets around Singapore. Eventually, Jumbo Group ventured beyond Singapore’s waters to Shanghai.
In Recent Years
2013: Jumbo opened restaurant doors in Shanghai
2015: Jumbo Seafood launched its initial public offering and became a publicly listed company
2016: Jumbo sales rose 11.4 percent from $122.8 million in 2015 to $136.8 million and earnings per share also went up to 2.4 cents from 1.7 cents previously, while net asset value per share was 10.1 cents, up from 8.9 cents a year earlier.
2017: Signs first franchise agreement and is set to open another outlet in Vietnam
Success
The 30-year-old restaurant chain is no stranger to success, having been awarded notable awards for their culinary and service standards.
Their awards include the Singapore Prestige Brand Award, Excellent Service Award, the Best Chilli Crab Award and Singapore’s Best Restaurants 2016 – Awarded by Singapore Tatler.
Future Prospects
2017 is likely to be a promising year for the Jumbo Group. At the beginning of this year, the restaurant group confirmed that it had signed its first franchise agreement with Vietnam’s Nova Bac Nam 79 Joint Stock Company. This move aligns with Jumbo Group’s plans which according to Mr Ang, is to “diversify and grow its business offerings and geographic markets”.
Jumbo Group plans to operate its restaurants through the franchise deal in prominent Vietnamese cities, Ho Chi Minh City and Danang. The first outlet is set to open mid-2017.
And it doesn’t stop there. The publicly listed company has plans to open two more outlets in these same two cities.
Testing waters
Jumbo Group’s past business strategy has proven that “slow and steady, wins the race” and careful analysis of foreign markets is necessary to weed out all possible risks.
The firm has plans to improve its financial performance by streamlining operations to raise productivity and by lowering operating costs.
Mr Ang explained that the abundance of opportunities in the market meant full focus was needed to carefully plan the Group’s overseas expansion strategy. Opportunity costs would still have to be incurred given the limited resources despite the extensive opportunities available to them.
He added: “Our general philosophy is that if I’ve to open 10 shops overseas, I’d rather open all 10 in one city that’s big enough to have capacity for 10 shops. Why?”
“This is so that my team of managers and chefs can focus to fully develop the market there.”
MrAng also said that Jumbo’s focus would be occupancy rates adding that the company needs to “fill up the restaurant to maximise [their] fixed costs.” He also added that a trend among their restaurants is that they have at “least 1.5 or 2 rounds of turn” every night.
“We’re talking about the revenue turnaround of two restaurants, with the overhead of one restaurant. That’s how we can maximise our productivity.”
