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Yangon / DPA
In a Yangon shopping mall, Wai Hin tucks into a lunchtime burger. “I like such foods and places,” he says, sitting in the cool air of the South Korean Lotteria franchise in Junction Square mall, one of the largest buildings in the former Myanmar capital.
“It’s quiet, well-decorated and air-conditioned,” and well worth the relative expense, Wai Hin says. The mobile phone salesman is a member of Myanmar’s booming middle class, whose disposable incomes, and appetite for eating out, are growing.
Per capita income rose by 50 per cent from 2010 to 1,200 dollars per year in 2014, according to the World Bank, which reclassified Myanmar from low-income to a lower-middle-income country in 2015. Wai Hin spends about 3,500 kyats (3 dollars) for lunch at Lotteria, twice what he might spend at a roadside eatery. But he says it is worth it now and then, not least to avoid the midday sun.
“I forgot to bring my lunch box, and also don’t want to go to a road-side shop for lunch. That’s why I am here.” Fast food joints arriving in Myanmar had to compete with a longstanding tradition of street stalls and small eateries, well preserved from global chains by five decades of isolation under a military dictatorship.
After the gradual return to civilian rule started in 2011, the South Korean company Lotteria was the first fast food chain to open a franchise in the country in 2013. With reforms under retired general and then president Thein Sein, and the easing of sanctions, US brands including KFC and Pizza Hut followed, chasing the country’s 52 million potential customers.
“Myanmar is a dynamic emerging market that presents abundant business and growth opportunities to a multinational organization like KFC,” says Nyan Kyaw, marketing representative for KFC Myanmar. KFC set up in Myanmar in June 2015 in association with Yoma Strategic Holdings, led by Myanmar tycoon Serge Pun.
“The economy is forecasted to experience huge growth during the coming years, this coupled with a young, vibrant population increasingly interested in sampling new foods and demanding quality products makes Myanmar a very exciting prospect for KFC,” Nyan Kyaw says.
The first outlet in Yangon’s Bogyoke market was a runaway success. For several hours a day, diners had to queue to be served. Several more outlets followed. “Currently we have five stores in Yangon,” he says. Pizza Hut has two restaurants in Yangon, opened under a joint venture between Jardine Restaurant Group Myanmar and City Mart Holding.
Operating as Jardine CM Restaurant Group, the initiative said last year it is planning 18 more Pizza Huts accross the country in the next five years. Amid the success of foreign franchises, one local company says it has already done the US fast food thing, and is now moving away from it.
Soe Nyi Nyi first starting selling hamburgers, French fries and milk shakes from his first restaurant, Dream, in 1992, mostly to relatively affluent government workers in the then capital Yangon. But in 2005 the military junta moved the capital to the newly built city of Nay Pyi Taw, 350 kilometres to the north, and Soe
Nyi Nyi switched back to Burmese food, under a new brand, Feel, for a more middle-of-the-road clientele.
When incomes started rising after 2011 in Yangon, even without the government business, he decided to stick with the recipe, rather than venture back into burgers and fries. “I knew we couldn’t compete with he international restaurant chains anyway if we had the same menu,” he told dpa. “That’s why I decided to emphasize the Burmese cuisines rather than western food.”
Customers at Feel’s flagship outlet on Union Avenue Street in central Yangon point out their orders from a range of hundreds of dishes arranged in a hotplate display. “Here we have more than 200 dishes
so that customers can enjoy all the Burmese traditional cuisine,†Soe Nyi Nyi says, as
staff deliver curries, vegetable and soup dishes on tiny plates to the tables.
The Feel Group now has 23 branches, mostly serving Burmese fare, across the country. “I realized we need to expand as much as I can to keep our position in the market,” he says. “Competition is good for business.”
Specializing on Burmese tastes is the best way for local chains to expand, economist Aung Tun Thet says. “Demand for Burmese foods is still high as they are cheaper and more familiar to Myanmar people,” says Aung Tun Thet, Thein Sein’s former economic advisor.
“Most Myanmar people prefer fried rice to hamburgers,” he told dpa by phone. Soe Nyi Nyi knows that local preferences and habits will sustain demand for the Feel chain.
But he realises that the new spending power will bring new appetites. “Then demand for Western food or fast food will also rise,” he says. In order not to miss the opportunity, the Feel Group opened a franchise of MIX Restaurant & Bar, Bangkok’s prize-winning fusion restaurant, in Yangon in June 2015, and plans to open a US franchise restaurant soon.
“We can’t compete with
giants such as KFC, but we
have our own methods of survival,” he says, without going into detail.
