Maxim’s is taking its bakery business into Thailand.
The Dairy Farm Group subsidiary has opened its first MX Cakes & Bakery outlet in Bangkok and plans up to 100 across Thailand, in partnership with Thai Beverage subsidiary Food of Asia.
Located in the Siam Paragon shopping centre Market Hall, the 50sqm outlet marks the first MX store outside Hong Kong. It draws on a menu of “hundreds” of bakery lines.
“We plan to open 80 to 100 MX Cakes & Bakery outlets in [Thailand] by 2020 via different retail formats, which are conventional shops, on-the-go and kiosk outlets,” Nongnuch Buranasetkul, Food of Asia MD said at the opening ceremony. “They will be at many locations, including shopping malls and office buildings,”
ThaiBev, owner of Thailand’s top-selling beer Chang, mong other brands, launched Food of Asia last year in a move to diversify from its core beverage business. The Thai bakery market is growing at a rate of 7 per cent annually.
“We have seen tremendous business opportunities in Thailand, which shows a great potential for growth in the future,” Buranasetkul said.
Maxim’s group chairman and MD Michael Wu said MX Thailand marked the company’s first expansion of its own bakery brand internationally. The company does have extensive experience offshore, operating the Starbucks businesses in Vietnam and Cambodia.
“We have operated the business for 60 years, with our first dining restaurant opened in Hong Kong… and we have seen plenty of room for the future expansion of our cake and bakery business in Thailand, which will be our focus market in the initial period,” he said.