and two from China — have opened in the center. Each is from a different category: Cheesecake Factory (food and beverage), Anta (sports apparel) and Pop Mart (toys). On the Wednesday between Christmas and New Year, Inside Retail came to the centre to take a look at each. We found one of them to be underwhelming, one pretty much as you would expect, and the other exquisite. Can you guess which is which? Read on for our short take on each. Cheesecake Factory Cheesecake Factory opened its first restaurant in Thailand on the ground floor of Central World in December. It is located in the redeveloped northern wing that was occupied until 2020 by a seven-level Isetan department store. It is aptly placed adjacent to Shake Shack, another American casual dining palate-pleaser. Operated under license by Hong Kong’s Maxim’s Caterers, the restaurant is much as you would expect if you have dined in one of the company’s 213 restaurants in North America. Cheesecake Factory is not exactly a pioneer in experiential dining, but as restaurant chains go it is among the most famous, with numbers to prove it: the average Cheesecake Factory pulls in more than $12 million per year, well above the average for its rivals. Prices are very modest though: the average bill is $29 which is good value for its formidable portion sizes. The Bangkok restaurant menu features many of Cheesecake’s signature items in the 400-800 baht range ($10-20), tweaked slightly for the Thai palate. The restaurant opens at 11am and lunchtime on this particular day was absolutely buzzing. The company has an ambitious expansion plan: expect more of them in Thailand. Apart from the Central World unit, it operates 31 restaurants under license outside North America, in the Middle East, Mexico, mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau. Pop Mart What a beautiful store. Opened in late September it has really hit its straps. Before arriving here, Pop Mart was already well known to its devotees in Thailand for its miniature pop culture figurines. The Thai customer now gets a look firsthand at Molly, Skullpanda, Dimoo, Pucky, Crybaby, The Monsters, and more, all tidily presented in and out of their boxes. It is a compact store (approximately 170 square meters) that, even though tightly merchandised and packed out with customers, didn’t feel congested. There was a long line at the checkout. The store was easy to find on the ground floor next to Shake Shake, which is just as well because — this is annoying for a big mall that has a constant influx and exit of retailers — the Central World store directory online isn’t kept up to date. Anta While the problem with the outdated store directory wasn’t a big deal for Pop Mart, it was super-annoying for the third retailer we visited: sports apparel and footwear retailer Anta, another new entrant to Thailand from China. Anta, like Pop Mart, has been open since October and still hasn’t gotten a guernsey in the online directory. In a seven-level mall, that’s tough on the customer. And by the way, good luck trying to find it on Google Maps. Sure, there is a precinct on the third floor with a number of sports stores (which is where we went looking for, and found, Anta) but Central cannot expect every customer to do the same.  According to Statista, Anta is the number two sportswear brand in China after Nike, with a little over 20 per cent market share after having overtaken Adidas in 2022. This makes it a hugely important company in a really sports-mad country like China. Thailand likewise is on the rise as a sportswear market, yet it is the fourth country in Southeast Asia to host Anta: the company already has 84 units in the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore.  The store is ‘nice’, but underwhelming considering all the hype about the brand and the hoopla about this particular store opening. By far the most prominent displays were for the company’s running shoes that were (on the Decathlon model) presented on the display walls graduated by price, which are on the low end for athletic shoes, with the signature Anta Rocket and G21 running shoe models both priced at just under 3,000 baht (US$85). There are debates about the technology that goes into Anta’s shoes and their relative merits compared to Nike and other leading footwear brands, but purely from the standpoint of a retail store this one was not at all immersive in any sense. No customers were in the store, which was attended by one shy staffer.  Central World continues to evolve Central World has always been a bit of a puzzle, difficult to navigate, uneven in its quality and unsure of its identity. It’s like a great orchestra that puts together a decent production but never quite gels enough to create the perfect symphony. The good news though is that it is getting closer. The redevelopment of the Isetan wing has given the centre a whole new lease on life and it continues to attract the highest-profile retailers from overseas. It is something of a ‘hub’ in the middle of the downtown shopping district. To be sure though, the word ‘hub’ has become somewhat overused in Thailand. It is a favorite in the lexicon of Thai government officials, who often view their cities in terms of how they can impress the world by concentrating resources in a specialty. They want Bangkok to be a shopping and entertainment hub, Pattaya to be watersports hub, Buriram to be a motor-racing hub, and so on. Hardly a day goes by without some kind of grandiose pronouncement of this kind. Bangkok, at least, is certainly walking the talk. With the opening of Emsphere in December and the constant influx of new retail talent in centers like Central World and Iconsiam, it has arguably become the trendiest shopping destination in Southeast Asia.