Steena Joy – Mumbai
CPF India, a subsidiary of Thailand-based CP Foods (Charoen Pokphand Foods) which operates the Five Star Chicken small-format quick-serve retail chain, is looking at the India market aggressively and is aiming at a 30 to 40 per cent increase in outlets (around 300 to 400 outlets) in the next few years. Speaking to Food & Hospitality World, Sanjeev Pant, senior vice-president, CP Foods, said, “We are looking at growing our food business in India and Vietnam. CP Foods, a part of the diversified CP Group, is a Thai multi-national conglomerate with US$ 35 billion businesses in agro-industry and food, retail and telecommunications. In India, the markets we are looking at are Maharashtra, Nashik, Pune, Ahmednagar, among others. We already have 240 outlets, mostly in south India across Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Goa.”
Pant added, “For our chicken supply, we use contract poultry farmers who only work with us through a formal agreement. We provide them with the chicks and they will raise them to our standards and then we buyback from them. We even supply the chicken feed which is manufactured by our own feed mills. We have seven feed mills in India, the newest one opened in Ahmednagar three months ago.”
Elaborating on the market strategy, Pant stated that the brand uses a small footprint format. “A high format model incurs huge overheads which consumers have to bear. In a small footprint format, the rentals are lower, so are manpower costs (even three people can run a store). We want to go where the middle class lives. Our target is the young population of India thats why we want to keep our price points low. We have the backward integration because of our feed mills so that helps us pass on the benefits to our consumers. We also plan to tweak the products to suit tastes and local palates.”
The brand is looking at Turkey for expanding internationally as it already has a feed farm there.
