KUALA LUMPUR: Borneo Oil Bhd (BornOil) has plans to aggressively expand its food and beverage (F&B) business by opening 40 new Broasted by SugarBun concept kiosks around the country this year.
BornOil executive director Raymond Teo, in a recent interview, explained the group’s franchise division has targeted setting up 40 Broasted by SugarBun kiosks this year.
Of those, 20 will be in Sabah, 15 in Peninsular Malaysia and five in Sarawak.
“The management has identified several high-potential locations in various townships across Pahang, Penang, Perak and Johor to roll out the new concept kiosks and expects to open six by the second quarter of 2018,” Teo told NST Business recently.
The first Broasted by SugarBun kiosk was opened for business in Gambang, Pahang in September last year.
The food kiosk is based on a Grab-n-Go model and is a scaled-down version of its popular SugarBun restaurants.
SugarBun is one of two F&B brands associated with BornOil, the other being Prezzo.
Home-grown SugarBun is targeting middle-income entrepreneurs through this micro business concept.
Teo said this new concept offers several advantages over full-sized SugarBun restaurants and offers attractive returns.
“As the kiosk requires a smaller space (minimum 400sq ft), it is easier to secure business locations, faster to set-up and much more cost-effective.
"It is also affordable (below RM300,000) to take up a franchise for an outlet, requires less labour and has low overhead,” he said.
The kiosk concept offers a simple menu, making operations easier to manage, and ensuring quick service for customers, he added.
On the parent brand, Teo said SugarBun is looking at expanding to smaller towns where competition is less intense.
“As main cities are saturated with fast-food restaurants and good locations are hard to come by, this [move to smaller towns] will help tap the potential of a market which has not been capitalised on by fast-food operators,” Teo explained.
SugarBun currently has 92 franchised restaurants, most of them in cities and secondary towns in Sarawak. There are SugarBun outlets across Brunei, Bangladesh and Australia.
On top of that, there are currently 47 Pezzo outlets are in Malaysia, most of them located in Sarawak and Sabah.
BornOil is engaged in investment holding with interests in four segments, namely restaurant, franchising and head office operations; general trading; management and operations of properties; and oil, gas and energy-related businesses.