双语新闻：越南风味快餐店大放光芒
In Vietnam, Fast Food Acts Global, Tastes LocalHo Chi Minh City, Vietnam -- Homegrown Vietnamese fast-food companies are using Western branding techniques to grab a chunk of the country's fast-growing consumer market before U.S. heavyweights like McDonald's Corp. can sink their teeth into it.
After North Vietnamese troops marched into this city in 1975, then-21-year-old Tran Kim Thanh was ordered from his family's baking-supplies store. He was sent to work kneading buns and baguettes for the newly united Communist country at a state-owned bakery. Today, Vietnam is racing to embrace capitalism, and Mr. Thanh's Kinh Do Foods Corp. has become one of the country's biggest consumer companies, with a market capitalization of around $400 million. The company, which is publicly traded on Vietnam's stock exchange, is backed by investors including Citigroup Inc., Britain's Prudential Insurance PLC and one of Singapore's sovereign-wealth funds.
Kinh Do's distinctive red and yellow stores -- which sell specialties like dried-squid buns -- have become iconic symbols of the commercialization of everyday life in modern Vietnam.
'Vietnam is integrating with the rest of the world, and we have a very short learning curve to climb if we are to be ready to compete with foreign companies when they come here,' says Mr. Thanh, who also goes by the name of Paul Tan. Since launching his fast-food chain in 1993, he has expanded his empire to include shopping malls. Soon, he plans to start a business offering consumer loans for household appliances and motorcycles.
'We want to be ready for McDonald's,' says Ly Quy Trung, the Australian-educated founder of a noodle soup chain named Pho 24, after Vietnam's fragrant 'pho' noodle dish.
Like Kinh Do, Pho 24 has spread out across the length of Vietnam. Pho 24 is now expanding overseas, serving up its steaming beef and chicken broth in the Philippines, Singapore and South Korea, and Mr. Trung is aiming at the British and U.S. markets.
Kinh Do and Pho 24 won't be going head-to-head with U.S. chains like McDonald's or Starbucks Corp. just yet. Officials at both U.S. companies say that for now they have no plans to enter the Vietnamese market. McDonald's spokesman Liam Jeory says the company is focusing in extending its business in India and China. Yum Brands Inc.'s KFC restaurants opened its first Vietnamese outlet in 1998. Company officials regard the country as a potential growth market. Its network is so far limited to 44 stores, compared with 306 in nearby Thailand.
Next year, Vietnam will face pressure to make it easier for foreign fast-food stores and retailers to open up shop under the terms of the country's entry into the World Trade Organization in 2007, which required Vietnam to allow foreign companies access to the service sector without having to create cumbersome joint-venture arrangements with local partners.
The titans of Western consumer culture will eventually find their way to Vietnam, businesspeople here predict, drawn by the country's quickly urbanizing population. Instead of planting and tilling rice fields, many Vietnamese now work in factories and often spend their free time in shopping malls. About half the population of Ho Chi Minh City's sprawling suburbs consists of recent migrants who have left farms to work in new manufacturing industries. This influx has swollen the population of the southern city once known as Saigon to about 10 million, from roughly six million in 2000, city officials say.
Vietnam's economy has expanded by an average of 7.5% over the same period, making it one of the fastest-growing in the world. Average per capita income among Vietnam's 84 million people increased to almost $900 last year from $600 in 2005.
'We hope to cater to this new urban population by building shopping malls, food courts and everything they need for life in the city,' says Mr. Thanh. As people move to the city, they have less time and less space in which to prepare meals themselves and often prefer to do their shopping and eating in the same place, he explains. 'That's where we fit in,' Mr. Thanh says.
Countrywide branding was a key element in Mr. Thanh's plans when he created Kinh Do with $125,000 he scraped together from relatives and a local bank. 'Right from the beginning we established a marketing and public-relations department,' he says.
Like many other entrepreneurs here, Mr. Thanh closely studied the success of the Jollibee Foods Corp. burger chain, which outsells McDonald's in the Philippines, by tailoring its sandwiches to local tastes and copying the U.S. chain's colorful, standardized decor for its stores. Mr. Thanh still tours his restaurants throughout the country, making sure the staff is properly turned out in red-and-yellow uniforms and that the chain's sandwiches and sticky buns meet his standards. To help maintain quality, Kinh Do uses centralized warehouses to store goods before sending them out along its own distribution chain. Mr. Thanh also has invested heavily in television advertising, especially after buying the Wall's ice cream brand from the local unit of Unilever PLC, renaming it Kido and selling it through Kinh Do bakery outlets.
Mr. Trung says he was influenced by McDonald's when he started Pho 24 in 2003. The Pho 24 outlets, designed in brushed concrete and steel, attract both businesspeople having informal lunch meetings and teenagers spending their parents' cash. The author of two books in Vietnamese on branding, Mr. Trung says it is important to recruit a young, professional work force to staff the Pho 24 restaurants, which offer table service, to underscore its break with Vietnam's traditional, family-run, roadside noodle shops. 'There's no room for an auntie or uncle sitting in the corner counting the money,' he says.
越南风味快餐店大放光芒
越南的消费市场正在快速发展，当地的快餐企业正用西方的品牌理论将自己武装起来，以赶在麦当劳(McDonald's Corp.)等实力雄厚的美国同行开足马力扩张前抢先占领市场。
在北越军队1975年攻占胡志明市后，当时21岁的陈金成(Tran Kim Thanh)便被迫离开自家的面包店，到一家国有面包厂干揉面包的活。如今的越南又向资本主义敞开了大门，陈金成的京都食品加工集团(Kinh Do Foods Corp.)已成为越南最大的消费品企业，并在越南的股票交易所上市，市值达到4亿美元左右。该公司的投资者包括花旗集团(Citigroup Inc.)、Prudential Insurance PLC和一家新加坡的主权财富基金。
该公司红黄色调的店面装潢别具一格，其出售的鱿鱼乾面包也独具风味，并已成为商业化深入越南人日常生活的标志。
陈金成（英文名为Paul Tan）称，越南正在与世界其他地区接轨，在外国公司进入越南之前，越南企业只剩下很少的时间来做好与外企竞争的准备。他在1993年靠连锁快餐店起家，后来又经营购物中心。他还打算在不久的将来经营家用电器和摩托车的消费贷款业务。
越南河粉连锁店Pho 24的创办人Ly Quy Trung曾在澳大利亚接受过教育。他表示，我们要做好与麦当劳争天下的准备。
与京都集团一样，Pho 24的连锁店也已经覆盖越南全国，并正在向海外扩张。如今在菲律宾、新加坡和韩国，都可以品尝到该公司香喷喷的牛肉和鸡肉河粉。Ly Quy Trung现在还计划向英国和美国市场进军。
不过京都集团和Pho 24与麦当劳、星巴克(Starbucks Corp.)等美国连锁店同台竞争的局面暂时还不会出现。后两者均表示，目前尚无计划进军越南市场。麦当劳发言人利安.杰瑞(Liam Jeory )称，公司目前的业务扩张重点是印度和中国。不过Yum Brands Inc.旗下的肯德基(KFC)早在1998年就在越南开设了第一家快餐店。该公司认为越南是个潜在的增长市场。不过肯德基目前在越南的连锁店数量仍只有44家，相比之下在泰国有306家。
明年越南将面临向外国快餐店和零售企业进一步开放其国内市场的压力。根据越南2007年加入世界贸易组织(World Trade Organization)的规定，越南要取消外资必须与本地合作伙伴合资方可进入本国服务业的限制。
身在越南的商人们预言，代表西方消费文化的商业巨头在城市化迅速推进的吸引下，终有一天会找到途径进入这块市场。如今许多越南人已不再靠种地为生，他们到工厂工作，并靠逛商场来打发业余时间。胡志明市杂乱无章的城乡结合部居住著大批离开农村到新兴制造业打工的移民。据该胡志明市的官员称，由于农村人口的涌入，该市人口已从2000年的600万激增至1,000万左右。
越南经济在此期间以年均7.5%的速度增长，是全球经济增长最快的国家之一。其人均年收入也从2005年的600美元增加到去年的将近900美元。
陈金成表示，我们希望通过建设购物中心、食品店和这些新城市人口日常所需的一切来迎合他们的需要。这些人在搬到城市后，自己做饭的时间和空间都随之减少，他们往往喜欢在同一地点购物和用餐。这便为公司提供了业务切入点。
陈金成当年靠著用关系和银行贷款筹集来的12.5万美元创办了京都集团，打造全国品牌是他创业的关键所在。他表示，公司创建伊始便成立了营销和公关部门。
像诸多其他企业一样，陈金成也仔细研究了一番快乐蜂(Jollibee Foods Corp.)的成功史。后者是菲律宾的一家汉堡连锁店，依靠口味本地化和效仿麦当劳采用色彩明亮、标准化的店面装修而取得成功。该公司在菲律宾的生意之好甚至超过了麦当劳。陈金成现在仍坚持考察公司遍布越南的连锁店，以确信员工穿著公司红黄色调的制服时不走样，以及店里出售的三明治和面包符合他的要求。为了确保质量，京都集团实现了集中化库存，并建立起自己的派送队伍。此外，陈金成还在电视广告上投入大笔资金，特别是在收购合利华公司(Unilever PLC)一家当地下属企业的冰激凌品牌──和路雪(Wall's)后。后来京都集团将这个品牌改成“Kido”，并通过自己的连锁面包店销售。
而Ly Quy Trung称，他2003年创办Pho 24是受到麦当劳的影响。Pho 24连锁店采用了富有现代气息的设计风格，商务人士喜欢在此边吃边谈，年轻人也喜欢到这用餐。Ly Quy Trung在越南先后写过两本关于品牌的书。他表示，重要的一点在于要为连锁店招聘年轻而专业的店员，以此突出Pho 24与越南传统的家庭路边河粉店的不同。他说道：“我们可不是哪种老板或老板娘站在一边数钱的小店”。 还有点想去越南玩玩
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