Shops profit from snack deliveries to office workers

Selling cakes to serve demand for snacks has become a profitable business in HCM City. Hundreds of snack shops have blossomed in the city and their main clients are office workers.

The snack market for office workers has grown with brands like Gbread, anvat4h, or Bloom. When someone needs food, they can call for delivery call. Cream cakes, breads, fried fish balls, goi (a dish made of raw fish and vegetables) or fruit can be ordered with a single call.

Chewy Junior from Singapore is one of the most popular brands in HCM City. The shop targets office workers in Districts 1 and 3.

Mai Truong Giang, Business Director of Chewy Junior, remarked that “We now have more than 25 kinds of cake and we target office workers who have incomes of over four million dong a month.” When asked about revenue, he responded that sales have been very satisfactory, running about 12 million dong per day and having grown 30 percent after just nine months of operation.

Nguyen Huynh Duc, Representative of Gbread shop, agreed that revenue of delivery sales is three million dong a day, much higher than in-shop sales.

While some establishments search for advantageous retail sites to attract business easily, others locate their shops on small alleys to save expenses and then follow the model of the ‘online shop’. Nguyen Thi Hang Nga, the owner of Bloom online, decided to open an online shop to keep expenses down.

According to Giang, office workers nowadays tend to eat foreign food. Different kinds of foreign-sourced cakes that fit Vietnamese people’s taste may gradually replace traditional foods on snack menus.

Customers normally wait for delivery just 20-30 minutes. With bills of 100,000 dong or more, snack foods can be delivered in the inner city free of charge. Callers from other areas will be charged delivery fees of 15,000-30,000 dong.

Duc observed that loyal customers enjoy discounts of 5-15 percent. If they reduce their regular number of orders, the shop will check in with them to ask for comments.

According to a real estate company, in Districts 1 and 3 of HCM City alone, there are 99 buildings with four or more storys, plus big office buildings like Sunwar Tower, Metropolitan, each of which has more than 3000 office workers. Statistically-speaking, if a US cake that is expected to appear in HCM City by the end of July is priced at 30-40,000 dong, a big building can bring revenue as high as 100 million dong per day.

As the snack market has become very attractive, many foreign brands have entered, including KFC, Pizza Hut and Lotteria.

Some Vietnamese bakeries are uninterested in delivering. Do Manh Cuong, Manager of ABC cake shop, does not think of selling by phone. Another big brand company noted that, as they offer hundreds of kinds of cakes, it is difficult to sell them over the phone.

Tags: Vietnam retail market