Customers still desire to socialise in-person despite delivery boom: BonChon Myanmar head Troy Kozuma
He joins our upcoming event’s property panel.
Urban Kitchen Company CEO Troy Kozuma is joining the QSR Media Asia Conference & Awards as a panelist for the event’s Property Panel.
Born and raised in Honolulu, Kozuma graduated from the University of Southern California in 2013, moving to Asia shortly thereafter to pursue various business opportunities, eventually moving to Myanmar in 2014 and working in the corporate world from 2015 until the end of 2017.
In early 2018, he and a close friend acquired the master franchise license for Bonchon Chicken encompassing the entirety of Myanmar, and he has been working on the project ever since.
Other participants in the Property Panel include Dairy Queen regional director for APAC Michael Bruce and Cushman & Wakefield head of research for Southeast Asia Christine Li.
Below is a quick Q&A with Kozuma:
QSR Media: From your vantage point, how has the pandemic changed the restaurant industry?
Kozuma: Dine-in sales have been recovering and will continue to recover, however delivery sales seem to be permanently etched in our ledgers. Customers, likely for an entire generation or more, will be used to the convenience of delivery and also the dangers of a pandemic.
This is not to say that dine-in and/or "traditional" takeout will be permanently destroyed, but delivery particularly via apps will continue to play a role into the foreseeable future.
What emerging trends are you seeing at this stage? How are businesses and consumers behaving?
To echo my previous answer, we've seen that delivery continues to perform better than it did prior to March 2020, when the first COVID cases were diagnosed in our country.
While both dine-in and "traditional" takeout have mostly recovered, we've seen delivery take a larger role than it had before. Other than that, many customers still desire to socialize with one another in-person, and we continue to provide a safe and clean venue in which they may chill out and relax.
How do you imagine a post-COVID environment would look?
Based on our sales trends over the last couple of months, at least in our country I would be inclined to say that it won't look terribly different than pre-Covid. However, even if our restaurant sales grow at the same rate as before, the world around us might not necessarily be the same.
The newer generations are more digitally connected than ever, and perhaps have seen that in-person meetings are not always completely necessary. International business travel may likely see a permanent hit, and even offices as we know them may change forever.
Find out how the pandemic is reshaping the region’s restaurant landscape. Register here to join the QSR Media Asia Conference & Awards: A Virtual Event.
