April 26, 2024

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[THE INVERTOR] Korean chicken franchise restaurant Goobne announced on Oct. 13 that it has opened a seventh outlet in Hong Kong.

The new Tseung Kwan O branch was launched last month and is located in a residential area.

“We are doing well in Hong Kong. The first store in Tsim Sha Tsui alone showed over 400 million won (US$ 354,170.36) in sales monthly last year,” a company spokesperson said.

Opening the new store in Hong Kong is part of firm’s strategy to focus on profitable markets as it is suffering in mainland China amid prolonged diplomatic tension between Beijing and Seoul over the deployment of THAAD missile system.

“We had two branches in China, but now we are left with one in Suzhou,” the company spokesperson said. “Our store in China is not very profitable.”

It is not only Goobne that was hit by the THAAD woes. BBQ, another major chicken franchise which has more than 150 stores in China, also said in May that it couldn’t open another store in China as its local partner refused to invest anymore in Korean firms.

Goobne currently has 11 stores in Japan, Hong Kong, Macau and China, and its monthly sales overseas reached 1.5billion won on average this year. Sales in Hong Kong accounted for around 1.3 billion won of the total foreign sales.

By Song Seung-hyun (ssh@heraldcorp.com)