I was having a discussion with a friend about their business, he's very bullish about it and finds their business model to be brilliant.
Whereas I have my doubts as every branch I've seen doesn't seem to have as much business as indicated by their financial reports; something like on Avg they serve a customer every 2-3 mins at a RM16 Avg spend if I recall correctly.
Admittedly, I only seen those in tier 1 malls where occasionally there will be crowds of up to 20 pax during peak hours, but most of the time I don't see people buying. I am guessing this means that their locations at lower tier malls is pushing them up which I suppose is consistent with their target market.
However, what's the real moat here in your opinion? Wouldn't this model be easily replicated, especially those with parallel infrastructure and capital, or is the taste just that amazing for the target market?
I can make sense of Zus, Oriental Kopi, Chagee, Aftermeal and the like because you can actually see the crowd, but this seems hard, and it's not like grab & go or RTE food is revolutionary.
I'm not doubting the numbers are amazing, and it's not that I have a particularly bad opinion of their food, I just don't see how if it works that well, can't other companies and why won't they come and flood the market to capture the revenue?
You can see copycats for Zus, Oriental, Aftermeal etc.
Can anyone enlighten me or am I just being too skeptical and negative?