PALMOILMAGAZINE, JAKARTA – Vietnam presents a promising opportunity for the food service trade. With a population exceeding 93 million and rising, along with increasing purchasing power, the country shows significant potential. Vietnam’s food service sector is divided into key segments such as full-service restaurants, cafés and bars, street food vendors, fast food outlets, and home delivery services.
In 2020, Vietnam’s food service industry generated US$ 24.62 billion, accounting for 0.7% of the global food service market.
However, the COVID-19 pandemic had a notable impact, causing a 2.8% decline in 2020, bringing the market down from US$ 25.3 billion in 2019. Despite this setback, the sector began recovering in 2021 and is expected to continue growing in the coming years.
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Rina Mariati Gustam and Muhammad Kharibi from the Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC) highlighted the rapid growth of the fast-food segment. Popular chains like KFC, one of the largest fast-food networks in Vietnam, are expanding rapidly.
“The consistent economic progress in Vietnam would be the main factor to encourage and be interesting to make multi-national scale fast-food chain. The western culture influenced and raised fast-food culture in the country. Some multinational – scale fast-food restaurants massively got more for the past years. The trend could be always increasing,” Rina Mariati Gustam and Muhammad Kharibi noted in their reports.
The increasing food consumption, out of home, and the increasing fast-food restaurants namely from the increasing work – class population, need affordable fast food. Besides, the millennial generations that want to eat within affordable budgets, also contribute to expand this sector. The fast, increasing tourism sectors also become the main factor to escalate food service – industries in Vietnam.
The foreign fast-food restaurant networks face close competition with the local ones. It happens for many consumers are fond of local taste and being cheaper. But the other brands, for instance, Jollibee, Lotteria, and KFC successfully showed better performances than the new comers, for instance, McDonald’s, Burger King, or Subway.
With the strong economic fundamentalism and the increasing people’s buying capability, food service sector in Vietnam would have the brighter prospect. The increasing economy, diet consumption, and food service – technology development would encourage this sector to expand. Even though the challenges exist, namely in competition and local preference, the big potential trade makes the country as the interesting one to invest in food service sector. (P2)
