What Is a Thai Express franchise?
Our Thai food QSR concept delivers popular, affordable and delicious foods to an eager, wide-open market
Thai Express franchise is an Asian restaurant franchise that provides made-to-order Thai cuisine with fresh ingredients, quickly cooked in front of customers while they wait. A vibrant environment, simple menu of more than 300 individual dish options, and inviting customer service took Thai Express from a humble five stores to hundreds of locations in Canada in just 12 years. Now, we’re bringing Thai Express to the U.S. market.
“This is a first-to-market QSR restaurant unlike any other,” says John Wuycheck, Sr. Vice President of Development for Kahala Brands. “Thai Express is a well-tested model with a long performance history to back it up, and we are introducing it to a new, untapped market with tremendous growth potential. When customers visit Thai Express, they’ll be amazed by what they find.”
Think about the last time you ate in an Asian QSR restaurant. Approaching the counter, you saw a steam table filled with cooked meals of varying degrees of quality. Customers have no way of knowing how long before their visit, those foods were prepared, let alone what ingredients went into each dish. That’s not the case with a Thai Express franchise. Customers watch as a skilled cook selects ingredients from a cold table, and then cooks their dish while they wait, delivering to them a beautiful, flavorful and authentic Thai dish in as little as a minute and a half.
Food theatre meets fast food, and customers know they’re getting a quality meal. Chef’s Pencil did the math, and Thai food ranks 4th in popularity for ethnic foods on Google. The Washington Post points out that most of that — more than 90% in fact — come from mom-and-pop restaurants2. In the U.S., though, roughly half of all Asian food sales come from chains. Thai food chains exist, but they follow the table model. No other Thai food chain provides the made-to-order experience quite like Thai Express.
Our Thaï food restaurant combines the best of several worlds — a fast food QSR restaurant, made to order authentic dishes, and a pent-up demand for Thaï cuisine. All the while, you benefit from being the first-to-market with a brand that has explosive potential in a high-demand market segment, while also enjoying the tried-and-tested concepts, dishes and branding that are usually reserved for legacy QSR brands.
Why a Thai Express Franchise is a great investment opportunity
Experts from across the QSR industry agree: Asian food is exploding in popularity, including Thai food. Yet finding authentic Thai typically requires customers to visit fine-dining style mom-and-pop restaurants, where customers pay more and visit less because it’s expensive. Thai Express customers visit more frequently, because our food is wholesome, fresh and affordable.
We make eating Thaii an affordable option for all customers for roughly the same cost of a value meal at one of the burger chains, all the while offering sit-down quality food at an affordable price in an approachable yet trendy environment. One of the biggest benefits of owning a Thaï Express franchise is that we’ve tested each dish, all of our processes and procedures, and every aspect of business operations to great effect in the Canadian market. From controlling food and labor costs to providing a popular product, Thaii Express franchise is a great opportunity to enter a market with tremendous growth potential.
The core of our business lies in the simple complexity of Thai Express’s cuisine. That may sound like a contradiction, but consider: the Thai Express menu features just ten dish choices, yet through various options ranging from spice level to choice of protein, those ten dishes yield a staggering 300+ individual dishes.
“The menu is so simple, yet it’s incredibly diverse,” says Dennis Ng, Thai Express Brand Vice President for MTY Group in Canada. “Customers can come back multiple times a week over the course of an entire year and never once have the same dish. Yet, the menu is not overwhelming with options. There are only those ten core dishes.”
A Thai Express franchise builds a repeat clientele quickly
This is precisely what multi-unit owner Sami Haddad sees in the Laval, Quebec, store he owns and operates. He has a host of regulars who know his face, greet him by name, and visit his stores more than once a week. One trend he particularly appreciates is that Thai Express appeals to a wide audience and attracts a more diverse clientele than other QSR brands.
With so many options on the menu, customers are surprised by how approachable Thai cuisine can be. They see the dish on the menu, they order their dish and customize it to their liking, and then they come back to try different variations of the same.
Training and support you need to grow
You don’t have to hire Thai cooks to prepare the food at Thai Express. Our training programs can make a gifted chef out of any candidate, taking the guesswork out of making delicious, consistent Thai cuisine.
“You don’t have to be a chef,” Sami says. “They teach you how to make every dish, how to prep your kitchen, and how to work the business systems. If you follow the systems, you will grow.”
Each franchisee receives advanced training in food preparation and customer service. Then, after completing the training, our expert support staff tests them on their knowledge and skill. Before you leave our training kitchen, you’ll know how to make each and every dish on our menu, how to plate it in an appealing fashion, and how to describe those dishes to the customer.
We provide similar training for business systems, where we teach you how to manage your inventory, review your books, and maximize revenues. When challenges arise, we provide additional training and resources to help keep you up to speed and performing at your absolute best. And it’s all backed up by some of the most unique and recognizable marketing and branding in Asian cuisine today.
“We work with the franchisees to make sure they understand the ins and outs of their business before they open,” says Tim Le, development director for MTY Group in Canada. Tim oversees the training program for each new Thai Express franchisee, and her enthusiasm for our brand and the people who make it successful is infectious. “With our training and support, anyone can own and operate a thriving Thai Express.”
Bring a Thai Express franchise to your community today
Be the first to market with your own Thai Express location, and you can experience what Sami has seen in his own stores — a loyal clientele, a time-tested product and brand, and a powerful system — all part of what makes Thai Express a great opportunity.
Investment costs range from $454,050 to $846,700, depending on the model you choose and location costs, which make Thai Express a remarkably affordable entry into a potentially huge growth market. Learn more about owning a Thai Express today.
1 The Washington Post, Asian food: The fastest growing food in the world
2 Chef’s Pencil, Most Popular Ethnic Cuisines in America According to Google
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