KUALA LUMPUR: Following its strategic acquisition of WonderBrew last year, Loob Holding Sdn Bhd is teaming up with Singapore-based food tech company TiffinLabs to bring several of their new virtual restaurant brands to Malaysia.
This collaboration will eventually see Loob deploying up to 100 kitchens to introduce TiffinLabs' virtual restaurant brands into the Malaysian market.
"We're a regional player specialising in the premium quick-service segment, and working with TiffinLabs to launch their delivery-optimised virtual restaurant brands in our kitchens is a good fit into our corporate plans," Loob founder and chief executive officer Bryan Loo said in a statement today.
Loo pledged to gradually deploy the company's resources to set up 100 kitchens across its various brands over the next few years.
"Our team has short-listed several locations where our kitchens will soon offer these virtual restaurant brands.
"We will also decide, jointly with TiffinLabs, which brands to roll out first," he said.
TiffinLabs is a global food service platform that creates and owns virtual restaurant brands that enable food and beverage (F&B) operators and food ingredient producers to capture the fast-growing food delivery services segment through its proprietary virtual restaurant brands.
It will make its debut in Malaysia through this collaboration with Loob, the owner of the top regional lifestyle tea brand, Tealive, and virtual coffee brand, Bask Bear.
TiffinLabs has developed over 20 virtual restaurant brands across cuisine types, currently serving consumers across four states in the United States and Singapore.
Among them are La Takorea, RBL Burgers, Phat Fingers Korean Fried Chicken, Publico Italian Kitchen, and Southern Soul Fried Chicken.
Loo said the Malaysian market is ripe for such virtual restaurant brands as people have come a long way from pre-pandemic days, with everyone accepting delivered food as the norm now.
TiffinLabs' co-founder and president for Southeast Asia Phuminant Tantiprasongchai said Loob was an ideal launch partner, as evident from its lifestyle tea segment.
"We have seen how Loob has grown its Tealive brand to more than 700 stores in under five years, and it's now the undisputed market leader in Malaysia.
"We see many opportunities in combining Tealive's depth of market understanding and penetration with our expertise of developing and growing delivery-first virtual restaurant brands to capture the rapidly growing food delivery demand fully," he said.
He looks forward to synergies of the two companies through this collaborative partnership and will also begin introducing halal-certified plant-based protein products as part of the menu to serve the rapidly-growing alternative protein segment.
"At TiffinLabs, we create and scale delivery-optimised virtual restaurant brands curated by our world-leading culinary team and proprietary food trend analytics engine."
"With Loob as our major launch partner, we envision our virtual restaurant brands and solutions also to be licensed to other Malaysian F&B businesses and operators, particularly in the SME space, to boost their delivery revenues from food delivery by 200-300 per cent while continuing to focus on regaining dine-in volumes," he added.