It’s all about food today as we bring you an inside look into what’s said to be the largest supermarket chain in Thailand. And this is a company that you might be very familiar with if you frequent the food halls at Bangkok’s malls.

With operations dating back to 1996, our guest for today is Central Food Retail Company, one of the business units under Thai multinational conglomerate Central Group. 

The firm now runs supermarkets and F&B concepts in varying formats, namely: Tops Food Hall, Tops, Tops daily, Tops Online, Central Wine Cellar and Tops Eatery.

Besides that, the company also embarked on a joint venture with Japan’s drugstore chain Matsumoto Kiyoshi in 2015 to open Matsumoto Kiyoshi stores.

But why are we trying to get you hungry by speaking to Central Food Retail at this time of the day? Central Food Retail is an interesting company to talk about given how the firm announced an investment plan of 1.6 billion baht or close to S$63.2 million for 2024. 

The investment was in line with the firm’s T-O-P-S strategy to position it as a Truly World-Class Omni-Channel Food Retail player, with an aim to achieve a total of 1,000 stores by 2027. 

To this end, the firm is also doubling down on its investments in technology, having in December 2024 teamed up with Google Cloud to launch an AI-powered shopping assistant called ‘Tops Chef Bot’.  

With the investments in place, Central Food Retail aims to achieve a compound annual growth rate of 8%. But what should we know about the firm’s progress in bridging its online to offline presence? 

On Under the Radar, Money Matters’ finance presenter Chua Tian Tian posed these questions to Stephane Coum, Chief Executive Officer of Food Group, Central Retail.

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