Loob Holding Sdn Bhd, fresh from its acquisition of a strategic stake in market-leading kombucha brand WonderBrew last year, is partnering Singapore-based food tech company TiffinLabs to bring several of their new virtual restaurant brands into Malaysia.
This collaboration will eventually see Loob deploying up to 100 kitchens to introduce TiffinLabs’ virtual restaurant brands into the Malaysian market.
TiffinLabs is a global food service platform that creates and owns virtual restaurant brands that enables 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 top regional lifestyle tea brand, Tealive, and Malaysia’s most-delivered 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 in Singapore. Among them are La Takorea (created on The Apprentice: One Championship Edition), RBL Burgers, Phat Fingers Korean Fried Chicken, Publico Italian Kitchen, and Southern Soul Fried Chicken.
“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,” said Bryan Loo, founder and CEO of Loob.
Loo pledged to deploy the company’s resources to set up 100 kitchens across its various brands gradually 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 added.
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 trail-blazing record in the highly-competitive 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 fully capture the rapidly growing food delivery demand,” he said.
He looks forward to unleashing the 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 to also 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% while continuing to focus on regaining dine-in volumes,” he added.