Thai President Food Plc (TPF), producer of Mama instant noodles, plans to team up with foreign partners to diversify into beverages and other food operations this year.
Chief executive Pipat Paniangvait said the company would expand into beverages and instant noodle-related businesses in the coming months.
TPF is negotiating with investors from several countries in Europe and the Middle East as well as Japan to run a restaurant chain jointly. The first restaurant is expected to open this year in Bangkok with an initial investment of 10 million baht.
The company is interested in running a Japanese restaurant rather than other types of cuisine as Thais are familiar with noodles. Japanese food is also becoming more popular here with sales growing by 15% on average a year.
"Customers like Japanese food because it is healthy. An increase in the number of health-conscious people means an opportunity for Japanese food," Mr Pipat said.
A recent survey found the highest noodle consumption in Thailand came from restaurants in shopping malls.
Kasikorn Research Center estimated the total value of the food business was 669 billion baht in 2013. Of the total, chain eateries accounted for 90 billion baht, with almost 2,000 Japanese restaurants contributing 22 billion baht.
Mr Pipat said per capita consumption of instant noodles in Thailand grew slightly to 45 packets in 2014, up from 42 in 2013.
"The instant noodle market is gradually reaching saturation point. This means we have to diversify into other food and beverage businesses to maintain our sales growth in the future," he said.
Apart from restaurants, TPF will also enter the beverage business after finding that the market in developed countries is bigger than that of instant noodles. However, it is not interested in drinking water and ready-to-drink green tea because of intense competition.
When the green tea market was booming, it had more than 30 brands. Now there are only three key brands left.
"We're interested in the beverage market because the size of non-alcohol business is as massive as 200 billion baht," Mr Pipat said.
Suchai Ratanajiacharoen, president of TPF, said the company is in talks with potential partners in Europe to jointly operate a beverage business in Thailand.
"Expanding into new business segments is very challenging this year because it's something new for an instant noodle producer like us," he said.