Charoen Pokphand Foods Plc (CPF), the SET-listed flagship of food and agribusiness conglomerate CP Group, looks set to beef up sales of its sausage products to cash in on the ongoing trend of cooking meals at home, which has been fuelled by Covid-19.
According to Anarkawee Chooratn, the company's senior vice-president, in-house research has found that more people cooked food at home in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic.
The overall consumption of sausages at home continued to increase in the first quarter of this year, with the growth momentum expected to be maintained in the second half of 2022, she said.
"Now that a majority of people who cook at home are new-generation customers, we have developed bologna sausage products under the new CP Magic Chef brand, which makes their cooking at home more simplified and more convenient,'' she said.
CP Magic Chef bologna was made available at 7-Eleven convenience stores yesterday, and will be distributed through modern retail chains from Aug 8.
The firm will spend 10 million baht on marketing to promote its new CP Magic Chef sausage products. It has hired Sahadol "Pond'' Tantrapim from MasterChef Thailand Season 3 to be the face of the product in order to reach younger customers.
To access a wider group of consumers, the company has also teamed up with Dak Galbi, a South Korean food chain, to develop Kimbap, a Korean dish made from cooked rice and ingredients such as vegetables, fish, and meats that are rolled in gim -- dried sheets of seaweed -- and served in bite-sized slices, with CP Magic Chef bologna used as an ingredient. There are currently 500 Dak Galbi restaurants and Galbi X Korean street food outlets in Thailand.
"We believe the popularity of Extraordinary Attorney Woo, the ongoing South Korean television series, will help attract more people to Korean-style Kimbap dishes with CP Magic Chef bologna as an ingredient,'' she said.
Ms Anarkawee said CP Magic Chef bologna is unlikely to cannibalise the existing CP Delight sausage product line because of different target customers and prices.
In addition to bologna products, the firm plans to roll out five new meat protein products under CP Magic Chef during the rest of this year. The move is expected to boost overall sales of CP bologna sausages by 12-13% this year.