It’s the Battle of Tanshui all over again.
In hindsight, I’m tempted to say we should have let the French win.
Guy
We’d have better sandwiches.
We’re getting them slowly through the steady growth of banh mi shops!
Guy
For my money chorizo is the best salami type thing there is. Especially the thinly sliced one. Thats the best Pizza topping.
Never had jamone but it looks like it would be awesome.
Thats where it ends though, Italian food wins besides that. Paella? Rice and left overs? No thanks!
It’s funny to see Europeans argue about food, when clearly Americans have accomplished maximum calories per lb of food and created the most addictive nutrition out there.
Though I do agree that a French-run supermarket chain is far superior to letting the locals run a shop. Just look what is happening at Pizza Hut!
It’s not just any locals—it’s Uni-President! We know what they are all about.
Guy
What?
My letter to Santa Claus had only one word: jamón.
I got Australian prosciutto. I must have done terrible things this year.
Because even Santa doesn’t do knockoffs of Italian greats.
Why would he get you Temu Prosciutto when he can get you the real thing?
Is coffee?
伊是咖啡. It was popular in the 2000s, when Star Bucks was just starting in Taiwan.
I went to the one in Guting many times.
The president of Uni-president, Lô Tì-sian (羅智先) made several comments about the future of Carrefour in the news.
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He admits the original transliteration “家樂福” is almost perfect and hard to beat, and that many decent options have already been registered, but there are four internal options for a new name, and they will announce the final decision soon.
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He said the reason to give up the Carrefour brand isn’t just because not wanting to pay royalty. It’s mostly because changes require the French company’s approval, and Uni-president feels like since pulling out of the Asian markets, the French company is not in tuned with trends in Asia, and it is hindering operations.
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He said despite closing down 4 mega Carrefours and a dozen smaller former Wellcomes, Taiwan Carrefour’s revenue hasn’t actually changed. He believe that it implies the previous store placement strategy wasn’t optimal, and involved too much human intuition.
It was always kind of black swan, but that was its charm. Sounds like data-driven operations are taking over.
Well sure I can see why there is some need to analyze the store situation.
When they took over wellcome there were suddenly carrefors everywhere. Not only that they were of varying quality.
The stores that used to be wellcome were very half assedly converted and general shit holes with half the stock of an OG carrefor market place. They probably dont need to be open 24/7 either.
Honestly I doubt thats what they are looking at though, closing down the big stores is really a miserable development.
Leaving the mega store market in one of Taiwan’s riches areas is definitely not something to shrug off of.
I wonder how much delivery is changing the grocery market here - if lots of people are getting groceries delivered, then the chains don’t need as many outlets.
It’s not something I’ve bothered with, but I’ve been surprised how often there are full grocery bags waiting in the food drop-off section of our building.
It’s quite often somewhere between cheaper and negligibly more expensive by an amount I don’t care about (like <NT$50). Uber Eats often has promotions for NT$100–200 off when you spend more than NT$800 or so, which more than offsets the delivery fee and slightly higher prices on some items.
Even for a few items from Costco, which tends to have higher delivery/service fees in Uber Eats than PX Mart or Carrefour, it still usually works out cheaper for me than taking the MRT/bus there and a taxi back, even disregarding the time aspect. The main downside is probably that I’ve stopped eating Costco hot dogs, which is perhaps more of a benefit than a downside.