Tao Heung 稻香

A Message from the Chairman

Chinese are renowned for their appreciation of good food. They frequently dine out at restaurants and demand excellence in cooking and use of high-quality ingredients. Restaurants are also where Chinese regularly gather to mingle and socialise, making them an essential constituent in the famous Chinese ‘yum cha’ culture.

Tao Heung Group has not only built its business on this dining culture, but has taken it in new and exciting directions. With in-depth experience and knowledge of the local markets, Tao Heung Group has introduced innovative marketing strategies, modern management techniques and stringent quality standards. These innovations have brought remarkable success to Tao Heung Group over the years, helping it emerge as a market leader with a loyal customer base and attracting to it strategic investors who brought significant synergies.

At the same time as Tao Heung Group continues to expand, it is laying the foundations for achieve its next strategic objective: to become one of the most esteemed and premier Chinese restaurant groups in Hong Kong and China, recognised for innovation and its capabilities to provide high quality food and restaurant service that promise customers exceptional dining experiences.

The restaurants
A diverse multi-brand restaurant experience

Since 1991 and up until now, Tao Heung has built a network of more than 112 restaurants in Hong Kong and Southern China. These restaurants are at prime locations hence enjoy high customer flows and draw patronage of primarily affluent middle-end diners. Tao Heung adopts a successful multi-brand strategy, with 18 key brands under the Tao Heung Group. Each brand represents a unique dining style and targets a specific clientele or dining preference. As such, they can profitably co-exist in popular dining areas. Tao Heung Group’s restaurant brands are also differentiated by their fine style and décor, including staff uniforms, tableware and interior decoration.

Tao Heung Group has innovative and effective marketing strategies that have helped to capture new customers for its restaurants and reinforce the different brands in the public mind. Its speciality restaurants, for example, its Chung’s Cuisine restaurant is popular for its “no MSG, no artificial colour ingredient” promise.

Tao Heung Group’s rapid growth and popularity in the competitive restaurant industry is founded on the following key factors.

Pioneer in industry
Leading innovation in a traditional business

Tao Heung Group is amongst the very few Chinese restaurants that operate its own centralized food processing and logistics centre supported by laboratory testing facilities. In 2007, Tao Heung is in the process of opening another food processing and logistics centre in Dongguan, across the border in Mainland China. The Dongguan Centre will provide food production and processing services of a broader range and in bigger scale than the Tai Po Centre to Tao Heung's restaurants in Hong Kong and China. It is supported by advanced laboratory testing and food preparation facilities, cold storage compartments, vacuum packaging machines and cold-storage vehicles to facilitate timely delivery of ingredients, etc.

Apart from the Dongguan Centre, Tao Heung Group 's centralised food processing and logistics centre in Tai Po, moved from Fo Tan and commenced operation in January 2011. Approximately, its gross area is 19,000 sq.m. It enables Tao Heung Group to standardise and control all the essential parts of the food preparation process, thus contributing to the high quality of products. The Tai Po Centre purchases in bulk, meaning it has strong bargaining power in securing high quality ingredients at competitive prices. What's more, with operations from purchasing, food processing to quality checking, packaging and distribution all under one roof, Tao Heung Group boasts tremendous operational efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

Commitment to Quality
Tao Heung Group’s quality commitment covers every aspect of its operations, particularly those in relation to products, services and the environment of its restaurants.

The Tai Po Centre is equipped with an ERP system to closely monitor every stage of the food preparation process. The Fo Tan Centre also operates an advanced food testing laboratory to analyse and check food samples for consistency of quality and flavour.

Tao Heung Group designed its quality recognition and management systems based on the pioneering 5-S management system. With specified quality standards and procedures to follow, optimum efficiency is guaranteed in every aspect of Tao Heung Group’s restaurant operations, including the sourcing and processing of ingredients, hygiene standards, staff training and daily management.

As an extra quality safeguard, Tao Heung Group carries out in-house internal audits and employs the service of external consultants to conduct the ‘mysterious shoppers’ program and customer satisfaction surveys regularly to maintain quality of its food, services and the environment.

With the spirit of pursuing food safety, Chung's Cuisine in Kowloon Bay of the Group has been the first Chinese Restaurant certified ISO 22000 by Hong Kong Quality Assurance Agency (HKQAA) in 2008, which proved the practice of the food safety management system in Tao Heung Group.

The people
People with passion

Tao Heung Group has an experienced and market-savvy management team. Most of Tao Heung Group’s Executive Directors have over 20 years of experience in the Chinese restaurant industry. Other members of its senior management team possess a wealth of experience in corporate, strategic, financial, logistics and business management. Together, they hold a remarkable track record, which is characterised by consistent growth in Tao Heung Group’s operations and profitability in recent years.

Tao Heung Group understands quality staff is critical to its success. Committed to nurturing the expertise and passion of its staff members, Tao Heung Group adopts a people-based philosophy in staff management and development. Tao Heung Group puts all new recruits through a two-day in-house training program, and periodically offers its frontline service staff and chefs a range of training and development options to equip them with the latest knowledge and skills. Complemented by an internal promotion examination scheme, it boasts a staff incentive system that ensures delivery of top-quality products and services.

The skills of a chef are what different superb dishes from mediocre ones, and Tao Heung Group ensures it has the best chefs on board to brace its good reputation in the food and beverage industry. In order to keep up product quality and inherit the craftsmanship of the masters, the “The Unconventional Chef” program is conducted in 2005. This program not only unified provisions quantity and production procedures, but also standardized the products of the Group. The knowledge, craft and wisdom of the production section became systematic and popularized, craftsmanship is hence transferable and staff properly trained. With the “The Unconventional Chef” program, the Group won the Gold Prize of Excellence in Training in the Award for Excellence in Training organized by Hong Kong Management Association in 2007and the Group was awarded Excellence in Practice Award by American Society for Training & Development in the subsequent year. Besides, to encourage pursuit of excellence among its chefs, Tao Heung encourages them to participate in cooking competitions and develop new dishes to keep its menus afresh. Tao Heung chefs have won many prizes and awards in recent years.

Continuous Development
Develop with various new challenges

Building on its winning formula combining quality and innovation, Tao Heung Group is looking to increase the number of restaurants in Hong Kong and China in the next few years. At the same time, it will continue to renovate and upgrade its existing restaurants.

In order to further improve the corporate governance, Tao Heung Group has been listed in the Main Board of The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited in June 2007, with the Stock Code: 573.

In the future, Tao Heung Group will leverage on its strengths to capture enormous opportunities arising from ongoing economic growth in the Greater China region. With the new 45,000 sq.m. Dongguan Centre up and running, Tao Heung now has boosted resources to support business expansion in Southern China laden with potential. Capable of supporting the food processing requirements of up to 200 restaurants, the Donnguan Centre also gives Tao Heung Group the option of providing food processing services to other corporations and catering operators in Hong Kong, China, and the overseas Chinese communities. Selling pachaged and frozen food products in supermarkets may also be another potential source of income. In other words, Tao Heung Group has a strong platform to diversify its business and achieve sustainable growth in the long run.