Fast Food Slow to Arrive in Cambodia
Jul 4th, 2007 by Jinja
It’s always the bad news that gets front-paged about Cambodia. Genocide, land mines, prostitution, smuggling. Forget the fact that there’s some great food.
That said, I nearly fell off my moto when I first saw a Khmer driver wearing a ‘Café Society’ t-shirt. (Fresco‘s a Western restaurant that seems to be edging out Java as the popular breakfast spot for Nonprofit Directors.) When I think ‘Café Society’ I think San Francisco, Paris, the coffee shops of Vietnam, but not The Big Sawmaw.
I’m all for Cambodia contrasting Cafés with Killing Fields, anything to put a different spin on the old clichés. Fresco’s ‘premium’ coffee is a bit pricey for local folks who start off their day with pork & rice or a kuy tiew. To me it indicates that while Phnom Penh is getting more prosperous as a city, it puts even greater distance between itself and Planet Countryside. Is Posh Penh trying to become Bangkok?
Beg, borrow or steal today’s Cambodia Daily for “Fast Food Giants Still Holding Off on Cambodia”, a fine article that touches on the global and the quotidian. (Alas, the article will not appear online anytime soon. www.cambodiadaily.com updates very infrequently.)
It’s hard to escape McDonald’s, Burger King, Pizza Hut and other chain stores in the USA. Why aren’t they in Cambodia? Is it that there isn’t enough high grade local produce? That there isn’t sufficient consumer demand? Or are multinationals concerned about political stability?
I’m not enthused about the uniformity of franchises, and their tactics to squeeze out small business competitors. But if there were more companies like Black Canyon Coffee and The Pizza Company here, it would be a positive indicator of how international investors perceive Cambodia’s financial stability.
For Cambodians? Branded restaurants are upscale, novelty food. And the demand is there, so much so that some pseudo-franchises have been ‘cloned’ – ‘Pizza Hot’, ‘BB World’.
If Vietnam can internationalize with Trung Nguyen coffee, it’s not impossible to imagine that there could be a food franchise coming from Cambodia someday. It probably won’t be ‘Happy Pizza’ though.
Tags: Cambodia, food, marketing, globalization, glocalization
Don’t forget the Dairy Queen at the airport. How do you think that wound up there?
The DQ has been here for a while (and was mentioned in the Daily) but never ventured out of the international jurisdiction of Pochentong Airport.
http://detailsaresketchy.wordpress.com/2006/10/27/serving-justice/