Kuantan

Hannah is in London for World Travel Market.

I'm about to head out to Kuantan on the east coast of Malaysia for the 5th World Islamic Tourism Conference where I'll be moderating a panel entitled The Middle East Geopolitical Outlook, Navigating Uncertainty and Converting Regional Vulnerability into Long-Term Tourism Differentiation.

We've got an excellent panel, including the Senior Director of International Promotions at Tourism Malaysia.

We've got the Bureau Chief of Al Jazeera and the founder of the Hyatt Group from Japan.

Clang Valley, okay, let's assume we can take seven, eight outlets.

Then the rest will be where? You need to go to areas like Alostar, Kota Baru, Kuantan, Melaka, Johor.

These are the areas that you want to reach and you want to touch people there.

Then people say, kopitiam, Arang is the real deal.

because the brand is now quite entrenched over in the East Coast and we've managed to secure some decent locations.

So where are your most dense areas right now? Are we talking Kuantan further up? Oh, it's actually Kelantan.

You know, Kelantan is a very special place for us because it was the first state in the East Coast that we opened up a store, right? And since starting this business, I've open up stores in places that I've never ever heard of before.

So we're going deep into the heart of the rural areas of Malaysia.

Yeah.

No, I, I was from Kuantan, actually.

You're from Kuantan?

Yeah, I was.

I'm from Kuantan.

What? [laughs]

Yeah.

I live in Kuantan Garden.

I mean, we're doing some primary school pilots, but most of our communities are teenagers, right? Secondary schools.

And so there was this school in Kuantan, and by the way, this school in Kuantan also improved significantly, right? Uh, uh, over 20 over points, uh, over that three-month period.

So this school in Kuantan last year told us, "You know what? If you want to run this program after school, no one will show up." And this school was actually, uh, uh...

So the history of this school is, uh, most of the students come from the, uh, low-cost housing areas, uh, uh, mostly fishermen families, uh, that was, uh, uh, taken out from their homes and put into a, uh, PPR.

Um, this school's, uh, attendance rate was closer to 60%, actually.

And that's not just Clang Valley, it's beyond the Clang Valley as well.

And you're looking at Kuantan specifically here.

Now, a successful brand within the Klang Valley doesn't automatically mean that you'll be successful in a new geographic location.

So what gives RT the confidence that you guys can go to an entirely new market right now?

With the 20 years experience and system that we already developed, plus our two central kitchen already obtained HALA certificate.

So we are quite confident where if let's say we want to check into Guantan, we can bring HALA.

Why Kuantan? Why not Penang or JB for that matter? Based on our study, actually, like, northern and southern, there are a lot of, like, competitors already been there for many years.

And...

Coming up at 8:00 AM, we've got the Breakfast Grill.

Homegrown bakery chain RT Pastry raised 16.5 million ringgit in its ACE Market IPO to expand into new markets like Kuantan.

The question is, why did a profitable cash-generative business choose to tap public capital instead of using its own funds? RT Pastry Chief Operating Officer Mike Thea joins Roshan Kanesan to discuss store expansion plans, declining same-store sales performance, and the reason behind the pause in dividends prior to listing.

I'm hoping they're bringing some tasty pastry in.