Hop Vietnamese is in talks with franchise partners for travel hub locations, and is likely to reach the 10-site mark next year as it pushes forward with expansion, founder Paul Hopper tells MCA.

The Vietnamese QSR concept plans to open five sites per year going forward. It will make its regional debut in Manchester’s Trafford Centre this summer alongside a new opening within London’s West One shopping centre at Bond Street station.

“We’ve had preliminary discussions with franchise partners for transport hubs, particularly airports,” Hopper says. “Two to three years from now, it will be an important growth pillar for us.

“From descaling kitchen operations to outsourcing food production, we were always built for simplicity and scale.”

The focus for now is raising brand awareness and proving success across formats for landlords and future franchise partners, particularly in stations and shopping centres – high volume, high intensity, “difficult trading environments,” Hopper explains.

While the concept was initially oriented towards City workers, it is now branching out to a captive audience of offices as well as delivery catchments, tourists, and shoppers to increase occasions.

“We’ll then eventually go into the suburbs, like Wimbledon and Kingston,” Hopper adds. “We’ve always wanted to go outside London but the Manchester opportunity came sooner than we thought.

“Some opportunities come rarely and you can’t say no to them.”

Trafford Centre is a proven trading destination and will evidence the brand works outside the capital, according to him.

However, London is still the focus, with an eye on sites either within or with close proximity to major hubs like King’s Cross, Waterloo, London Bridge, and Victoria.

As it broadens its target consumer, Hop Vietnamese has also pushed forward with food development and will trial its first breakfast offer at the Bond Street location.

The new items include breakfast-style banh mi, Vietnamese as well as espresso coffee, egg pots, yoghurt pots, and hash browns with a seven-spice mix.

“We thought about how to evolve the menu to suit the growth plan.”

Moving away from lunchtime will also involve new dinner-oriented items in the future, with rice boxes and other hot food already on the menu.

Burgers with Vietnamese-style slow-cooked pulled pork and beef might be on the cards, depending on the customer response to the current menu.

“We always thought this had legs for the evening. We’re developing a Vietnamese burger range…it has similar ingredients to banh mi so it comes without the operational stress.”

New items will be primarily customisable, tying in with Hop’s current range.

They also include an expanded drinks and dessert offer, with a new range of bubble teas, lemonades, and flavoured iced coffee.

Soft serve ice cream with personalised toppings will launch at the Manchester location.

“It’s all customisable and fusion, which we saw a lot of in Vietnam,” Hopper says. “We were purely lunch-focused until last year, then we knew we were going to have to leave our City roots.”

The concept began as a “Vietnamese Pret” with a focus on pre-made. While its menu was only 10% hot food, 80% of its sales were hot items, leading to an evolution towards made-to-order.

“We have no front-of-house fridges anymore…the hot food does the cuisine justice.

“We saw a trend towards people wanting to customise, but our model was pre-made – it was killing us.”

A move towards digitisation – self-order kiosks in particular – took away from the “chaos” and helped drive ATV and bring down labour costs.

“We could charge more by changing the way we operate.”

Staffing concerns have eased somewhat this year, through offering competitive wages, while a focus on premiumisation, quality, and digital has helped the business pass on price rises.

“People didn’t mind us raising prices because they see it as a better experience and value for money.”

Hop Vietnamese currently has a “solid, committed shareholder base” and will look towards different types of funding as it expands.

“We’re privately backed but October or November is the right time, given our profitability structure and rollout plans, to look for a different type of investor,” Hopper says.