BananaBro: A RM70 Million Business With Overseas Franchising Aspirations

Tony Lim, Co-Founder, BananaBro

17-Jan-24 10:00

BananaBro: A RM70 Million Business With Overseas Franchising Aspirations

Pause
Embed

BananaBro is a chain of banana leaf restaurants founded in 2018 by Tony Lim, who isn’t a stranger to the F&B space. He previously started Boat Noodle back in 2013 and before that set up a Chatime franchise in Cambodia in 2011.

In 5 years, BananaBro has grown to over 30 outlets nationwide and made RM70 million in revenue in 2023, with EBIDTA margins around the 15%-20% range. The business is still actively expanding and is looking to take their store count to 60 by 2026. At present, Tony sees potential revenue for the Malaysian market hitting between RM150 million to RM200 million in time.

From bubble tea to thai boat noodles and now Indian banana leaf, in this edition of Open For Business we explore the business rationale and promise for building a banana leaf restaurant chain, how Tony's past experiences have helped with the starting and scaling of this venture, and much more.

Produced by: Kishan Sivaswamy

Presented by: Roshan Kanesan

This and more than 60,000 other podcasts in your hand. Download the all new BFM mobile app.

Categories: markets, food, entrepreneurs

Tags: ofbbb2023, BananaBro, malaysian restaurant chain, restaurant chains, banana leaf, banana leaf restaurant, f&b, made in malaysia, food business, malaysian brands,

Today’s Shows

11:00 AM

Best of Enterprise

(REPEAT) Alexandre Salesse, Partner at BCG, explains how the "Single Buyer" model and "Take or Pay" contracts have created a reliability gold standard at the cost of future flexibility.

12:00 PM

Just For Kicks

(REPEAT) The pundits look ahead to match week 27 of the EPL, featuring the big match between the wounded Arsenal against their neighbours in turmoil, Tottenham Hotspur.

1:00 PM

A Bit of Culture

(REPEAT) Does good always triumph over evil? Kam, Sheryll and Dhanya will unpack that, as well as talk about AI caricatures and whether it's cool to show off your partner on social media.

2:00 PM

Ringgit & Sense

(REPEAT) Dr. Mohaini Ahmad Basri, licensed financial planner with Wealth Vantage Advisory talks about EPF dividends, and who gets the most benefit from them.

2:30 PM

The Property Show

(REPEAT) Dr. YM Cheng, Founder and Principal Consultant of ChineseZodiacFengshui.com, discusses Fengshui outlook for Commercial and Residential properties for the upcoming Year of the Horse.

3:00 PM

Best of The Bigger Picture

(REPEAT) With TB cases on the rise and clusters reported across the country, we speak to a respiratory physician to break down what you need to know about the disease and precautions to take.

4:00 PM

Best of Evening Edition

(REPEAT) We speak to Balan, founder of a lion dance troupe and seasoned performer, about his journey to becoming part of this art form and what led to his passion for it.

5:00 PM

BBC World Service

This episode of The Life Scientific features Caroline Smith, Head of Collections and Principal Curator of Meteorites at the Natural History Museum, home to one of the finest meteorite collections in the world.

PROGRAMMES