Number of restaurants increases 47% since 2005

According to a market research survey carried out by Arellano Marketing, the number of restaurants in Peru has increased 47% over the last four years. By the end of 2009 it is expected that there will be 66,000 restaurants on a national level, of which 41,450 will be in Lima.

The survey also revealed that 9% of Peruvians currently like to go out to eat between two or three times per month. Of those questioned, around 40% said they would increase the amount they spend on food if their salaries were increased by 25%. Peruvians spend an average of 35% of their income on food.

Publication: Esmerk - News monitoring
Provider: Esmerk
October 30, 2009

Chef Acurio brings Peru's food boom to the poor

In a tucked away neighborhood in a dirt poor part north of Lima, Peru's capital, a school started by an elite chef is training students from humble backgrounds in the skilled art of Peruvian cuisine.

Like its economy, Peru's culinary community is exploding, and chef Gaston Acurio says people from all walks of life should have a chance to take part.

"On the one hand, we have a booming food culture ... and on the other hand, we have youth without opportunity. The school is meant to bring the two hands together," said Acurio, who runs the school and dozens of successful restaurants all over the world.

Though trained in Spain and France, Acurio is best known inside Peru for combining classic European techniques with typical ingredients in the Andean country, and for telling Peruvians their cuisine is world-class. Plates in his restaurants reflect the country's desert coast, frigid mountains and sweltering jungle, while appealing to people with different size wallets.

Students at the cooking school in Pachacutec are encouraged to experiment while being taught to make the classics.

"For us, it is the best school in Peru. The cooks that will graduate from here already have contracts with the best restaurants. They are fighting over students," Acurio told Reuters at a food festival in Lima this week.

His top-end flagship restaurant is Astrid y Gaston, now with branches in Lima, Santiago, Caracas, Bogota, Quito and Madrid. Acurio has two middle-range chains, Tanta, an urban classic, and La Mar, a ceviche restaurant with kitchens in Lima, Mexico City, Santiago and soon, in San Francisco. And he has a fast-food chain called Pasquale Hermanos, which serves criollo dishes like fried pork skin on bread.

Students at the school pay roughly 60 soles ($20.20) a month to attend classes taught by some of the country's most prominent chefs. Private companies also make contributions and students, like Cesar Raul Toribio, help clean to cut costs.

Toribio lives near the school and pays for his classes by hopping on public buses to play music and ask for donations.

He spoke as his teacher poured over the texture of his causa - a typical Peruvian dish made from mashed potatoes, aji pepper, lime, vegetables and fish.

"My idea is to work five years at a good restaurant where I can learn and gain enough experience to be able to open my own place," Toribio said.

Publication: Andina - English Newswire
Provider: Andina
Date: September 30, 2008

Peruvian gastronomy expanding abroad through franchises

In the 1990s, the big names of American fast food, such as Burger King and McDonald's, saw an opportunity in Peru. But they did not foresee that they would have to fight an extremely resilient rival in the Andean country.

Bembos, a local burger chain, not only survived the invasion of Whoppers and Big Macs but emerged as king of the burger market. And now, 15 years after the first McDonald's opened its doors in Lima, Bembos owns roughly 50 percent of the market.
Exporting its successful experience abroad, Bembos is expanding beyond the Peruvian borders -- beginning in India, where it has opened three fast-food restaurants that sell burgers made of anything but beef -- lamb, soy or beans.

Bembos is not an isolated case. Indeed, a number of successful Peruvian restaurants, from fast food to gourmet, have begun to sell Peruvian cuisine all over Latin America and are eyeing more-difficult markets, such as the United States.

China Wok, a Peruvian food chain specializing in ‘chifa’, a tasty mix of local and Chinese flavors, already has 50 restaurants in seven Latin American countries, and it plans to enter the U.S. market next year.

According to the manager, Carlos León Velarde, it has already begun negotiations with businessmen from the East Coast. ‘It will be our entrance door to the American market,' he said.

Pardo's Chicken, a popular roasted chicken fast-food chain, opened its first restaurant in the United States in 2006, in New York's West Village, and this year it will open two more -- one in Coral Gables and the other in Mexico City.
To explain the chain's success, Arnold Wu, the company's CEO, talks about what he calls the 'Peruvian taste' and Pardo's secret formula, made of a mix of 14 ingredients imported from Peru.

But not all the international expansion comes from the fast-food chains.
Higher-end restaurants are also making inroads in the international market.
One of the first of this kind of restaurant to cross the Atlantic is Astrid y Gastón, which in 2007 opened in Madrid's most exclusive zone.

This year the owner, Gastón Acurio, one of Peru's most prominent chefs, is opening another restaurant, La Mar, specializing in marine dishes, in the San Francisco Bay area, with an investment of about $6 million. Acurio says soon there will be La Mar restaurants in New York, Las Vegas and Florida.

'It's time for the Peruvian cuisine to make the big leap to achieve global recognition,' said Acurio. He thinks this global expansion can get help from foreign investors who find it is profitable to invest in Peruvian cuisine, because of both its quality and the fact that other national cuisines are overexposed.
The Peruvian government is also part of the collective effort to sell the national cuisine abroad.

According to Mara Seminario, tourism director of Promperu, the National Committee for the Promotion of Exports and Tourism, Peru is participating in gastronomic fairs around the world with the motto ‘Perú, mucho gusto,' a phrase that plays with the double meaning of ‘mucho gusto’ – ‘nice to meet you,’ and ‘very tasty.’ Also, the government has declared the national cuisine as one of its seven ‘flag products’ to be actively promoted abroad.

‘Peruvian food is unique. The first wave of Peruvian restaurants outside the country were made by immigrants, but this second one is of a much better quality and mixes tradition with modernism, sophistication with history,’ Seminario said.

Among the Peruvian dishes that already attract global attention are ceviche, a raw fish cooked in lime juice, and causa, mashed potatoes mixed with fish or seafood.
Peru is also selling itself as a gastronomic destination. Statistics from Promperu show that in 2007 more than 20,000 visitors came to the country to do ‘gastronomic tourism’ -- paying an average of $3,500 to eat at exclusive restaurants, visit local markets and visit fishing ports.

Source: Miami Herald

Pizza outlets to increase

Pizza outlets have only achieved 4% Peruvian and 10% Lima (the capital) penetration. These figures have led Corporacion Peruana de Restaurantes, the firm that operates the franchise for Papa John's pizzerias, to decide on investment of US$1mil in 2008 in the construction of five new restaurants, four in Lima and one in either Cusco or Arequipa, explains its director of marketing, Gonzalo Lanata. Papa John's is a ten-store-strong chain at present and it posted a turnover of US$4mil in 2007, up 45% over 2006. Delivery services supply 70% of revenues.

Publication: SABI - Business News
Provider: South American Business Information
Date: January 31, 2008