Snacks market attracts more investment from food producers

Vietnam has many snack dishes such as banh trang tron (mixed rice paper), pha lau (intestine stew), fried pigskin and processed chicken feet.

However, many people dare not order the dishes at street stalls for fear that they are not safe.

Local newspapers have reported that agencies have discovered many private establishments and street shops processing food from spoiled and expired materials. Vietnamese believe that food corporations, under strict control of management agencies, will have to provide safe products.

Some corporations have introduced products to explore the market. Vissan, one of the largest meat suppliers in Vietnam, for example, has marketed crispy fried pigskin made of materials imported from Europe. Vissan’s deputy CEO Phan Van Dung said the next product Vissan plans to launch into the market is pha lau.

The director of a food company in Binh Duong province said Vietnamese consumers like crispy foods, so products made of pigskin are expected to attract customers. The director confirmed that pigskin must be imported, because there is still no domestic supplier.

It is difficult to preliminarily process pigskin and the work needs to be done with modern technology, or pigskin will degenerate. Mixed rice paper and fried corn are the two kinds of food selling very well at 7-Eleven shops in HCMC, though the selling price there is VND5,000 higher than street shops.

Le Thi Thanh Lam, deputy general director of Sai Gon Food, which provides products to the retail chain, said the demand for common street food is very high, but large corporations cannot do all the dishes. To ensure food hygiene, producers need to control all phases of the production process, including material selection, processing, preservation and distribution.

Since nosh dishes must be sold within 48 hours, producers need to keep close cooperation with distributors. In other words, the products cannot be sold like other kinds of food. “As for mixed rice paper, we have 15 kinds of materials, but the number of materials is still lower than street shops,” she admitted.

“We cannot make dark beef jerky, made of pig and cow lungs, because we cannot control the quality of supplied materials.” Vinh Thanh Dat Food JSC in 2015 began making food products from eggs after a long period of operating as fresh egg supplier.

However, the products processed from eggs were sold very slowly. Only in 2017 did the market begin booming with the growth rate of 100 percent per annum.