Shakey's PH now offering frozen mojos in supermarkets

MANILA -- You may want to add Shakey's frozen mojos to your cart in your next grocery run.

This as Shakey's Philippines announced Monday that its best-selling potatoes are now available in ready-to-cook packs at select Robinsons Supermarkets at P375 each. 

In a Facebook post, the restaurant chain also suggested a "mojos hack" that involves rinsing the potato slices before coating with your preferred breading mix and frying.

The frozen mojo packs only include sliced potatoes, but Shakey's Philippines suggested a homemade breading mix recipe that includes garlic powder, all-purpose flour, black pepper, salt, paprika, and thyme.

"Want it crisp and tasty? Follow these 3 easy steps!" it said.


Shakey's Philippines made the announcement more than a month after its Japan counterpart released a recipe for mojos which involved microwaving the spuds first before frying.

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Thailand to close malls as coronavirus cases jump to 422

BANGKOK - Thailand announced it will close malls in the capital Bangkok as the country reported its largest daily increase in coronavirus infections on Saturday.

Malls, except for supermarkets, will be closed for 22 days beginning March 22 to April 12 in a bid to curb the outbreak of the coronavirus, Bangkok Governor Aswin Kwanmuang said in a statement.

"For malls, only the areas that sell food and goods that are used in daily life, will be open,” Aswin said in a Facebook live broadcast.

Long queues and crowds of shoppers were seen at a grocery store in downtown Bangkok with their carts full of dried goods, food and medicine.

The governor asked the public not to panic and hoard goods.

“Please don’t be alarmed, I guarantee that you will be able to buy food and goods sufficiently,” he said.

Restaurants will be open for takeout orders and pharmacies will also remain open.

The measures come as Thailand reported 89 new cases of the coronavirus on Saturday, bringing its tally to 411, with the majority of cases in Bangkok.

The new cases were linked to earlier infections from a boxing match, an entertainment complex and a religious gathering in neighboring Malaysia, Taweesin Wisanuyothin, a Public Health Ministry spokesman, said.

Boxing stadiums, beauty salons and arcades were also included in the closure announcement.

Those found violating the order face up to one year in prison or a fine of up to 100,000 baht.

Bangkok will also extend the closure of schools and bars for another 22 days.

Budget airlines also began suspending service.

Thai AirAsia is temporarily suspending its international flights from March 22 to April 25.

Thai Lion Air on Friday said it would suspend international and domestic flights from March 25 to April 30.

Of the patients infected, 366 are currently being treated, while 44 have recovered.

Thailand has reported one death in the outbreak.

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Americans rush to stock up on essentials, retailers scramble to keep up

NEW YORK - From Jersey City on the East Coast to Los Angeles on the West Coast, American shoppers picked grocery store shelves clean on products ranging from disinfectants to rice, causing retailers to race to restock their stores as the worsening coronavirus crisis stoked fears of shortages.

As shoppers swarmed stores, President Donald Trump on Friday afternoon declared a national emergency aimed at slowing the spread of the novel virus, which has killed at least 47 people in the United States.

Daily routines have been upended as businesses including Amazon.com urge employees to work from home, schools and universities close, and sporting events and church services are paused across the country. In response to the run on certain items, major retailers have imposed some purchase limits.

The chief executive of Walmart Inc, Doug McMillon, at a news conference with Trump on Friday, said the retailer was having trouble keeping up with demand for products like hand sanitizer Purell, cleaning supplies and paper goods.

"Hand sanitizer is going to be very difficult to have 100% in stock for some time," McMillon said. "We're still replenishing it... but as soon as it hits the stores it's going. The same thing is true for the other categories I mentioned."

In Hanover, New Jersey, about 40 customers had lined up to get into a Wegmans grocery store before it opened on Friday morning. A few hours later, shelves were stripped bare of sanitizing wipes, bulk rice and dried beans. The store posted signs announcing limits on the purchase of hand sanitizer and bottled water.

"An abundance of caution - semper paratus, like the Coast Guard motto that means 'always ready,'" shopper Marlene Russell, 69, told a reporter after packing groceries into her car.

At a Fairway Market on Manhattan's Upper West Side, shelves normally full of pasta, Oreo cookies, pasta sauce, crackers and toilet paper were depleted on Thursday evening. On the West Coast, grocery stores including Ralphs, Pavilions and Trader Joe's had sold out of products ranging from eggs to Lysol cleaning wipes.

RETAILERS REACT

Johnson & Johnson is accelerating production of over-the-counter pain killer Tylenol to ease any spot inventory crunches.

J&J, which also makes Listerine mouthwash, said it was shipping stocks of products in a controlled manner. It was increasing production of other consumer products to ensure retailers were well supplied, it said, adding it did not expect any shortages.

Pharmacy chain Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc and supermarket chain Kroger Co instituted purchase limits to stabilize inventory.

Kroger, the largest US grocery store operator, limited the number of cold, flu and sanitary products per visit, while Walgreens said it was limiting disinfectant wipes and cleaners, face masks, hand sanitizers, thermometers and gloves to 4 per customer.

John Terry, 33, went to a Whole Foods in Manhattan to pick up chicken and other items his wife was unable to get at grocery stores near their Jersey City home, in New Jersey across the Hudson River from Manhattan.

"It was insanity," he said about his local stores. "She went to Costco and there was a line down the block. At another one, the shelves were picked clean."

Phil Lempert, editor of SupermarketGuru, said labor shortages due to everything from school closures to illness could cause business disruptions that last several months.

"It's a lot more than stockpiling toilet paper or Purell. This is going to have implications on our food supply and supply chain for months to come," Lempert said. 

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Honey, can you pick up a tablet at the grocery store?

BARCELONA - Originally derided as a pricey niche product for geeks, tablet computers have become so common that supermarkets are now selling their own brands, pushing out low-cost rivals.

The shifting nature of the market underscores how millions of people are choosing simpler devices to surf the web, send emails and shop, putting pressure on traditional PC companies.

And since Apple pioneered the tablet in early 2010, the gadgets now available at the lower end of the market are becoming commodity items that non-technology companies can order from Asian contractors using common components.

"Reference designs for tablets and smartphones from companies like Qualcomm have drastically reduced barriers to entry and increased commoditization pressure in the hardware industry," said Sameer Singh, Hyderabad-based tech analyst.

"This opens the door for not only players that can survive on low margins, but also for companies that use hardware as a channel for something else."

Tesco in Britain and Walmart in the United States, are selling their own branded tablets pitched at customers unwilling to pay $400 or more for an Apple or Samsung product.

Grocers like Tesco and France's Carrefour are not only trying to cash in on booming tablet sales, but also to nudge people to buy everything from films to groceries from their online stores, pushed through their devices, a lesson learned from Amazon and Google.

Traditional computer makers including Asus, Acer, HP, Lenovo, Dell, Sony, LG will continue to be squeezed, said Gartner analyst Tracy Tsai.

They account for only 10% of the market today, far behind Apple and Samsung with 60% and also smaller than the 20% share held by white label tablet makers who manufacture for others, such as Archos. Amazon and Google hold the other 10%.

"Some of them will pull out from the market of tablets altogether," Tsai predicted.

The price for tablets running Google's Android software ranged from $99 to $299 in 2013, providing an estimated 15% to 25% gross margin to hardware vendors, but when prices need to be cut to meet the competition the margin could drop.

Lessons learned

Amazon, which sells its Kindle Fire tablet at cost or even at a loss, ties people to its site to buy music, books or films rather than them buying Apple's iTunes or going to Carrefour and Tesco.

"If you get a tablet into someone's hand, it is almost a digital shop window," said Ben Wood, analyst at CCS Insight.

"The retailers are realizing: 'Crikey, we need this to be part of a much bigger strategy to make sure that Amazon does not eat us alive.'"

Carrefour is also selling smartphones and a smartwatch starting at 149 euros, in addition to four tablets, while a Pakistani bakery chain called Gourmet poached a former Samsung executive to help it sell smartphones starting at $15.

Tesco shifted more than 400,000 of its Hudl tablets, priced at 119 pounds ($200) in little over three months after a September launch.

"We saw an opportunity in the market for a lower priced but highly spec-ed tablet," said Michael Comish, who heads Tesco's digital strategy and operations.

"We were certainly pleasantly surprised by consumer demand," he said, adding that Tesco was selling as many Hudls as it could produce in the autumn.

Carrefour's mobile phone, dubbed the Smart, launched at Christmas and was among the store's top-five selling products in recent months, said Jose Zdziech, sales director for technology products.

Big retailers have been here before. In the past many worked with manufacturers in Asia and elsewhere who produced everything from clothing to refrigerators that the retailers then sold under their own brands. Carrefour and Tesco, the world's second and third-biggest retailers, then turned to that network of manufacturers to make gadgets.

Tesco's Comish said they designed the Hudl to drive people to purchase films, music, and now books from blinkbox, a video-on-demand provider Tesco bought in 2011. The company spent a lot of time on the user interface, he said, to make it easy to get to Tesco services, without forcing customers to use them.

Carrefour's Zdziech said the retailer would continue to sell Apple and Samsung products since its own products were not aimed at the high-end. But Carrefour has dropped some competing tablets and phones from lower-end manufacturers he declined to name. "We had to make some choices so as to better showcase our own branded products," he said. ($1 = 0.6011 British Pounds)

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