(Xinhua) - Flo's first restaurant in China opened in Beijing in 1999 with a cheerful success, said the director of Flo's international business department,Arnaud Fantapie.
"The oysters air-expressed from France every Friday would be sold out the same day they arrive," he said.
"The Chinese and the French both have great cuisines. Seven years of working experience there (in Beijing) allows us to know better China and makes us confident to open more and more restaurants there."
"In each restaurant we open in China, we try to offer as various dishes as we can and the service is the same in China as in France. Only the price is much lower there thanks to local purchase. Our goal is to offer good French food that the ordinary Chinese people can afford and that they really enjoy," he added.
Hippopotamus is one of the three main brands of Flo along with Bistro Romain and Flo Brasseries. Annexed by Flo in 1992, Hippopotamus has now 81 restaurants in more than 10 countries, including 69 in France. Its estimated share in grilled meat restaurant market is 23.4 percent. Thirty-six percent of its clients eat in a Hippo restaurant more than six times per year, he said.
Bistro Romain was created in 2000, inspired by the Cafe Greco in Rome. Its 39 restaurants, mostly in France, registered a turnover of 61 million euros (about 73.2 million U.S. dollars) in 2005.
The Flo Group has more than 150 restaurants in France, Spain, China, South Korea, Algeria, Morocco, Cyprus, Russia and the Middle East region. It has 5,240 employees and its turnover in 2004 was 300 million euros (360 million dollars).
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