Hong Kong-listed chain Best Mart 360, which had 75 stores trashed during protests, opens in Macau

Hong Kong-listed snack shop chain Best Mart 360 on Tuesday opened the first of as many as 15 stores planned for Macau, as it diversifies away from the city, where 75 out of its 102 stores have been targeted by anti-government protesters over the past seven months.

“We opened the first store today, the first of three. Now we will see how the business will fare. We have rented three stores in Macau. The goal is to see if we can open 15 [there],” Lin Tsz-fung, its chairman and co-founder, said in an exclusive interview.

He denied the move was motivated by Beijing’s plan to develop Macau into a financial centre with its own stock exchange, and said the new opening had been planned earlier. “We hope to diversify our markets to Macau and mainland China. We think Macau has a lot of tourists,” Lin said. “We planned it many years ago.”

More than 30 million tourists visited Macau in the first three quarters of 2019, a year-on-year increase of 17 per cent, thanks to the opening of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge. But tourist arrivals have declined in double digits since August, with the Hong Kong protests hitting tourism in the region.

Best Mart 360, some of whose directors are members of pro-Beijing groups, has denied links with Fujian gangs that are said to have attacked anti-government protesters in Hong Kong’s North Point district in August.

Meanwhile, unemployment rose in November in the consumption and tourism sector, to a three-year high of 5.2 per cent, and in the catering sector, to an eight-year high of 6.2 per cent, Law Chi-kwong, Hong Kong’s Secretary for Labour and Welfare, said on Tuesday.