Golden Gate, with about 600 restaurants, starts up its second food plant in Phu Tho Province

Vietnamese restaurant giant Golden Gate has started operating a food plant called "Golden Gate Foods Tiên Tiến" in the Tiên Tiến Industrial Cluster (cụm công nghiệp) in Thịnh Minh commune (xã Thịnh Minh), Phú Thọ province. Phase 1 covers a 4-hectare site with an investment of over 600 billion dong. It serves as a central kitchen and processing-and-distribution hub that sends ingredients to the company's roughly 600 stores, and it also makes ready-to-eat food for retail channels. Phase 1's designed capacity covers up to 2,000 stores' worth of output, handling everything from meat and vegetable prep to ready-to-eat food, dumplings, fresh noodles, and pizza dough in one location.

Over 600 billion dong for 4 hectares in Thịnh Minh commune, Phú Thọ: Golden Gate starts up its second plant

The Investor (VAFIE), in an article dated September 21, 2026, writes that Golden Gate Foods Tiên Tiến began operating as the group's second production site"last Saturday." Since the article carries a Monday date, that places the start date on September 19.

The investment is put at over 600 billion dong (VietnamBiz). The Investor writes 600 billion dong, or $23.06 million. The yen conversion in this article uses the September 24, 2026 exchange rate, under which 600 billion dong comes to about 3.65 billion yen.

The Vietnamese-language VietnamBiz (dated September 22) explicitly calls this Phase 1 (giai đoạn 1), stating that the 4 hectares and "over 600 billion dong" are Phase 1 figures. The Investor doesn't mention any phasing, so the two articles diverge on whether this 4 hectares and 600-billion-plus dong figure represents the whole plan or just Phase 1. This article follows VietnamBiz's framing and treats it as Phase 1.

The location needs a careful reading. Until the 2025 administrative restructuring, Thịnh Minh commune belonged to the former Hòa Bình city, Hòa Bình province. A pre-restructuring map will place the site in the wrong location.

3,600 tons of meat a year and up to 10,000 pizza dough pieces a day, all on one site

The Investor describes the plant's role as a central kitchen and processing-and-distribution hub that supplies ingredients to the company's own restaurant chains, while also making ready-to-eat food for distribution through retail channels. VietnamBiz calls it a "distribution and processing center complex" and describes a zoned layout that runs from primary processing through to finished products. Only VietnamBiz reports the capacity of each line.

VietnamBiz writes that the hot kitchen's output items -- simmered, fried, grilled, and braised dishes -- are matched to each chain concept under the group. Primary processing (sơ chế) runs on separate lines for meat and vegetables.

CEO says the new plant quadruples production capacity, enough for about 2,000 stores

The Investor writes, attributing it to CEO Dao The Vinh, that the new site can bring production capacity to four times the current level, enough to support about 2,000 stores. However, the basis for "four times" is given only as "current production capacity," and it isn't clear whether that means the capacity of the Tac Tat plant or current usage. VietnamBiz, meanwhile, describes the 2,000-store figure as the plant's designed capacity.

The scope of the business expansion also mixes confirmed plans with items still under consideration. The Investor states plainly that production and distribution of ready-to-eat food for retail channels is planned. Exporting some consumer food products, on the other hand, is described only as "looking to export" -- that is, still under consideration, not a settled decision. Vinh also says the company can move into areas beyond just its restaurant business, but neither article gives specifics beyond that.

The two articles also disagree on his title: The Investor calls Vinh the CEO, while VietnamBiz calls him founder and chairman (nhà sáng lập kiêm Chủ tịch). Here is the remark VietnamBiz quotes from him: "Our first kitchen was a small one set up on the rooftop of the Ashima Phan Đình Phùng restaurant. Standing in front of a plant this big, I feel that Golden Gate has walked a long road, step by step."

The first was the 2024 Tac Tat plant: a parent company with 7.69 trillion dong in revenue has now concentrated manufacturing at two sites

VietnamBiz fills in the background behind the phrase “second location.” According to Vinh’s explanation, the first location is the Thach That (Thạch Thất) factory, which opened in 2024 and specializes in soup bases, dumplings for hot pot, and ice cream. With Tien Tien now operating, the in-house manufacturing setup now divides functions — R&D, primary processing, processing, production, quality control, and transport — between the two sites, Thach That and Tien Tien.

According to The Investor, Golden Gate was founded in 2005 and was one of the early adopters of the chain-restaurant model in Vietnam. It runs more than 35 brands and about 600 stores (VietnamBiz says "nearly 600 stores"), with brands including Manwah, Kichi Kichi, iSushi, Gogi House, and Sumo BBQ. Several of the concept names sound Japanese, but both source articles list them as brands operated by Golden Gate.

On the financial side, 2025 revenue was approximately 7.69 trillion dong ($295.55 million, approximately 46.8 billion yen), up 16% year on year. The Investor states that the F&B business was the main driver. Net profit more than doubled to reach 213.8 billion dong ($8.22 million, approximately 1.30 billion yen), the highest since 2022. For 2026, the company is targeting revenue of 9.81 trillion dong (approximately 59.8 billion yen), up 28%, and net profit of 1.2 trillion dong (approximately 7.31 billion yen), which, if achieved, would be the highest in more than 20 years.

In August 2026, Vietnam's State Securities Commission revoked Golden Gate's status as a public company. The company says this has no effect on its business operations, financial condition, shareholder rights, or its commitments to customers, partners, and employees. Vinh says the company will pursue an IPO once market conditions and its own business strategy are aligned.

Everything from prep to delivery for about 600 stores, now consolidated into the company's two plants

From the standpoint of a Japanese food OEM, seasoning, or ingredient manufacturer, the fact to take from this case is that a Vietnamese food service company with around 600 stores is now positioned to run meat and vegetable pre-processing, sauces and prepared foods, and even dumplings, fresh noodles, and pizza dough through its own factories, placing everything from R&D to transport within its two sites. For a supplier considering this, the discussion becomes about checking, case by case, what remains outside the items this factory produces.

As a scale benchmark, the Phase 1 figure of $23.06 million alone already exceeds the $12.65 million Kyokuyo invested in its first overseas company-owned plant in Vietnam. Kyokuyo's figure, though, is the total for a single plant, while this one is only the Phase 1 portion, so the two aren't measured at the same granularity.

On the restaurant-chain side, this site wrote in June 2026 that Vietnam's fast-food outlets are projected to grow 13%, from 1,022 to 1,156 stores, with new openings shifting toward tier-2 and tier-3 cities, and that this store-network expansion would widen the opening for ingredient supply and OEM work. That earlier count, though, named Lotteria, KFC, Jollibee, Texas Chicken, and McDonald's -- Golden Gate's brands weren't included. For Golden Gate, it's more accurate to read the situation starting from this move to bring supply in-house.

Sources

• The Investor (VAFIE) -- "Golden Gate opens $23 mln food plant in northern Vietnam as it expands beyond restaurants" (September 21, 2026)
• VietnamBiz, Chủ chuỗi Gogi, Manwah, iSushi… mở nhà máy thực phẩm đủ sức phục vụ 2.000 nhà hàng (September 22, 2026)
• Doanh Nghiệp & Kinh Doanh, the original article behind the VietnamBiz article above (September 22, 2026)