A quick-service restaurant does not necessarily serve greasy chips and fried chicken. There are Thai-Chinese restaurants, high-end cafes that offer exotic pastries, delicatessens that serve salads with Parma ham and, of course, your regular finger-licking hamburger chains.

With average-salary people spending more time away from their homes or clocking in late hours at the office, eating out twice a day has become the norm. The sector is now hot with many operators from various backgrounds entering the battleground. Witness the recent takeover of McDonald's Thailand by the nation's leading cinema chain Major Cineplex Group.

This year, the fast-food business is expected to occupy 67 per cent of the quick-service restaurant category and be worth Bt14 billion. Hamburger joints account for 21.4 per cent of the overall fast-food sub-category and have a total market value of Bt3 billion. The pie is expected to grow by 8 per cent annually.

It is not difficult to guess who the market leader is. Yet despite being the least competitive business, compared to the fried and grilled chicken and pizza businesses, McDonald's does not rest on its

laurels. In an interview earlier with The Nation, Vichai Poolvaraluck, owner of Major Cineplex Group,

said he wanted to make McDonald's the number-one quick-service restaurant chain in the Thai market "as it once was".

The most popular fast-food restaurants are the chicken chains. Perhaps because chicken features in many Thai dishes, this subsection has half the total fast-food market, or about Bt7 billion. It is set to grow by 6 per cent in 2007.

Sandwiched in the middle are the pizza chains, which hold 28.6 per cent of the fast-food market share. Although they will be growing at 8 per cent, these pizza chains all face a common problem - the lack of frequency among patrons. To increase the volume of pizzas sold, many operators have opened small outlets in supermarkets and sell take-home pizzas in convenience stores and petrol stations.

Within quick-service restaurants, speciality outlets have been growing at 15 per cent for the last five years. They are the premium coffee chains, bakeries and sandwich shops. All are seen as a healthy alternative to the regular fatty cuisine. Thai taste buds have been adapting to the bread and butter once deemed alien to the majority of the population a few years back.