CHAPTER 1

THE INDUSTRY

SO YOU WANT TO BE IN THE FOOD BUSINESS?

In this time of financial crisis, you just don’t wake up one day and say, “I am excellent
chef.Food is something people need and this business will always make money”.
We hate to burst your bubble, but oppening a restaurant is not only very hard work, but
can be heartbreaking when you see your dreams go up in flames right up the smoke hood!
The mantra, “If you coook, they will come” is only true for a few days or weeks, until the
hoopla and media hype die down and the struggle to keep your business afloat begins.

THE LONG ROAD TOWARDS SUCCESS

Starting restaurant is equal to planning a party 24/7 for the rest of your life. The only
difference is the customers get to decide what to order. You need to have proper inventory to
make sure you can serve every dish on the menu. The biggest let down is when important
ingredients are not available and you hear exasperated customers complaining, “What do you
have?” or worse “Why do you even bother to open?”
People who start restaurants with little or no experience will find that there are so may
hurdles to overcome along the way. Learn one kind of operation well before you venture into it.
If you hit the right product mix, the rewards can be good. Otherwise, the venture can be
a expensive and traumatic experience for you, your bank book, and worst of all, your self-
esteem.
Check out your potential competition but don’t be a copycat. Be original but not to the
point where your customers canot understand or will not appreciate your food. It is known fact
that aside from Filipino cuisine, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Italian , Mexican, Thai, and Korean
food are well accepted by Fillipinos. French is also appreciated but only by the few who can
afford it. Vietnamese and Greek are slowly making their own way into the palate of Filipinos. Be
vigilant. Trends and tastes are evolving. Your concept need not be complicated, but it has to be
good, current, and worth every peso your customer is paying for, since people are always
looking for value for money.

LEARNING FROM THE PIONEERS

We know of some very successful restaurants., like the Landmark star Cafe in Baguio that has
been in existence for almost seventy years and still going strong! The econg generation owners,
Joey and Donna Fufino, are very hands-on. They would rather close shop for a few weeks a
year when they travel instead of leaving the restaurant rudderless while they’re gone, or be
tied up to the cellular phone trying to fix problems back home instead of enjoying their
vacations. They are the only restaurant owners we know who are not worried about losing their
customers to others when they shop for a few days.
A famous restaurant that has also withstood the test of time and is almost as old as the hills is
our favorite noodle, siopao and siomai place in Chinatown that has a few branches in Quezon
City. The consistency and flavor of the few items they serve in the menu has made it, for
decades, a very popular eating place for people from all walks of life.
Long ago, the ambience in their main outlet was unique since you could hear the clip-clop of
horses pulling carriages competing with cars and pedestrians on the narrow road.

At one time, perhaps to cater to their more affluent customers and to give them added privacy,
the owners decided to enclose and air-condition a portion of dining area in their bigger-and
better-looking Quezon City outlet where the latest and most expensive cars could be seen-
parked side by side with dilapidated jeeps and taxis.

Unfortunately, this changed the uniqueness of having a good customer mix where the
employers and their drivers could be found sitting just a few tables apart and sharing the same
dining room, heartily slurping the same delicious soup.

Perhaps this new set up did not sit well with the regulars and the perceptive owners eventually
went back to the old formula of overhead fans, marble tabletops and no dividers for blue-and
white-collar workers.

DON’T REINVENT THE WHEEL

It is not necessary to start a business with a new concept all the time, sometimes it works to
adopt an established concept, such as the case when one gets a franchise. This is what
entrepreneur Vince and dental surgeon Sarah Espino, a young Filipino couple who migrated to
Hawaii from mainland USA, did after studying the local market in the Islands. They awarded the
franchise of IHOP and opened their first restaurant in Waikiki two years ago. It was so well-
received they opened another outlet in Kaneohe.It was unbelievable that Hawaiians were
willing to wait for two hours for a seat, but wait yhey did, while basking in the lovely Hawaii sun
in seating areas provided outside the restaurant. The success led them to open another outlet
in nearby Pearl City and eventually, fourth one in waikiki again, and a fifth outlet in Hilo in the
Big Island.

A WORD ABOUT FRANCHISING

There are several international food chains waiting to be tapped, but a few of them may not
cater to the Filipino’s discriminating tastes.

Study your market well and before you pour in millions of pesos on a project that may fall flat,
be very, very sure this is what the local market wants--- and not what you want.

Getting a franchise from a weel-known and popular chain is the fatest road to success. Be very
careful, though, that you follow all the rules and regulations, especially the requirements and
specifications of your franchisor.
We know of some people who are fortunate to get popular franchise, but they still felt they
needed to boost sales, prhaps to recover their investment faster. They made the mistake of
inserting dishes that they knew the local would like but thy did this without seeking the
permission of the franchisor.

A LOOK AT SUCCESSFUL FOOD BUSINESSES

Topping our list of restaurants to emulate are these homegrown food companies that only
weathered the test of time, but have remained successful in their field. How did the owners
who never heard of Hotel and Restaurant Management at that time, come up with their
concepts and agree on simple names and menus that have remained favorites all these years by
generations of Filipinos? The founders must have a secret formula that has captured the hearts
and tastes of the food-loving Filipinos as they have sustained the patronage of loyal clients all
these years.

NEW CONCEPTS, DIFFERENT THEMES

One group of restaurants has been popular because they thought of a unique approach to have
many different themed restaurants. The owner is brilliant in developing new concepts that
catch on immediately and perhaps this is why, aside from his super cuisine and ambience, and
his restaurants have sustained their presence in this vastly competitive business. He crafted a
varied menu for each restaurant, carrying teh most popular Filipino items but served in exciting
ways. You have to go to a particular outlet if you want to savor a particular dish. This way,
people just go aroung to his different restaurants for their favorite dishes.

Many other well-known local restaurants in the Philippines have flourished in the food industry
these many years because they have mantained their quality of food and service.

HOLE IN THE WALL SUCCESS

On other hand, this tiny outlet (around 4x10 m),literally a hole in the wall in Sausalito,
California, serves the most delicious and juiciest hamburgers. Since it opened in the early
eighties, customers line up daily in front of a short and narrow counter to place orders while
the rest of the hungry crowd is willimg to wait in a long line on the sidewalk for their turn. The
appeal and charm it offers is a two-meter display glass window that takes uo almost the width
of the narrow frontage, where you can see a revolving grill that cooks the burgers to perfection.
It also helps that an exhaust fan above this grill brings the delicious aroma to the waiting and
hungry customers outside.

As the saying goes, “if it ain’t broke, why fix it?”.