“Bibingkinitan is the new coffee place, as shown by the very warm reception of our coffee products, that’s the reason why we are currently converting all of our stores into bigger café-type stores with seating areas for our customers. Right now we are already at 50% conversion status and it is our goal to convert 100% within the first quarter of 2012.” says Richard Sanz, President & CEO of FoodAsia Corporation, owner and operator of the popular chain.

Alongside the conversion, Bibingkinitan is set to open fifty (50) new café-type stores this year, with provincial areas as a priority. “Metro Manila is saturated, and surprisingly our provincial stores have bigger profit compared to stores in located in the metropolis. That’s why we are looking for individuals to partner with us in the provinces (thru our franchise program), which have really great potential.” added Sanz.

In another development, Bibingkinitan has recently partnered with BPI Family Savings Bank thru their Ka-Negosyo Franchising Loans to provide financing to approved franchise applicants interested to open new franchise stores of Bibingkinitan. The “Ka-Negosyo Franchising Loan”, the first franchising loan in the market, is supported and sealed with authenticity by PFA and AFFI to make sure Ka-Negosyo clients get the best investment and franchise deals.

This loan product of BPI introduces the “lite mode” in which clients pay only for the interest on the first six months and start paying for the principal payment on the 7th month. This allows the freed up cash flows to be allotted for other start-up costs necessary for the business.

The investment required for a Bibingkinitan café-type store varies from P1 Million to P1.5 Million, depending on the size of the store.

For more information on the Bibingkinitan Franchise Application procedure, Call: (02) 8-464646, Email: franchise@foodasia.com.ph, or visit www.bibingkinitan.com

For more information on the BPI Ka-Negosyo Loan, call 754-NEGO, email kanegosyo@bpi.com.ph, text 0917-852NEGO or 0922-869NEGO, or visit any BPI or BPI Family Savings Bank branch nationwide or www.bpiloans.com.

Sanz started Bibingkinitan in 2006 and opened it for franchising by 2007. The bibingka recipe was developed for a year to become what it is today. “Innovation is part of our strategy. The product itself is an innovation because we changed the landscape for bibingka. I want to make Bibingkinitan a global brand. All the other food from other countries like Italy, Japan, Vietnam and Thailand are available locally but we have to establish distribution of Filipino food abroad. My dream is to make this Philippine delicacy known globally through Bibingkinitan. We have inquiries in Jakarta, Singapore and Hong Kong today. Hopefully it’s a first step,” Sanz said.

Bibingkinitan employs about 200 people directly and another 200 at the various Bibingkinitan franchises. Sanz personally handles marketing for the brand and although he doesn’t have any marketing background he has received many awards on this aspect. “I trained my staff. They have been with me ever since I started. One thing I am happy about being an entrepreneur is that I get to guide and mold people and offer them opportunities. I am very hands on down to the last detail,” he said.

Sanz is an electrical engineer by profession. He tried working in a company for two years but it was his dream to go into business.

By accident, he got into the food business. Before he began the concept of single serve or bite sized bibingka he had Tea Square but realized that not all Filipinos like tea as they are more of coffee drinkers. This is when he started Bibingkinitan armed with P100,000 capital, half of which are sourced from savings and half a loan from his father-in-law.

As he values innovation, Sanz uses Business Plus and relies on his Globe Duo to stay connected to the office. Business Plus is the customizable postpaid plan offered by Globe Business that allows entrepreneurs to choose the mobile services that best suit them and pay only for what they need. It comes with various tack-on services such as unlimited call, texts, mobile browsing and Business Loop, as well as Duo and Superduo.

“I can call a landline anywhere I am and the reception is very clear. I call my office through the landline. I am heavy on calls, SMS and unlimited internet. I check my email every time and the speed is good. I have it set up in my phone. With Globe, the signal is good anywhere I go,” Sanz said. On a regular day, the first thing he does is check his emails from home and answer some that require immediate attention. While he is in the office every Mondays and Tuesdays, he relies on his Globe mobile for coordination with the office most of the time.

Today, Bibingkinitan is the popular brand among those carried by Food Asia Corp., which also has a frozen foods line that distributes processed meats to hotels and restaurants through its commissary in Las Piñas.

This article was obtained from Philstar.com.

MANILA, Philippines – The enterprise which operates the country’s leading bibingka chain in terms of revenue and number of stores, the company that first produced the Philippines’ largest pizza and the marketing venture that popularized the Filipino-initiated version of e-Bay have stories that inspire.

Food Asia Corp.’s Bibingkinitan!, El Buono Pizza and Sulit.com are enterprises catering to different markets. But there’s one common thread that binds these inspiring business ventures — look at the people behind them and don’t be surprised to know that they are all young.

The road to success of Richard Sanz, president and CEO of Food Asia Corp., was not without obstacles. Richard, who took on the responsibility of helping his mother to provide for their family when he was only 13, is a man of dedication and perseverance. Economically challenged as he was, he was still able to finish college at De La Salle, with the support of his uncle.

Armed with an electronics engineering degree, he worked as an engineer and was later promoted to conceptualizing and creating IT solutions for his company. Recognizing the need to earn more as he started his own family, he decided to leave the company and start his own business. But as a principled man, he opted to veer away from the IT field to avoid speculations that he would use or copy databanks from his former job.

Food Asia Corp. operates Bibingkinitan! which provides mini-sized affordable bibingka, and Tea Square inspired by Richard’s childhood memories of his mother making iced tea from tea leaves. Tea Square takes pride in using 100 percent natural tea leaves.

As of August 2010, Food Asia Corp. directly employs 150 full-time and another 300 employees indirectly (franchise-stores).

Meanwhile, another business that is making a name in the food industry is El Buono Pizza. Timothy Joel Lance Sarvida, together with a group of friends, started the company that thought big. “We are the first pizza restaurant to offer the biggest pizza in the market,” said Lance about El Buono which produces the overwhelming 30-inch, 35-inch and 65-inch pizzas aside from the regular 10-inch, 12-inch and 22-inch. El Buono has branches in Mandaluyong, Parañaque and Makati.

The third story is about capitalizing on the Internet as a tool. Ronald John David founded Sulit.com in 2006, an online marketing portal, much like e-Bay, where entrepreneurs can transcend the usual business bureaucracy, break through boundaries and bring goods closer to their target markets. Sulit.com, registered under Netrepreneur Connections Enterprises, Inc., is a dream come true not only for RJ but also for his eventual life partner, Marianne de los Santos, his business partner. Marianne complemented RJ’s lack of formal studies in and passion for information technology and programming, being a Mechanical Engineer graduate with expertise in IT development for the banking sector. The partnership produces and sustains a virtual portal where one can buy and sell, receiving over 89 million hits from 10.5 million visitors monthly.

Indeed, the young people behind these enterprises are exemplary role models for the Filipino youth. They have found their niches and created something that can, in one way or the other, help transform the country into an enterprising nation.

On Sept. 27, Go Negosyo will be recognizing Richard Sanz, Lance Sarvida, and RJ David, as three of the Go Negosyo Inspiring Young Filipino Entrepreneurs in the 2010 Youth Entrepreneurship Summit at the World Trade Center, Pasay City. The award will be presented by Go Negosyo founder Joey Concepcion along with the Go Negosyo trustees.

This article was obtained from Philstar.com

Glenn Francis Yu of SEAOIL Philippines; Federico Moreno of Ystilo Salon; Rommel Juan, Binalot; Siu Ping Par, PR Gaz Haus

Nineteen franchise companies made it to this year’s Franchise Awards of ENTREPRENEUR Philippines, among them a Nueva Ecija-based beauty salon and an Aklan-based bakeshop.

After undergoing a stringent selection processes, the following franchise companies were adjudged among the best: 7-Eleven, AMA Computer Learning Center, Animaland Stuffery, Aquabest, Bibingkinitan, Binalot, Bread and Butter Bakeshop, Goldilocks Bakeshop, Ink & Prints, Kumon, Lots’A Pizza, Ministop, Orange Blush Salon, Pizza Pedrico’s, PR Gaz Haus, SEAOIL, The Generics Pharmacy, Waffle Time, and Ystilo Salon.

These companies won in one or several categories, including Best Homegrown Franchises, Best Foreign Franchises, Fastest Growing Franchises, Most Promising Franchises, and Best in Franchising Support.

The winners of the 2010 Franchise Awards 2010 not only showcase excellence in their respective fields, but have also proved that even in the worst of economic situations, there are still promising markets to capture.

The list of winners and their stories are the highlight of this month’s issue of ENTREPRENEUR Philippines, in recognition of the best-performing franchise brands that have contributed to the new moniker given to the Philippines, “the franchise hub of Asia.”

“These are the companies that have weathered economic crises not only because of the mettle of the men and women comprising them, but also because of the very business systems that they follow,” says ENTREPRENEUR Philippines editor in chief Leah B. del Castillo.

“This is the core of the franchising system, a veritable support system that helps jumpstart new entrepreneurs and keeps experienced ones on the challenging but rewarding path of entrepreneurship.”

Now on its 10th year, ENTREPRENEUR Philippines started giving these awards in 2006; in the last five years, the rapid growth and expansion of franchise brands has changed the economic atmosphere of the country, allowing a greater majority of Filipinos—even micro and small-scale entrepreneurs—to venture into business. – Carlo P. Mallo

This article was obtained from Entrepreneur.com.ph

For the last five years, Philippine FoodAsia Corp., a food company that produces the Bibingkinitan brand of mini-ricecakes, has been using an integrated information facility to make its operations more efficient and effective. Last October, however, the company added an inventory tool to this information facility at a cost of about a million pesos.

“We purchased SAP Business One to attach to our IT infrastructure,” says Richard Sanz, owner of Philippine FoodAsia. “We needed better control in monitoring internal processes than simply using MS Excel, index cards, and manual vouchers. Before, our IT infrastructure consisted of the basic phone and fax; advance communication systems like e-mail, LAN, Internet access, website, and computer-sharing; IT using PC with Windows; and advance IT particularly the proprietary SMS Solution. To this we have added SAP Business One for our accounting, ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), and CRM (Customer Relationship Management).”

Sanz, an electronics and communications engineering graduate and an IT practitioner prior to establishing Philippine FoodAsia, says that SAP Business One is designed to integrate the various systems of a business, providing a single comprehensive and functional solution for the processes needed to run a business, such as finance, sales, customers, e-commerce, inventory, and operations.

According to Sanz, SAP Business One allows Philippine FoodAsia to transfer data from its Bibingkinitan outlets to the central office with less human intervention, thus ensuring greater accuracy. “Our outlets now simply text in their inventory to a number, which a computer then gets for processing,” he explains. “Before we availed of SAP Business One, we would manually process the data gathered in the server. Now that we have this advanced solution, data directly goes to the server, then automatically gets transferred to the SAP for consolidation.”

Philippine FoodAsia has 110 Bibingkinitan stores nationwide, 60 percent of them company-owned and the rest run by franchisees. It also owns and operates three other food chains–The Bibingka Cafe, Tea Square, and Noodle Boy–and currently has a total of 80 outlets nationwide, mostly in Metro Manila but also in Cebu, Davao, Cagayan de Oro, Iloilo, and General Santos City.

Sanz says that Philippine FoodAsia’s investment in SAP Business One is proving to be worth it because it enables the company to achieve stricter control measures, more efficient and productive internal processes, cost reduction, and increased profitability.

He explains: “Because the system makes figures and data accessible to us anytime, anywhere, we have become more competitive, able to very quickly respond to the needs of our outlets and customers. We have also saved 50 percent in our manpower requirements. And because we don’t print too much anymore, we save on paper and ink as well.”

Randy Mandia, director for the Global Solution Center of SAP reseller Clerysys Philippines Inc., says SAP Business One has been built specifically with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in mind. “The solution integrates the core business processes of an SME based on best practices,” he says.

PHILIPPINE FOODASIA CORP.
Unit 905 Page 1 Bldg. Acacia Ave.,
Madrigal Business Park, Ayala Alabang,
Muntinlupa City
Telephones: (02) 809-0884; (02) 809-6893

CLERYSYS PHILIPPINES INC.
Unit 2106 Orient Square Building
Emerald Avenue, Ortigas Center, Pasig City
Telephones: (02) 381-9198; (02) 666-3864
E-mail: info-ph@clerysys.com
Website: www.clerysys.com

This article was obtained from Entrepreneur.com.ph.

Richard V. Sanz, president and CEO of Bibingkinitan!’s mother firm FoodAsia Corp., said half of the new stores will be put up by the company and the other half by franchisees.

Sanz said the company’s focus is to establish more outlets in smaller-sized malls and roadside locations in provincial cities and capital towns.

“Last year we already saturated the big malls so our direction now is to go on smaller malls and provincial cities and towns,” he explained.

Sanz said they have expanded their product offerings to include “pancit in bilaos” and “Bar-B-Q” for take-out as the company wants to position Bibingkinitan! as the preferred brand for parties, gatherings and “pasalubong” (take-home) food packages.

He said Bibingkinitan! is now a recognized and established brand, with the Bank of the Philippines (BPI) even offering a collateral-free loan to its prospective franchisees.

“The fact that a bank in the stature of BPI is willing to offer collateral-free loans for our franchisees shows that Bibingkinitan! is already a trusted brand and a highly feasible investment opportunity,” Sanz said.

Aside from this encouraging indicator, he said FoodAsia Corp. has also come up with its own “Franchise Lite” package under which franchisees can pay the franchise cost in six months at zero interest and no down payment.

This article was obtained from Philstar.com.

RICHARD SANZ: “Our outlets now simply text in their inventory to a number, which a computer then gets for processing.”

For the last five years, Philippine FoodAsia Corp., a food company that produces the Bibingkinitan brand of mini-ricecakes, has been using an integrated information facility to make its operations more efficient and effective. Last October 2008, however, the company added an automated inventory tool to this information facility at a cost of about a million pesos.

“We purchased SAP Business One to attach to our IT infrastructure,” says Richard Sanz, owner of Philippine FoodAsia. “We needed better control in monitoring internal processes than simply using MS Excel, index cards, and manual vouchers. Before, our IT infrastructure consisted of the basic phone and fax; advance communication systems like e-mail, LAN, Internet access, website, and computer-sharing; IT using PC with Windows; and advance IT particularly the proprietary SMS Solution. To this we have added SAP Business One for our accounting, ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), and CRM (Customer Relationship Management).”

Sanz, an electronics and communications engineering graduate and an IT practitioner prior to establishing Philippine FoodAsia, says that SAP Business One is designed to integrate the various systems of a business, providing a single comprehensive and functional solution for the processes needed to run a business, such as finance, sales, customers, e-commerce, inventory, and operations.

According to Sanz, SAP Business One allows Philippine FoodAsia to transfer data from its Bibingkahan outlets to the central office with less human intervention, thus ensuring greater accuracy.

“Our outlets now simply text in their inventory to a number, which a computer then gets for processing,” he explains. “Before we availed of SAP Business One, we would manually process the data gathered in the server. Now that we have this advanced solution, data directly goes to the server, then automatically gets transferred to the SAP for consolidation.”

Philippine FoodAsia has 110 Bibingkinitan stores nationwide, 60 percent of them company-owned and the rest run by franchisees. It also owns and operates three other food chains–The Bibingka Cafe, Tea Square, and Noodle Boy–and currently has a total of 80 outlets nationwide, mostly in Metro Manila but also in Cebu, Davao, Cagayan de Oro, Iloilo, and General Santos City.

Sanz says that Philippine FoodAsia’s investment in SAP Business One is proving to be worth it because it enables the company to achieve stricter control measures, more efficient and productive internal processes, cost reduction, and increased profitability.

He explains: “Because the system makes figures and data accessible to us anytime, anywhere, we have become more competitive, able to very quickly respond to the needs of our outlets and customers. We have also saved 50 percent in our manpower requirements. And because we don’t print too much anymore, we save on paper and ink as well.”

Randy Mandia, director for the Global Solution Center of SAP reseller Clerysys Philippines Inc., says SAP Business One has been built specifically with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in mind. “The solution integrates the core business processes of an SME based on best practices,” he says.

Contact details:
PHILIPPINE FOODASIA CORP.
Unit 905 Page 1 Bldg. Acacia Ave.,
Madrigal Business Park, Ayala Alabang,
Muntinlupa City
Telephones: (02) 809-0884; (02) 809-6893

CLERYSYS PHILIPPINES INC.
Unit 2106 Orient Square Building
Emerald Avenue, Ortigas Center, Pasig City
Telephones: (02) 381-9198; (02) 666-3864
E-mail: info-ph@clerysys.com
Website: www.clerysys.com

This article was obtained from Entrepreneur.com.ph.

RICHARD SANZ: “We are confident that through focused development and brand-building, we can get a respectable market share in three to five years.”

In a country where iced tea is usually prepared from powder, Richard Sanz has successfully grown a line of all-natural tea beverages into a fast-rising consumer food business. Food Asia Corp., currently with four brands and 80 retail outlets nationwide, experienced revenue growth of over 1,000 percent during the past two years.

In 2004, however, Sanz only had a business concept and gut feel. He recalls: “I was 23 years old when I resigned from my engineering job in a multinational firm. It was a risky decision as I had a family to provide for, but I went ahead because I was young and excited to have my own business.”

Inspired by childhood memories of his mother making iced tea from tea leaves and water, Sanz raised P120,000 capital from personal loans and set out to introduce Tea Square, the country’s first specialty iced tea brand.

“My target was the upscale, health-conscious AB market,” he says. “Since I had a low budget, I developed my own products based on what I felt the market would enjoy. I also designed the cart, and learned how to use Adobe Photoshop to create my company’s logo and marketing materials. The entire setup took two weeks.”

TEA SQUARE

The first Tea Square branch opened at the Alabang Town Center in Muntinlupa City in March 2004.

“Since I only had one employee, I did all the marketing, accounting, and other tasks myself,” says Sanz. “But it made me so proud to see people frequenting the store–between 50 to 100 customers came each day, probably out of curiosity. The good thing, though, is we were able to translate that curiosity into continuous sales.”

To educate the public about his products, Sanz ran taste tests and put up in-mall posters emphasizing tea’s health benefits, such as boosting one’s immune system, preventing cancer, and reducing high blood pressure. He also distributed “LoyalTea” cards and, to ensure optimal customer service, printed his personal cellular phone number on all packaging materials.

Tea Square now offers an assortment of natural iced teas, milk teas, natural tea soda, and BreadBites snacks. It has grown to 20 branches nationwide. “I was able to recover my initial investment in only six months and repay my loans within a year,”Sanz says.

BIBINGKINITAN!

In 2006, Sanz expanded into the bibingka business. “My family likes eating bibingka, but sometimes, we can’t finish a whole serving. So I thought of making smaller portions.” He branded it as Bibingkinitan!– a word that combines bibingka with balingkinitan, the Tagalog term for small or petite.

At P20 apiece, Bibingkinitan! rice-flour cakes offer value for money, particularly to the mass-based broad C market. It offers classic and flavored variants, including chocolate, cream cheese, and macapuno.

The mini-bibingkas were a hit. “Bibingkinitan! is the country’s leading bibingka chain today in terms of revenue and store number,” he says. “It’s also our bestselling brand. We now have over 60 Bibingkinitan! branches.”

A year after Bibingkinitan!’s launch, Sanz put up another upscale outlet called Bibingka Cafe at the Alabang Town Center in December 2007, offering special treats as bibingka ala mode, champorado, salabat, tsokolate,
and barako coffee at prices ranging from P50 to 100. Three more branches have opened within 2008 at SM North EDSA, SM Clark, and SM Mall of Asia.

FRESHFOODS

Continuing its expansion, Sanz introduced another division earlier this year called Fresh-Foods. Its initial product offerings are ready-to-eat and ready-to-cook frozen foods, like Stuffees stuffed bread and tilapia ala pobre, as well as fresh poultry produce, like fresh white eggs, red duck eggs, and fresh chicken.

Says Sanz: “SM Supermarket was impressed with our products and marketing efforts, so it offered the opportunity to develop a brand of consumer food products for the broad C market. These products are now being distributed through major SM supermarkets and hypermarkets nationwide.”

He admits that FreshFoods’s competition is much more formidable than those of their retail brands, but he remains unfazed. “We are confident that through focused development and brand-building, we can get a respectable market share in three to five years.”

FOOD FORWARD

FoodAsia Corp. presently has a workforce of almost 100 employees and occupies a 100sq m office in Muntinlupa City. Within the year, the company will move out from its two commissaries in Paranaque City and transfer to a new 500-square-meter, three-storey FoodAsia Building at the Madrigal Business Park, Alabang.

Both Tea Square and Bibingkinitan! have begun franchising, with its combined 20 franchised outlets comprising roughly 25 percent of the current total stores. “We want to establish a presence in all towns in the Philippines,” Sanz says. “We are targeting about 500 stores in the next five years, and plan to expand into the Southeast Asia region by mid-2009.”

Contact Details
9/F Page 1 Bldg.
Acacia Ave., Madrigal Business Part
Muntinlupa City, Metro Manila
Telephone: (02) 809-0884
Fax: (02) 809-6893
E-mail: info@the teasquare.com
Website: www.theteasquare.com

This article was obtained from Entrepreneur.com.ph

Bibingkinitan is the Philippines’ leading and biggest bibingka and coffee chain popularized by its variety of soft and moist bibingka (rice cake) and 100% Barako (Philippine Liberica) Coffee, which is characterized by its full and strong flavor.

Established in 2006, Bibingkinitan had evolved from a brand-new player in this category into the market leader within five (5) years, in terms of revenues, market share, and market presence with a store network of over 200 in key cities and towns nationwide.

In a time of popular burgers joints and doughnuts chains, Bibingkinitan has initiated renewed interest over Filipino delicacies thru an aggressive expansion program, as seen thru the very warm reception of its products whether in highly urbanized cities, or in rural areas.

To date, Bibingkinitan is currently negotiating to open their first offshore branch in Jakarta, Indonesia targeting the mainstream market, not just Filipinos. This is the first step in Bibingkinitan’s long-term goal of making Filipinos proud by introducing Philippine delicacies to the world.

Awards & Citations

Bibingkinitan!

• 2007 Best in Franchise Support by Entrepreneur Magazine Philippines
• 2008 Best in Franchise Support by Entrepreneur Magazine Philippines
• 2008 Fastest-Growing Franchise by Entrepreneur Magazine Philippines
• 2009 Fastest-Growing Franchise by Entrepreneur Magazine Philippines
• 2010 Best in Franchise Support by Entrepreneur Magazine Philippines
• 2010 Fastest-Growing Franchise by Entrepreneur Magazine Philippines

Richard V. Sanz, Founder & CEO, FoodAsia Corporation

• 2008 Top Ten (10) Entrepreneurs of the Philippines by Entrepreneur Magazine Philippines, screened and audited by SGV
• 2010 Young Market Masters Awardee for Entrepreneurial Marketing; by Mansmith and Fielders, Audited by TNS
• 2010 Agora Awardee for Entrepreneurship, Medium-Scale by Philippine Marketing Association
• 2010 Go Negosyo Most Young Inspiring Entrepreneur by Philippine Center for Entrepreneurship

Bibingkinitan! Franchise Details

For more information: email franchise@foodasia.com.ph or fill up our contact form.