Bounty Fresh eyes bigger presence, industry growth

MANILA, Philippines—Bounty Fresh Food Inc. is on an aggressive campaign to expand its presence in the Philippines, said company president Tennyson G. Chen, who is representing the Philippines in the prestigious World Entrepreneur of the Year (EOY) awards in Monaco this coming June.

“We started with one house and 5,000 layers. Now we produce 2 million (day-old) birds weekly,” he said in a presentation at the send-off party over the weekend for the winner of the national EOY competition.

Bounty Fresh is thus well positioned, he said, to take advantage of economic growth in the Philippines and the resulting increase in purchasing power and consumption.

A 6-percent growth in gross domestic product per year over the next three to five years should provide enough [growth] opportunities for companies like Bounty Fresh, Chen said.

“If (the Philippines) can achieve at least 6-percent growth each year, Filipinos would have more money in their pockets, and the money remitted by OFWs [overseas Filipino workers] would likely be spent on more food or maybe better quality food items, among other things,” Chen added.

“I have poor eyesight but my vision 2020, or my dream, is to help double Filipinos’ consumption of chicken by the year 2020,” Chen said.

At present, each Filipino eats 7.5 to 8 kilograms of chicken yearly.

Chen said his target is for the poultry industry to serve 15 kilograms of chicken to every Filipino each year.

Besides poultry farming, Bounty Fresh is into food retail through company-owned rotisserie stores under the trade name “Chooks-to-Go.”

Chooks-to-Go has 1,100 outlets, which were rolled out over three years.

The target is to reach 1,500 stores within 2011.

Edwin G. Chen, a director of Bounty Fresh, told reporters that Chooks-to-Go can reasonably expect to grab a big chunk of prospective growth in demand for both dressed and cooked chicken because its outlets are more accessible to consumers.

Some Filipinos, especially those with lower income, may still feel intimidated going into big stores to buy cooked chicken or to supermarkets to get dressed chicken.