Would-be doctor now provides a living
By Merceditas A. Esguerra
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 23:59:00 10/11/2008
MANILA, Philippines—The prospect of developing a dish that could be associated with Davao and with a potential for becoming a national chain motivated Manuel Paul “Bong” Villanueva to put up a restaurant. Banoks Ihaw-Ihaw—coined from the words barbecueng manok—began as a single proprietorship in 1995 with 35 employees. At that time, the chicken inasal was starting to gain headway in Negros. Bong thought of coming out with the same concept of serving grilled chicken in Davao. The initial staple offerings at Banoks were grilled pork and chicken. Shortly, pancit and bulalo were added to the menu.
The second Banoks outlet opened a year later, in 1996. By 1997, the couple had six Banoks outlets consisting of restaurants and kiosks; a total of eight restaurants including Café Eliza, the first full-service restaurant set up by the couple in 1989 when they were still sweethearts. They also had a small convenience store and several food carts in the malls.
To some, having seven restaurants would have made them sit back, and enjoy listening to the cash registers ring. Not Bong. He was constantly on his toes. Expectedly, the success of Banoks opened the floodgates of chicken and pork barbecue businesses. “Within a few weeks of opening a new branch, other eateries with the same menu would be sprouting nearby,” he says.
UP education has molded Bong to excel in a very competitive environment. The challenge began when he passed the Upcat; it came with the pressure to live up to the expectation of being among the best. He knew then that along with the privilege, independence (of living away from home in Davao), and flexibility, comes responsibility.
“In UP, one is very much on one’s own after the first day, when the professor recites the requirements, gives the syllabus, and the schedule and coverage of quizzes, term papers, and exams,” he recalls.
Between attending to the business and family obligations, Bong sets aside time for business and management seminars. His enrollment in a Master in Management course at UP Mindanao—which he finished in 2006—was providential. Using his restaurant business as basis for the required strategic paper, he learned, among other things, that the best way to improve and grow a business was to incorporate.
Sunrise Foods Corp. was formed in 2006 with Bong and his wife, Mariel, as principal shareholders. While he derived the idea from the inasal, the similarity of Banoks Ihaw-Ihaw with Bacolod chicken inasal, ends with the main ingredients, chicken and pork. Banoks’ version of the chicken barbecue is somewhat sweeter and without the achuete coloring. The stores were spruced up and an aggressive promotional strategy launched to promote the new image. In a few months, Banoks was transformed into a full-service diner serving authentic Davao cuisine, the only one of its kind in the city.
The next stage after incorporating was to franchise. Franchising would stave off competition, allow expansion, and provide maximum exposure at minimal costs. The company carefully worked out a franchise package with reasonable rates for three types of franchises: restaurant with commissary, restaurant unit, and kiosk. Since then, there has been no letup in promoting the franchise. Aside from being listed in a Web-based franchising site, Bong also presides over franchising presentations similar to the one organized by Unilever in Manila last month.
Today, there are 11 Banoks outlets in Davao—most are company-owned, a few are franchises. In the final planning stage is another in General Santos City. Negotiations have just been concluded for the first franchise to open next year outside Mindanao, along the Timog strip in Quezon City.
The menu is predominantly sinugba (barbecued or grilled meats and seafood), tinola or tinowa (soup), and kinilaw (raw fish salad). And when fast-food chains came out with “combo” meals, Banoks followed suit with its “su-tu-kil,” a combination platter of sugbang panga, tinola, and kinilaw with unlimited rice. For the budget-conscious, there’s a filling meal of meat, soup, achara, and unlimited rice for a very reasonable price.
It has helped that Mariel proved to be a very good partner in life and in business. A banking and finance graduate, she excels in figures as much as she does in developing new recipes. Before they set up the commissary, all supplies, food preparations, and the office were housed in the couple’s residence, with the family kitchen doubling as her laboratory for experimenting and testing the recipes before introducing new dishes. The family members were just too willing to be the critics. Even the instant noodles were not forgiven, Banoks developed its own variant. Today, a core staff composed of the most loyal and trusted employees man the commissary.
Bong is the son of a doctor and youngest in a family of four who was groomed to take after his dad. He enrolled in Biology at UP Los Baños where he stayed for three and a half years. An unfortunate incident prompted his transfer to Ateneo de Davao. By the time he finished his BS Biology at age 21, he already had a string of successful business endeavors in his resumé—as distributor of TheBar (an alcoholic drink) in Los Baños and other parts of Laguna, Burger Bar (a hamburger stall at the hospital in Davao where his dad worked and which was inspired by the success of burger chains in Manila), burger vans (following the concept of a known burger brand) also in Davao, and Café Eliza. He gave up TheBar when he continued his studies in Davao. Later, he gave the burger stall as a wedding gift to his original tindera and focused on the café and the burger vans.
When the burger chains set foot in Davao one after the other, in 1993 and 1994, as Bong had anticipated, he dropped the burgers and switched to chicken. He used the proceeds from the buyout of his vans—which had by then increased to three—by one of the burger chains to start Banoks.
He may not have become a doctor. But, as it turned out, the medical profession’s loss is the food industry’s gain. Instead of prolonging lives, Banoks Ihaw-Ihaw is providing people with a living.
But all is not business and family for Bong who has four children with Mariel. Bong is an active partner in several feeding programs. He regularly brings food to a drop-in center for street kids—those who refuse to be confined in their homes or shelters. The children frequent the place to bathe, eat, and sometimes sleep. He also provides sacks of rice and chicken monthly to the Department of Social Welfare and Development for the latter’s project for malnourished children. “These are very modest contributions. Helping people is a small accomplishment.”
(The story of Bong Villanueva is among the 25 documented in the “Iskolar ng Bayan Gives Back, the enterprising way” the last of the Dreamers, Doers, Risk-takers book series published by the UP ISSI and Serdef. For inquiries, call 928 to76 to 79 )
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