Sumo Sam targets Visayas and Mindanao

CEBU City, Philippines—Entering the Cebu market is a tough move for Japanese restaurant Sumo Sam.

Cebuanos have the reputation of being spendthrift and cautious in the way they spend money.

But partnering with Cebuano entrepreneurs Shanna Lopez and Glecy Lopez-Go gives the six-year-old restaurant the confidence to expand outside of Metro Manila

“We’ve known Glecy’s family for years and we are just lucky to be working with people who love food and the brand… and understand the kind of business that we’re doing,” says Raymund Magdaluyo, one of the co-founders of Sumo Sam who owns other restaurants like Clawdaddy, The Red Crab, New Orleans and recently set up a gym named FTX.

The first Sumo Sam restaurant in the Visayas opened at the Terraces of Ayala Center Cebu last November 24. It is a joint venture between the Lopez sisters and Magdaluyo’s team, which includes actor Marvin Agustin and GMA marketing manager Ricky Laudico.

The Cebu restaurant has 120 seats.

Sumo Sam also opened a 70-seat restaurant in Davao in September 2011 with the goal of furthering their reach in the regional market.

Shanna Lopez, who spearheads the family’s real estate business, says her older sister Glecy is friends with Magdaluyo, Agustin and Laudico and learned about their interest in expanding to the Visayas and Mindanao.

“We thought that it was good opportunity to partner. We love the food at Sumo Sam and we’re confident that the Cebuanos will accept the brand. The menu choice caters to both the young and old market and it has been modified from the traditional Japanese cuisine to suit the palette of the Filipinos,” says Lopez.

Started in 2005, Sumo Sam was born with the idea of bringing high-quality Japanese cuisine to the Philippines at a price point that is not too expensive, says Magdaluyo.

“We felt that there was a gap in the market between the expensive restaurants (which offer high quality food) and (small restaurants) that sell food at low prices,” he says.

“When prices are low, they can’t use premium ingredients. At the same time, if it’s too high, we are not able to capture the market so we aimed to build a restaurant that is not too expensive with price points that will enable us to serve quality products,” Magdaluyo explains.

With the addition of Cebu and Davao, Sumo Sam now has nine branches, seven of which are located in Luzon (Pampanga and Laguna) and Metro Manila.

Magdaluyo says they will open 10 to 15 stores in the next two years.

Sumo Sam first opened in December 2005 at the Shangri-La Plaza Mall in Mandaluyong City.

It has received positive feedback and loyal following from customers who appreciate the way they integrate different cooking styles and ingredients into Japanese cuisine.

“When people encounter the word ‘fusion’ they tend to get confused of what their dining experience will be. We live the goal of making our customers experience dining by combining different techniques and elements of cooling from different cultures and discipline of international cooking integrating it to Japanese cuisine without sacrificing taste, service and quality of dishes,” he says.

Magdaluyo says each Sumo Sam restaurant will come out with dishes unique to a specific branch. This will be one of the distinguishing qualities of Sumo Sam, he says.

For the Cebu restaurant, they will introduce eight to 10 dishes that will use locally known ingredients. These include danggit and mangoes among others.

Keeping true to their promise of serving food using high-quality ingredients, Lopez says they source materials from reliable suppliers.  Soya oil is used for frying while Japanese koshihikari and miponica rice varieties are used for rice dishes.

She says they use tiger prawns (not the white shrimps) for the tempura and utilize the freshest catch for sashimi and sushi.

While Sumo Sam is the team’s first “baby,” Magdaluyo says they also opened their doors between 2007 and 2009 to expand to restaurants offering traditional Japanese and international cuisine.

These restaurants are John and Yoko (cosmopolitan Japanese cuisine) in Greenbelt 5; Marciano’s (Italian-New Yorker cuisine) in Greenbelt 3; and Mr. Kurosawa (European-Japanese cuisine in Quezon City and Pasay City.

“We provide variety. What we want to achieve is for people not to be afraid of Japanese food. That’s why all items have pictures so they will see how the food look like,” says Magdaluyo.