The steady popularity of pizza in the country, the ever-increasing reliance of nearly 80 million Filipinos on prepared food and the booming food-cart businesses in the country make a good recipe for a pizza business.
This was something crystal clear to Kerwin Tansekiao, managing director of Jiminy Foods Inc. A young entrepreneur—out of his guided decisions based on experience and facts—Tansekiao put into flesh a business portent that was presenting itself to him some 15 years ago, when he was struggling to make it on his own.
Sometime in 1992, after graduation, he wanted to put up his own business but needed an initial capital of P50,000 to be able to do that. His dad would not lend him the money, so he was compelled to slave the hours away in a multinational company. His salary, however, was not that much, even for a brand-management post.
“Early on after graduation, I
wanted to start my own business. That was in 1992, a long time ago. I wanted to get a loan worth P50,000 from my dad, but he said I have to earn it. He didn’t want to give me [the money]. So, I think, life is full of those challenges to be able to prompt you to do better, so I started looking for a job, and I landed with Del Monte,” he reminisces.
He was doing great in his job, but still he wanted more challenges. So, after staying for barely eight months in his work, he resigned and put up his own detergent company. That move seemed to make a lot of sense to him—he came up with his own mixture of dishwashing soap and detergent bar, and did the production in his own backyard.
Right from the start, his business was unstable, and a lot of reasons can be attributed to that. He did not give up his business because he wanted to prove to everyone that he can make it.
“Nakakatuwa doon sa nangyari, ang challenge lang sa detergents is, since it’s now commoditized, parang
everybody can go into detergent business, mag-enroll ka lang sa seminar, the ingredients are easily accessible. You can just mix it at the back of your house, then pack it and sell it. You’re in business. So I was looking at that as a general weakness for the category if you want to be able to establish it as a brand.”
So Tansekiao asked himself what was the best thing to do. Then somebody just told him to shift to the pizza business. “You know what, this pizza company is selling 2 million boxes of small solo-sized pizzas every week.”
And his reply was, “Pwede na…”, not fully absorbing what he heard.
He did not want to go head-on against the main brands or the bigger players in the business, so he had to look for a format that will click to the Filipinos, with the assurance of really good taste and high standards.
After careful planning, a series of deliberations and market study, Jimini Pizza was born. And his first outlet was a small cart placed at a school restaurant in Alabang.
The brand was derived from the name of a popular fictional children’s book character Jiminy Cricket. What it is selling is just half the size of a normal pizza, but big and solid enough for one person to eat.
They had to stick with that business format—best quality but affordable and easy to bring. It was also during that time when pizza was called boxed, or frozen, pizza, since every pizza sold then was frozen and not fresh.
That made Jimini a standout. Every recipe is fresh, including the dough. In fact, most of the ingredients used are from Europe and New York.
Tansekiao even had to hire a food technologist to maintain the good taste and high quality of their products. “It took us about two years to do research and development for that one. The first person I hired was a quality-assurance person, who is now my product pack manager, siya ’yung fresh from college, a food technologist. He was the one who helped concoct our pizza before, since we wanted to come up with an idea that is coming from a solo size, we wanted it one size but with many flavors,” he explains.
“So the first outlet we opened for trial was at the Saint Benedict School in Alabang. We tried one school. We really started as a cart-based operation.”
Among the many reasons pizza lovers are so into Jimini is its unique taste. Probably, people would agree that almost all pizza brands have the same taste and presentation. As a brand specialist, Tansekiao made sure Jimini would loom large among the competitors.
“The taste has to be ‘Philippinized.’ That’s why it has to be on the sweet side. But then, it should not be too sweet, to the point naman na it’s overempowering the taste profile. The goal of the company is to make sure that we bring in the world’s most-favorite food, and bring it to every Filipino. So that’s how we want it done.”
Since its dough is top quality, there’s a certain crispiness factor in Jimini. Nothing beats the intense heat and smoky flavor and oozing mozzarella cheese from it. When their customers finally fell in love with their products, that was the time he decided to put them in the supermarket. “So when we introduced it in supermarkets, the market was ready. Actually, we’re the top pizza-market leader in the supermarkets now.”
Due to the increasing prices of recipes abroad, he decided to come up with a local version of their pizza. And in 2004, Pedricos was born. “The taste of Pedricos is actually localized, saltier ’yung cheese niya, mas cheesy ’yung dating niya kaysa sa Jimini, because it’s really sourced locally. The cheese has a local blend, we still blend it.”
The Pedricos brand is targeting mothers and group buyers, or those who are used to basically buying a family-sized pizza. “That’s why we came up with the four-pizza-in-a-box concept. Ito na ’yung ginawa naming franchise. Since we started in 2004, Pedricos now has over 100 outlets.”
Jimini pizza and Pizza Pedricos are now available nationwide, proving that hard work, dedication and careful planning will yield growth and profit.
Image credits: Stephanie Tumampos