Pinoy success story

Franchising has really gone big in the Philippines. That the Philippines has become known as the franchising hub in this part of the world speaks volumes of how far the business of franchising has grown in the country. So many success stories have been documented and shared by the franchise association, and though not all of them have grown as big as, say, Mang Inasal, some are even more remarkable in that they started ever so humbly and just grew exponentially over the years.

One of the Cinderella success stories in local entrepreneurship is Julie’s Bakeshop which had its roots in Cebu City. Business & Leisure talked with Mr. Bien Topacio, a member of the Gandionco clan which started Julie’s Bakeshop and is now the franchise business development manager of Julie’s, and he traced the humble beginnings of the bakeshop.

Julie’s came into being in 1981. Prior to that, Mrs. Julie Gandionco, the clan’s matriarch who started it all, toiled hard as a canteen concessionaire of a large factory in Cebu that employed thousands. If you run the canteen of such a huge company serving thousands of hungry employees, one can imagine the volume of cooked food that comes out of Julie’s kitchen, day in and day out, from morning to afternoon. Even the bread that she served in the canteen accounted for a big volume, such that she had to farm out her daily orders to many small bakeries just to keep us with her daily bread allocation. In one of these bakeries, one of the employees, a baker himself, remarked on how big her volume of daily bread needs was, and shouldn’t she just consider putting up her own bake shop instead of giving the business to others?

 According to Bien, Julie herself loved to cook, which is essentially why she chose the canteen business to start with, but she didn’t know a thing about baking. She was hesitant to go into the bakery business, until the baker himself offered:  “Why don’t you just get me to bake for you and you can open your own bake shop?”

That was in 1981, and Julie’s Bake Shop opened in Wireless, Mandaue in Cebu. It was an immediate hit, and not too long after, a second branch opened in Urgello St., and the chain of bake shops was well on its way. In 1988, the first Julie’s Bake Shop opened outside of Cebu, in Iloilo City. All these stores were family-owned, (some with partners) a testament to how hard-working the family was and how the driven matriarch ruled by example. Here was a housewife/mother-turned-businesswoman who did not have fancy educational credits to her name, no masteral or PhDs to speak of, just a lot of perseverance, hard work and good business sense. Thirty two years later, Julie’s Bake Shop is the largest chain of bake shops in the Philippines. In this country where there is a bake shop in every corner in every community, this is no mean feat.

It was in 1998 that Julie’s decided to venture into franchising.  As Bien says, the company had to move on, they had to step up.  They could afford to be passive; they had to be dynamic all the way. Embracing the franchising concept fully, back in the late ’90s when the concept had not really caught on with Filipinos, Julie’s Bake Shop now has 500 stores nationwide, an amazing feat indeed for a lady who didn’t even know how to bake when she opened her first bake shop in Mandaue.

This country has no dearth of bake shops, and as an American friend commented, how can these neighborhood bake shops earn when there seems to be one in every corner? The first Julie’s Bake Shop in Cebu was not big – Bien recalls that it must have been around 70 sq. meters which housed the bakery, the sales counter and a small snack area. This set-up continues to be the typical set-up of Julie’s, and all their stores are located in neighborhoods, which makes a lot of sense because that is precisely their market. Julie’s positions itself as a neighborhood bakery, and they have shunned the malls to this day. They pioneered the concept of a visible production area where bread is baked fresh on an hourly basis, and this seems to be their best selling proposition. The small snack area is for the neighborhood mainstays who like to eat their bread warm from the oven, no frills of a fancy sandwich with lettuce, just gulped down plainly with a cold drink. That tops the list of the small joys for many folks.

Now, Julie’s has 130 franchises spread over 500 stores across the land. If the math doesn’t add up, it is because many of the franchisees have multiple stores, some owning 10 to 15 stores. That is also testament to how viable the business is. They have also stepped up the business even further – they have just gone international.

The first store outside the Philippines is set to open in the 4th week of September in Tangara, a city just outside Jakarta in Indonesia. They met up with a Filipino businessman there who has been living in Indonesia for 30 years now and is, essentially more Indonesian than Filipino. They are, of course, looking at other Asian countries where there is a large concentration of Filipinos who grew up with Julie’s breads. In a survey among Filipinos residing abroad, many of them yearned for Julie’s products and wanted one right in their neighborhood.

To be sure, some of Julie’s bread products will have to be tweaked to cater to the local markets abroad. After all, they are targeting not only the Filipinos living in those countries but the mainstream residents as well. In the meantime, Julie’s R&D continues to be strong. New products will still have to be developed. Bien also tells us that, like a good corporate citizen, Julie’s corporate social responsibility likewise continues to grow through their feeding programs. For them, Julie’s is more than just baking bread – it is baking bread to feed people. Together with their domestic expansion, their global expansion will take hold in the next few years.

Mabuhay!!! Be proud to be a Filipino.

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