A truly Pinoy experience

"When people are through eating, the banana leaves left on the tables pique the interest of other customers." — Rommel Juan of Binalot

Binalot was inspired by our family outings in Cavite when we were young, when our mom used to wrap our packed lunches in banana leaves.

My brother Raffy and I saw the potential of the banana leaf as a marketing and branding tool, so in 1997 we decided to start the business so we could put our marketing management degrees to good use.

With the help of our friend, Aileen Anastacio, a graduate of a culinary school in the US, we introduced to Filipinos our mom’s style of wrapping picnic food. Binalot was born.

It is now a thriving business, but things had been a slog before we started it.

Like all new graduates, I tried my luck as an employee, but after six-and-a-half months I decided to pursue my dream of running my own business. Not wanting to start on zero knowledge, I decided to work for my father’s business, MD Juan Enterprises, a manufacturer and exporter of jeep bodies, to learn the basics.

The company was already running smoothly when I joined, and it taught me and my brother Raffy how to run a business and gave us time to plan Binalot.

Our first task was to decide where to put it up, and Makati was the runaway winner because we would be right there in the financial district.

We then researched for three months and sought our friends for advice. We had no cash to pay for rent, so we decided to deliver the food to our target market. We started by calling friends and asking them to try Binalot. We included a survey form with every delivery to get feedback, and in the early days I made the deliveries myself to familiarize myself with the business.

Business was very good in the beginning. People had money to spend, but when the Asian financial crisis started biting by 1998, many employees started packing lunches and eating in the office instead of dining in the malls. One result was, we started having a lot of unsold food, and to solve the problem, the board required each member to sell seven meals a day and to pay for all unsold meals. We were forced to dig deeper into our pockets.

Our chance to put up a mall-based outlet came in 1999, when Shangri-La offered us a spot in the Food Court. The company was not doing well at the time, but we decided that the brand was mature enough to hit the malls. It became a huge success. We now have 17 mall-based outlets and 10 franchised ones.

As a manager, it’s important to me that my staff are happy. In fact, I have organized a monthly get-together, Breakfast with the President, so I could listen to my employees–the people who interact with customers and have such great ideas about customer service.

And in improving customer service, it helps that we have a unique idea in our banana leaf wrappers–something that’s truly Filipino and that creates an aura of freshness. In fact, when people are through eating, the banana leaves left on the tables pique the interest of other customers.

We now plan to expand in the provinces. Once we’ve penetrated the key cities, then maybe–just maybe–we could bring the Filipino provincial experience to the world. –Interview by Neil Palabrica