Fruitas concocts expansion plans

MANILA, Philippines — The brands are seen in many food places around the country, in malls and even just around the corner if you happen to live in a densely populated neighborhood.

These are the brands that have now become common household food and beverage names — Fruitas Fresh From Babot’s Farm, Buko Ni Fruitas, Fruitas Ice Candy, De Original Jamaican Pattie and Juice Bar, Juice Avenue, The Mango Farm, Buko Loco, Johnn Lemon, Black Pearl, Shou, Friends Fries, and Halo-Halo Islands.

All these brands are under Fruitas Holdings Inc. (FHI), the food and beverage company, which has three operating companies. These are Fruitas Group Inc, which holds most of the brands; Buko ni Fruitas and Negril trading which houses the Old Jamaican Pattie Shop.

With FHI’s brands now established in their respective markets but with potential to strengthen further, FHI is ready to embark on a roughly P2 billion initial public offering (IPO) possibly this year.

FHI founder and chief executive officer Lester Yu said the company is targeting to go public this year to raise funds for expansion.

“The IPO is something that we intend to do within the year,” he told The STAR.

The time is ripe, he said. Yu said the company wants to raise funds for expansion on the back of the booming growth of the food retail busi- ness across the country, which are being driven by overseas and Philippine-based Filipinos looking for investments and growing consumer demand.

Fruitas Group chief financial adviser Calvin Chua said the IPO would help the company grow much faster.

FHI is the market leader in the Philippine food cart business. It was founded in 2002 when Yu opened his first kiosk in SM City Manila. The company soon began to open more branches in a few years’ time and introduced brands that have grown to be loved by Filipinos. It is now considered as the fastest growing food business in the country in terms of branches.

The company now has 820 branches nationwide and is looking to double this network in three to five years to about 1,600 stores.

Aside from food kiosks, FHI also has lifestyle parks, which carry the company’s own brands as well as other new brands in the market.

These food parks are in Maginhawa, another is in Cordillera corner E. Rodriguez called Le Village Lifestyle Park and the other is in Cascades along Tomas Morato.

Yu said the parks are a source of recurring income for the company but more importantly an avenue for the group’s brands.

“Like an incubation period. We place our concepts in our own lifestyle parks. I would say around 30 percent or a third would be ours,” Chua said.

It was in 2016 when FHI gained footprint into the food and lifestyle park sector through Uno Cinquenta Lifestyle Park along Maginhawa in Quezon City.

The park is a 600-square meter al fresco dining space that hosts 14 vendors, offering a wide selection of food and beverages.

Moving forward, FHI is optimistic about the retail food sector. Thus, the company is planning to open more food cart locations, lifestyle parks and other new dining outlets.

“We believe we’ve barely scratched the surface. There’s still so much room to grow in the province. We see certain areas where there is potential for growth and more concepts,” Chua said.

He cited as an example, Johnn Lemon, one of its brands. “It’s quite new but in a span of 18 to 24 months, we’ve already opened 71 stores. So we think we have that track record to be able to identify and be able to deploy quite quickly,” he said.?Indeed, the time is ripe for Fruitas Holdings to become even bigger.