Casa Ilongga: Upbeat throughout the decades

Serving delectable authentic Ilonggo cuisine like no other, family-owned Casa Ilongga with its 26 years track record has been able to stay long in the food industry nationwide by innovating and seeing through the basic needs of its ever growing clientele.

Its president and CEO Raffy T. Uytiepo related to The Freeman Casa’s humble beginning and how it was able to become a nationwide venture and stayed long in the ever-growing and competitive food business.

Uytiepo shared that his family used to engage in an oil business in Bacolod way back the late 70s delivering gasoline supplies for a sugar plantation. But due to the crisis of the sugar industry that time, his family decided to venture in Manila. With barely enough money left from the failed endeavor back home, they figured to invest one more time in business and made their old ancestral house near St. Scholastica’s College and De La Salle University in Vito Cruz St. Malate into a boarding house.

Later on, their student boarders found a hard time looking for food and asked the family if they would want to serve them some. And so, coming from a place quite known for its delicious food treats; the family started serving La Paz batchoy, an all-time favorite Ilonggo cuisine to the students exclusively.

Delighted and satisfied with the food they served, by word of mouth the news spread like wildfire and soon they opened for the public to cater and serve more customers. From five tables, more people kept coming and in just a short time they expanded the business into a full blown restaurant with more food line in 1981.

They also started serving more Ilonggo specialties like chicken inasal, pancit Molo, kadyos, kanse, Ilonggo styled dinuguan with puto manapla and of which, La Paz batchoy remained as their number one best seller and specialty. Then with the growing demand, they opened another branch in Vito Cruz extension and then later on moved into the malls.

Now Casa Ilongga has 12 branches nationwide after it started franchising. They have three branches in Manila and Bacolod, two in Iloilo, and one in General Santos, Cebu and Davao. From these, four are company owned and 8 were franchised as the operation has already become quite difficult to handle because other family members have already migrated to the United States after their parents died.

But Uytiepo, being the first born swore to his mother that they will still maintain the family business despite the fact that he also has his own sporting career. He shared that he tries hard to always find time to look into the business and next year, they are looking forward into opening more branches and expand to other key cities like Cagayan de Oro and Dumaguete.

“We see to it that franchisees will maintain the quality of the food line and as an Ilonggo restaurant, Ilonggo specialty should be served. We also aim that when customers go to Casa Ilongga, they will savor nothing but the best authentic Ilonggo delicacies,” said Uytiepo.

Aside from their successful restaurant food chain, Casa Ilongga is also into export. They have been exporting packed Ilonggo food items for quite sometime already such as crunchy squid rings sourced from Negros and Iloilo, Spanish sardines from Dipolog and banana fritters or the so-called “pinasugbo”. These products are exported to the United States, Canada and Australia and Uytiepo shared that sometimes due to the high demand, they cannot anymore supply specially with the seasonality of the raw products.

 Recently, Casa Ilongga held a selling event called “Iloilo Food Fiesta” for three days at the Robinson’s Place Cebu where delicacies from Iloilo, Guimaras, Negros, and Bacolod were highlighted like piyaya, bisqutso, pineapple and mango ketchup, polvoron, casoy, inday-inday, butter scotch, and kakanin among others.

Casa Ilongga is the Philippine recipient of the award given in the 27th International Trophy for Quality, an annual award giving body created in collaboration with Trade Leaders Club based in Madrid, Spain. Citing the nationwide success of Casa Ilongga, Uytiepo was also nominated for the Agora Award for Entrepreneurship (small scale) last 1997 in the Philippine Marketing Association.

For 26 years of serving delectable Ilonggo cuisine, Casa Ilongga builds on their trusted name as the main reason that customers keep growing. And to stay at pace with the changing time and the growing competition as more players emerged, Uytiepo stressed that Casa Ilongga will, “keep on expanding and intend to maintain the business through continuously improving the food line and the customer service.” – Rhia de Pablo