BRYAN TIU President and Chief Operating Officer iFOODS GROUP INC.

“I dreamed of one day having an air-conditioned office that is not in Divisoria.”

There was once a Divisoria boy who had but a small dream, an innocent one: an air-conditioned office outside of Divisoria.

That boy turns out to be BRYAN TIU, who now holds an air-conditioned office in Greenhills, owns 10 multiple platform restaurant brands across different market segments and employs 400 people.

Bryan is definitely proud of his school Philippine School of Business Administration, but since it is not in the top three schools in the country he feels he could be a little bit discriminated in the hiring preference of most companies. With this in mind, Bryan immediately thought of putting his own business instead of going for a corporate job.

“So I looked for a business that is good route for a start up,” says Bryan. He started his first business, a franchise, when he was yet in third year college.

His first business as a young entrepreneur was as a franchisee of Domino’s Pizza. He was only 18 years old then and took a franchise with the seed capital from his parents. He started with one outlet in Mandaluyong followed by another branch in Ortigas until he was able to build a total of four Domino’s Pizza branches.

Unfortunately, the Asian financial crisis struck and Domino’s Pizza decided to consolidate the business in the US because of a market slowdown.

“I was forced to close and there I lost some money,” says Bryan, who considers this experience his MBA.

It took for a while for Bryan to launch another business. He envisioned to build his own brand. Then he found a gap in the Japanese food and restaurant segment which he observed was either focusing only in the upscale or in the low-end market segment.

Bryan was thinking of creating a brand that should address the middle segment or the casual dining of the growing Japanese food lovers.

“I am a foodie in Japanese so I started to develop a Japanese restaurant brand,” says Bryan.

The first brand he developed was Teriyaki Boy in 2001. Again, he borrowed some capital from his parents.

From then on, he built a total of five stores and in 2005, the Pancake House group bought 70 percent of Teriyaki Boy. He decided to sell thinking his restaurant can be managed professionally under a new group and expand the brand. The Pancake House though is now owned by the Max’s Group. But that did not break his spirit as Bryan continued to build more brands.

Bryan has the passion for food and believes in the talent of Filipinos. He cannot stop thinking of ways how to tap and employ them in his new restaurant concepts.

“So I started anew,” says Bryan saying he was also encouraged by some mall owners to develop new brands. This has pushed him to move on.

Bryan has decided to go into multiple brand platform catering to specific market segments. In 2007, he finally organized “iFoods Group.” The idea was for iFoods to be a familyowned food business, but run by professional staff.

“The vision is one day our brands will become international and can represent the country as a homegrown Filipino brand,” says Bryan.

iFoods was meant to portray love for food. He joked about the concepts about iPhone, iPad of Apple. But his concept was born long before these gadgets came into the market.

Bryan believes that Metro Manila is growing and there is a need for more variety when it comes to food choices. With the help of the talented Filipino chefs, iFoods can grow its brands overtime.

Its first brand under iFoods was Tokyo Cafe, a Japanese-themed cafe, as its entry into the coffee shop food segment. Tokyo Cafe has now 4 branches.

Then came the second brand Peri Peri, a charcoal grilled chicken with the special sauce called Peri Peri. It has four branches already.

Peri Peri, a Portuguese-inspired charcoal cooked chicken, is already iFoods most successful brand. The company is set to open a new branch in Myanmar this month for its first international foray.

“We get a lot of interest in Myanmar and we decided to partner with a local group because we need a local talent who knows the local market,” says Bryan. The third brand is Stackers, a burger joint, with already four branches.

Bulgogi is the company’s first Korean brand, which falls under its chain restaurant model. Bryan was thinking of a Korean restaurant brand because of the growing awareness and love for Korean food. There is also a huge Korean population in the country.

Then iFoods came up with its concept brand, which is chef-driven but not designed to become a chain restaurant. This time, they have Wafu, a Japanese restaurant in Greenhills and occupying an 800 square meter space.

“This is an all-Japanese restaurant with a very nice ambiance,” says Bryan.

“This is our flagship brand and it is doing very well in terms of the segment market as it caters more of the upscale market,” adds Bryan.

Another Korean restaurant brand called Kalbi is located in Edsa ShangriLa, which it will relaunch soon. Kalbi seeks to offer authentic Korean dishes to serve the upscale Korean food market within the community in that area.

Bryan noted that the trend now for restaurants is to cater to the community where you are at because people tend to go to nearby restaurants. It is just very seldom to get customers from afar except for those who would really look out for their favorite chef.

This time, they are going to locate in Resorts World for its new restaurant Kuromon where they could occupy a sprawling 500 square meter area that will allow them to offer fresh live seafood to its diners.

“Here we can highlight live seafoods because Japanese is all about freshness that is why we are situated near the airport so we can have the freshest seafood delivered to us from Roxas City and Zamboanga,” says Bryan. This new restaurant is expected to open before Christmas this year.

Another concept that Bryan is trying to implement is the food hall concept, which could be patterned after a Japanese seafood market.

Under this concept, iFoods is also studying if they can establish a fish or seafoods community where people can trade crabs and fish in their restaurant.

“One of the highlights in the food hall would be a fishing station for kids. What they can catch we can prepare it for them,” says Bryan.

iFoods will be having Japanese chef consultants for this ambitious project. They will have everything like the Japanese street food and snacks, but the highlight is seafoods.

Bryan admitted that it appears complicated because they operate as a multiple platform restaurant brands catering to different market segments, but actually they operate simply.

“If you look at our back end it is actually simple because we have a unified operation and we can have scale in terms of raw materials sourcing. For instance, for the supply of chicken we have volume. We can have scale for beef also because Korean restaurants are more for beef,” he adds.

Aside from shared resources, they have shared services as well.

“It just looks kind of many but it is a well-managed operation,” says Bryan.

It could be difficult in a way managing several products, but Bryan said they have 10 years of experience to back it up. Of course, there was a learning curve but iFoods has established a system to operate more efficiently.

“We have managed and we have our future team for future projects and current team for the current operations,” reveals Bryan. This means they are still cooking more brands.

In fact, Bryan shares that they are now thinking of going into the catering business called iFoods Catering.

There are still other brands that are under incubation stage while others are under renovation and rebranding processes.

All in all, iFoods has a total of 10 brands, including the small ones like Roots in Greenhills. iFoods employs around 400 people across 20 stores.

In terms of asset, Bryan said the restaurant group could be worth R500 million, but when it comes to the brand value that could be worth a billion pesos.

“We are small, but we are still growing. We have so much growth right now with our existing brands so we would like to continue this growth trajectory and go for something interesting to the market,” says Bryan.

“Most of our brands are profitable and in the upswing. We are in a happy position,” says Bryan, who refused to set a growth target or the number of brands he would like to launch within a specific timetable.

“We review on a month on month and yearly. Starting in 2014 everything is on the upswing, so we are now growing double digit growth,” says Bryan.

“I believe that the key to our success is the people, who help me grow the brand, operations. They are veterans in the industry, who are guiding me. I have also my sister who is part of my core group,” says Bryan.

Bryan would always attribute success of his food business to its people, particularly the chefs.

He noted that even the foreign restaurants abroad, most of their assistant chefs are Filipinos.

“This is because Filipinos are talented. At the end of the day, there will be some talents who will be coming back to Manila and there will be more opportunities waiting for them,” he adds.

The priority now is to grow the brands make them unique and get them more connected to the market. The visionary Bryan cannot say no to opportunities.

Bryan, a middle child in a brood of three, is into the food business because he loves food.

“I love food and when I travel that is the first thing I check out,” says Bryan. He noted that his architect friends would look at the buildings and their architecture when they go abroad, but for him, it has always been food that interests him the most.

“Food defines me,” describes Bryan of himself. He may not be personally cooking at his restaurants, but he is an international trend spotter and what determines what works best here. As a local trendsetter, he gets tops from foreign food concepts, tweaks it and makes it appealing to the Pinoy setting and taste buds.

He noted that unlike Domino’s Pizza, which is run by technology with high-tech ovens that are comparable as the Rolls Royce of the industry, his restaurant concepts are chefs-driven.

Aside from his love for food, Bryan may not be in the business had it not been profitable also

“This is financially rewarding. This is a good business especially that consumer spending is growing,” he adds.

But iFoods is also protective of its business. That is why, it is very careful when it comes to granting franchise. Some of their brands, however, are already under franchise at a fee of R800,000 to R1 million but the cost of one restaurant could run between R8 million to R10 million. The company may go full blast in franchising by next year yet.

As a manager, Bryan is hands on but he delegates most of the work to his people. He can be flexible. There are times when he could be strict.

“I am the traditional strict but generally casual and clear with my objectives,” he says. Most of all, he does not dictate.

At the end of the day, he said, he is clear with his objectives and where he wants the group to aim for.

“I try to be with my people,” says Bryan, 40 years old with two kids.

In the medium term, Bryan sees iFoods as a more significant player in the local restaurant business, not necessarily in terms of the number of stores but in terms of impact.