Restaurants Pivoting to Frozen Grocery Items

Asia’s Best Female Chef 2016 Margarita Fores (Cibo, Grace Park, Lusso) has never worked harder. “My son (Amado) and I can’t stay in. We have to work extra hard now,” she says, when asked if she was isolating. “The market is so thin.” With the ever-changing rules imposed during the constantly fluctuating levels of lockdown, the restaurant industry has been in constant limbo without definitive plans. Exasperated, Fores admits that they are “super pilay.”

This encouraged her to act fast and, as many of her contemporaries have since done, think creatively. Encouraged by the success of their bottled home-brewed iced teas from her Cibo chain of restaurants and resulting from the current instability of the hospitality industry, Fores knew she wanted to make a frozen ready-to-heat dish for the supermarkets. She picked a Roman-style pizza with a focaccia crust, as it is easy to reheat at home and it comes in at a good price point. It was a hit when they first launched the product in the supermarkets of the Robinson’s Group, a true testament of its quality and the perks of coming in first.

Some, still, were blessed to have already been in the process of transitioning toward essential goods without knowing that it will be their new bread and butter. When Fores launched her frozen pizzas in the 4th quarter of 2020, George Pua’s frozen lechon line was already making big bucks. Pua owns the iconic Cebuano brand Rico’s Lechon as well as a handful of other restaurants—Ogawa, Thai BBQ, and Modern China, to name a few. Like all his peers, his restaurants were at the mercy of the lockdowns. Luckily for him, his wheels were already in motion.

Pua has been a distributor of various essential goods to supermarkets for 38 years now, making it an easy entrance for him into the game. “At the end of March 2020, I started talks with the owners of the three largest, high end supermarkets (SM, S&R, and Landers),” Pua narrates. “I asked them: Do you want me to produce frozen lechon?” His Rico’s Lechon frozen product line was “accepted with open arms”, and it even got its own section and freezer. “After the first few days of selling,” Pua says, “we were wiped out and supermarkets were already reordering.”

Fores’ pizzas also received tremendous support from supermarkets, already expanding her reach to All-Day Supermarket, Royal Supermarket in Subic, as well as in more remote areas like Fairview and Novaliches. “This is a great way to reach customers who have probably not even tried our food in Cibo,” Fores imparts.

Pua sees the marketing potential of such goods. “Our frozen lechon only uses the best parts—the belly and ribs,” he says. “The white meat is utilized for our other frozen dishes like the paksiw and sisig. But, this way, when our customers try Rico’s frozen lechon, they’ll hopefully say ‘wow, this is so good! Imagine how good it is when it's a freshly cooked, whole pig?’”

While Pua dreams of big gatherings surrounding his lechon, he is not naive to the new reality and is thinking long term for his frozen food business. “There is no more ‘normal,’” he professes. Fores, too, sees expanding her frozen line to more flavors for her pizzas, baked pastas, and even a Filipino line to support her advocacy of promoting our local cuisine.

“The dine-in experience has been compromised,” she admits. “Also, people’s lifestyles have changed. Customers now enjoy the convenience of having everything delivered.” Pua agrees that the Filipino consumer sees frozen food now in a different light. “Before, Filipinos did not believe that frozen, ready-to-heat food can be delicious. But, now that they don’t have a choice, they were able to experience it and realize ‘masarap din pala.’”