A food industry executive is overseeing the construction of two to three stores a day this year for a fast growing company that sold 70 million chicken last year.
Crispin “Pinggoy” Aquino was appointed in January 2017 as vice president for supply chain management and engineering and executive assistant to the president of Bounty Agro Ventures Inc., a company with a target to open 700 new stores this year under three retail brands—Chooks to Go, Uling Roasters and Reyal Litson Manok.
Since January, Pinggoy has been involved in the planning and construction of more than 300 stores nationwide. And he expects BAVI to open additional 300 or more until December.
BAVI is a part of the Chen family’s Bounty Fresh Group of Companies—the fastest growing and second largest broiler integrator in the Philippines that registered more than P11 billion in sales in 2016.
BAVI president and general manager Ronald Daniel Ricaforte Mascariñas tapped Aquino, 55, to run the supply chain division and engineering unit of the company to support the retail expansion.
“By yearend, I think we will have a total of 2,000 stores nationwide,” Pinggoy says in an interview in Makati City. That will make Chooks to Go one of the largest food chains in the country.
Chooks to Go, the flagship brand of BAVI, is already the dominant leader in the rotisserie chicken industry, as it has more stores than the combined outlets of its three biggest competitors.
On Jan. 1 to May 16 this year alone, BAVI opened 337 stores, about 70 percent of which are under Chooks to Go brand. BAVI had a total of 1,843 stores nationwide as of May 18, according to Pinggoy. These included 1,257 stores under Chooks To Go, 395 under Uling Roasters and 171 under Reyal. The group also diversified into the snack industry when it introduced Snok, which sells chicken snacks and French fries. Snok now has 20 stores.
Pinggoy, who studied at Philippine Science High School in Quezon City and obtained a BS Degree in Agricultural Engineering at UP Los Baños in 1985 and MBA at UP Diliman, brings with him a 30-year experience in supply chain management, logistics, procurement and operations.
He was an executive of Jollibee Foods Corp., IDS Philippines and Ramcar Food Group (KFC, Mr. Donut and Tokyo Tokyo) and taught Business Management courses at UP Diliman and Ateneo de Manila University.
“I graduated from UPLB with a degree in Agriculture Engineering. I was supposed to be designing farm machines. But I have never practiced that, except in my first job in corn growing,” says Pinggoy, who worked as the operations supervisor of Urban Food Foundation Inc. between January 1986 and May 1991, before he joined Jollibee.
He worked as a production supervisor between 1991 and 1996 and as work management analyst in 1997 at Jollibee. He became a faculty member of UP Diliman’s College of Business Administration and ADMU’s Management Engineering Department until 2001, when he joined Ramcar Food Group, the local franchise holder of quick service restaurant KFC and Mister Donut and the owner of Tokyo Tokyo brand.
At Ramcar, he held various positions such as manager for systems and methods improvement, director for commissary operations, vice president for supply chain management, vice president for special projects and poultry operations and vice president for logistics.
Pinggoy was planning to retire early, but an offer from Mascariñas, the founder of BAVI and a former executive of Purefoods, proved to be challenging enough for him to forgo his retirement plans. “There were other offers from big companies in the food industry, but I chose BAVI,” he says.
“I felt challenged by the responsibilities entrusted to me by the president. Because of the trust given to me, I do not want to disappoint the organization about what I can contribute through the wealth of experience I have,” he says.
At BAVI, Pinggoy is responsible over purchasing, logistics, store construction, store and plant maintenance, demand planning and inventory management, fleet management, food manufacturing and value added products. He also acts as the executive assistant to the president (Mascariñas).
BAVI is aggressively planning the expansion of its store network, with a typical outlet occupying an average of 20 to 25 square meters.
“I only started with the company in January this year, but it seems to me like four years,” says Pinggoy.
The Chen family built the Bounty Fresh Group of Companies in the 1980s, starting with a poultry farm in Sta. Maria, Bulacan. Bounty Fresh Food Inc. became known for its high-quality and fresh chicken under the Bounty Fresh brand and became a top supplier of fresh-chilled chicken and table eggs to various hotels, restaurants, institutional food companies and supermarkets.
As a fully”integrated poultry company with its own feed mills, Bounty Fresh was able to control cost and become competitive in the market. Mascariñas’ decision to team up with the Chen family gave way to the rapid expansion of the rotisserie chicken industry.
BAVI started its flagship brand Chooks to Go in 2008, which was well received by the local market because of its delicious taste even without sauce. Two other retail brands followed—Uling Roasters and Reyal Litson Manok.
“All our chicken at retail branches are supplied internally. Our poultry farms are scattered all over the country. That is one of the key factors that worked well for Chooks to Go. We can supply all our stores nationwide using our own chicken at a relatively lower cost,” says Pinggoy.
On how BAVI achieved such a a rapid growth, Pinggoy says the company management “executes fast, addresses concerns fast and decides fast.”
“The company through the president is generous in many ways. This is why BAVI has grown to what it is today,” he says.
Pinggoy says he is confident about the continuous growth of BAVI’s retail network, as chicken is considered a major source of nutrition in the Philippines. The economy is growing and more Filipinos become wage earners and spenders.
He says the plan is to “continuously grow the existing retail brands to their saturation point” and offer new product lines in the food business through internal development or acquiring local and international franchise brands. “We prepare for new modes and trends in bringing our products to our customers.”
Pinggoy believes that while BAVI is aggressively expanding, there is a need to reduce overall costs by making things work more efficiently especially on areas under his supervision. “We need to make use of our resources more efficiently. We need to reduce wastage. We need to bring down all our costs. We need to reduce the inventory system wide to free up tied-up capital. There is always a better way [and] continuous improvement and management by numbers are some of the consciousness I want to impart. I want to prepare company for the future,” he says.
“I am confident that I can help bring it to the next level to support the further expansion of the group,” Pinggoy says.