October 2010

This phenomenon on the chicken barbecue business of Mang Inasal is somewhat mind boggling. Imagine a simple chicken barbecue business with all it’s stores nationwide could earn billions of pesos each year. Why not Bacolod Chicken Inasal? which I think has pioneered the concept of making a restaurant out of chicken inasal. It was ten years ago that I first tasted chicken inasal in a restaurant called Bacolod Chicken Inasal which I think, their chicken barbecue is tastier and really authentic with matching banana leaves on the native handcrafted plates. There are also other dishes like the fried crablets and lumpiang bangus which I don’t usually find in a Filipino fast food restaurants. But just last year me,  my wife and my daughter ate in one of the branches of  Bacolod Chicken Inasal but was a little disappointed because I expect the food we ordered will be as good as in the branch in EDSA Central (ten years ago). Maybe it depends of the branch or franchisee.

So why Mang Inasal is now the fastest growing fast food restaurant here in the country? Why not Bacolod Chicken Inasal which has really authentic chicken barbecue? So it’s true that as an entrepreneur, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. We just have to be creative. I admit that Mang Inasal has captured my taste. Yes their chicken barbecue are delicious but it taste more like an ordinary chicken barbecue with a sweet spicy taste which I think you can do yourself by marinating your dressed and chopped chicken in Mama Sita’s barbecue marinade. So in my opinion it’s not really how authentic your cuisine should be, but it’s how people will accept the taste. So below are some of my observation why Mang Inasal have captured the chicken barbecue market.

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This news is a month old and I only have a chance to read it on Entrepreneur Philippines website. Jollibee will acquire 70% of Mang Inasal with the amount of Php 3 Billion which was unconditionally and irrevocably accepted by Injap Investment Inc . Mang insal was a sure hit with 303 stores nation wide to which 273 are franchised and 23 are company owned. The estimated annual earning of Php 2.6 billion and sales up to Php 3.8 billion, I was a little bit curious why would the owner sell part of his company? is this business strategy or the offer was too irresistible because the buyer was the biggest fast food chain in the Philippines? Maybe this saying is applicable “if you can’t beat them, join them”.

Do you remember Red Ribbon bakeshop which was also acquired by Jollibee? have you noticed that the cakes and baked goodies you enjoyed in the past have changed with regards to taste, size and ingredients? one of my favorite cakes in Red Ribbon bakeshop is the ube cake. I really love their ube cake before because of the taste, the rich ube coating and the size was bigger then. Maybe that was only business strategy for the business to survive because if you will not implement cost cutting, you can’t sell a very expensive cake to the masses. I think there was a good effect after all because more people can afford to buy Red Ribbon cakes.

I was first skeptic if selling replica mobile phones will going to be a success or not. Probably yes or probably no but one thing is for sure, I tried. Many people who wanted to start a business have many doubts and fears in their mind before they start a business. I’m not exempted to this situation and the mere fact that there are hundreds of sellers of China made mobile phones in the malls and in the internet I was afraid that the competition will just leave me behind.

There are many factors that I have to consider first. One thing is that those replica cellphones is not as good with regards to the quality and since they are clones, some features like for example Itunes applications and games cannot be used on a China made replica iphones although there are games in java format that can be used on them. And how about Nokia E71? it runs on Simbian OS (operating system) that applications like Skype can be installed unlike clones. But on the other hand a china made clone of Nokia E71  have other features that the original ones don’t have. Do the genuine E71 have dual sim? hand shaking function? and can they watch TV on it? so come to think of it, it’s not that bad after all. Comparing it to the original price, it’s only 1/4 to 1/3 of the price and since those gadgets gets out modeled year after year, buying an expensive cellphone would not be practical if you are the type of person that don’t want to be left behind on new models of cellphone but can’t afford that lifestyle.

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