May/June
Eighties Eruption April 2003
Over 40 Class Contacts
Imelda and our Alumni database
Cheap Calls!
A Busy Bee in the Hamburger Hive
"Pinoy Viagra" Franchising
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2002
2001

ANNOUNCING THE EIGHTIES ERUPTION ISM ALUMNI REUNION!

For the first time ever...

The great International School Manila classes from the Eighties and Nineties are uniting to hold our very own reunion!

ALL THOSE who attended ISM in the EIGHTIES are invited!

So c'mon 80s and 90s alums! 

Time to travel back to the Eighties!

Where it's at:
Hyatt Hotel, San Jose, CA, USA

Mark your calendars: 
Weekend of April 4-6, 2003

Preregister and get in on the action:
http://www.jeepneygang.com/eightieseruption

Over 40 Class Contacts

Name a team of alumni with a LOT of school spirit. 

Give up? Why they are your Class Contacts!

There are over 40 of them already, from the Class of 1941 to 2000. And their ranks are still growing.

They would love to have your support. OK, ok, if you're not the type to volunteer, could you at least email them and say a few kind words. Sige na!

Oh, and there are still a few classes that need Class Contacts.

Class Contact List:
http://www.jeepneygang.com/classcontacts.html

Imelda and our ALUMNI DATABASE

Well, not really. But some jokers tried to register under her name at least that many times. Guys, the database is ONLY for AS/ISM alums, and Imelda never did attend our school (although her kids and grandskids have).

So sign up and use the database to search for classmates!

ALUMNI DATABASE:
http://www.jeepneygang.com/database

Cheap Calls!

From any phone in the USA to Manila only 14 cents/min! 
And great rates to anywhere on earth!

And it works as a web enabled Callback Service from Manila! 
Call USA for only 20 cents/min.

Best of all, there are no hidden costs! You'll need a credit card and internet access. 
Click here for details.

A Busy Bee in the Hamburger Hive

THE Philippines is a huge embarrassment to McDonald's. Filipinos are as mad about American culture as they are about fast food, and in 1981, when the golden arches first went up in Manila, everybody assumed that McDonald's would rule the Filipino market, as so many others. At the time, Tony Tan was a local entrepreneur who, with his siblings, had just turned a few ice-cream parlours into burger kitchens. He was soon getting friendly advice that he was still young enough to do something else for a living. At best, said his friends, he could buy the McDonald's franchise. 

Mr Tan did nothing of the sort. Instead, he chose to do battle with the invading global giant. And a strange thing happened. Within four years, Mr Tan's chain, Jollibee, had become the market leader. By the 1990s, Jollibee was trouncing its rival so thoroughly that McDonald's was forced to choose between retreat and imitation. McDonald's denies that it has opted for the latter, but that is how it looks—and tastes—to ilipinos. Even so, they continue to pass it by in favour of Jollibee (see chart). Other global heavyweights appear to have no hope whatever. Burger King's Filipino franchisee is trying to sell out but, after over a year, it is still looking for a buyer.

Like many successful entrepreneurs in the Philippines, Tony Tan is ethnically Chinese. His parents immigrated from Fujian, once one of China's poorest provinces, and his father made ends meet as a cook in a Chinese temple. Hanging round the kitchen early in his life, Mr Tan apparently developed unusually sensitive taste buds. A colleague considers them downright surreal. She remembers witnessing Mr Tan tasting a chicken and spotting a minor ingredient that he had noticed only once before—years ago, in a
Chicago food stall—and which he at once set out to track down.

His palate, indeed, seems to have been Mr Tan's greatest source of confidence throughout his struggle against McDonald's. Modest in every other respect, he never once doubted that he could make better food—or at least “better” to Filipinos. To this day, he still attends the weekly three-hour meetings of Jollibee's “new products board”. The decisions made there find their way into “the commissariat”, a top-secret spice kitchen and the nerve center from which Jollibee outlets are supplied.

Describing Mr Tan's recipes is not easy. Generally speaking, the Philippines is not famous for its food, and cardiologists consider it downright evil. In their own kitchens, Filipinos tend to cook meat with stunning amounts of sugar and salt, and to soak it in bagoong, a sort of brine. But no matter how poor, they like to splash out every so often on fast food. And then they like burgers that are sweet and juicy, spaghetti that is saccharine and topped with hot dogs (no Italian would recognise it), beef with honey and rice, and, for dessert, variations on the mango theme. All this Jollibee provides, whereas McDonald's, perhaps hidebound by its global standards, never quite seems to get it right.

Nor is Ronald, the Americans' red-haired clown, any match for the jolly bee, a ubiquitous icon in the Philippines. The Tans chose the bee because they thought it epitomised the Filipino spirit of light-hearted, everyday happiness. Like Filipino working folk, explains Mr Tan, “the bee hops around and produces sweet things for life, and is happy even though it is busy.”

Indeed, the corporate jolliness is infectious, and as much a part of Mr Tan's success as his recipes. Jollibee's staff outsmile McDonald's by a huge stretch. This January, they started greeting customers with a gesture adopted from the sign language of the deaf—a vertical stroke for “bee” and hands shovelling towards the heart for “happy”—which kids have started using in playgrounds. Staff call customers and one another “sir” and “mom”, which is at once casual and respectful in the Philippines. From the cleaners to Mr Tan, who is not above dressing up as a rapper and doing an awful Puff Daddy imitation for the delight of his staff, everyone at Jollibee projects fun.

All this success does not seem to have gone to Mr Tan's head—yet. He refuses to say “I”, and habitually deflects credit to “us”, meaning siblings and colleagues. But success may be taking a different toll. Of late, Mr Tan has discovered global ambition. “It's on his mind all the time now,” says a colleague.

Goliath in the making?

The real reason why he did not bid for the McDonald's domestic franchise all those years ago, he now claims, was that he already envisioned expanding overseas. That may be true, but it would have been a remarkably long-term vision for a man who was, at the time, a small entrepreneur in a poor country. In any case, the expansion has certainly begun. Jollibee recently opened eight stores in California, and a few more across Asia. It had to close one in China, but it is now regrouping for another push. In time, Jollibee means to be everywhere.

So far, this has been a low-risk strategy, because Jollibee aims mostly at the diaspora of overseas Filipinos. But in order to go global, Mr Tan concedes, Jollibee soon has to break that Filipino link and reach out to other nationalities. As ever, though, he feels that he can, because “we have an edge over all the American brands in food”. His brothers and sisters on the board are less convinced. What an irony it would be if a Filipino David were to become vulnerable to the slings of Davids elsewhere.

Source: The Economist, Feb 28th 2002 

"Pinoy Viagra" Franchising

Balut, as these fertilized eggs are known, have been part of nocturnal life in the Philippines for as long as anyone here can remember.

Filipino men like to slurp balut straight from the egg whole -- feathers, beaks and all. It supposedly improves their stamina in bed.

Traditionally, it is sold by roving street vendors yelling their distinctive cry of "baluuut!" amid the tightly packed alleyways of Philippine barrios. But Mr. Manalac believes balut has a potential that extends far beyond its folk origins.

By using American-style franchising and marketing, he plans on producing a gourmet version of balut that can be sold to the plush, gated communities where the Philippines' middle classes live. 

He has already created exotic sauces, such as curry and chili, to put some panache into the product, and he is working on developing standardized outlets and a distinctive brand name. "Balut is the local Viagra, and we're repackaging it for a new generation," he says.

The Philippines has long shown a flair for marketing, particularly franchising. Jollibee Foods Corp., of Manila, still keeps McDonald's in second place in the local fast-food market, thanks to sweet-and-spicy hamburgers and skillful branding. 

In recent years, that flair has helped extend the life of back-street foods that otherwise might have never made it out of the ghetto. Tapioca drinks and deep-fried pigskin, for example, have used the franchise model to tap unlikely markets in glitzy shopping malls. The Philippine Association of Franchisers is growing rapidly, drawing 20 new applicants each month.

Mr. Manalac is aware that marketing and branding will make or break his attempt to follow in Jollibee's footsteps. His pilot outlet is near his home in the suburban Paranaque district of Manila. 

Called Knock-on-Wood, the homey shop-house sports a wood sculpture of a head on which patrons tap their eggs open. "The name is about bringing good luck, but also brand recognition," Mr. Manalac explains. "When people say `knock-on-wood,' hopefully they'll think of balut."

Borrowing a page from fast-food joints, Mr. Manalac notes that success is all about consistency and maintaining standards. He has put patents on his logo and convinced the Philippine government to endorse the nutritional content of his aphrodisiacs. The packaging is microwavable, meaning customers can take it home to snack on before going to bed.

Mr. Manalac points out that he doesn't have to create a market; he just has to leverage one that already exists. "Eight out of 10 Filipino men eat balut," he estimates. "We're just making it more accessible for the middle classes."

He claims his unusual calling visited him around Easter last year. Tired of his nine-to-five job as an insurance salesman, the 34-year-old asked his wife to give him space to think a while. "Then, on Good Friday, the word `balut' came to me."

Soon after, Mr. Manalac went to shopping malls to observe how other snack vendors were bringing in customers. He hired a chef and started experimenting with different styles. Not everything went according to plan. One of his early sauces was modeled on Peking Duck. It sounds logical enough, but, he concedes, it tasted awful.

His attempt to create a Mexican balut, an egg wrapped in a tortilla with some salsa, didn't fare much better. "I'm sure there's a market for that one. It just needs some improvement," Mr. Manalac says.

Today, the pilot Knock-on-Wood sells curry, chili, sweet-and-sour, and soy-sauce balut, and even a tempura variety. The tempura batter, he says, disguises the look of the balut for those who might be squeamish about downing a duck embryo. "It's for the Western market," Mr. Manalac explains. The shop brings in around $200 a day, a solid revenue stream in the Philippines.

Over the past seven months, he has also carefully honed his franchising plan. He even yanked one stall out of a shopping mall because he felt he still needed to fine-tune the recipes and iron out quality-control glitches. 

Now, Mr. Manalac says he is ready to go mainstream. He has also enlisted the same franchising consultant who helped a place called Figaro grow from a neighborhood coffee shop to a franchise with branches across Manila and as far afield as Hong Kong.

Mr. Manalac would like to expand into areas around the world where Filipinos congregate, such as Hong Kong and San Francisco. "Maybe I can be the next Jollibee," he says.

For the time being, though, Mr. Manalac is trying to pry open another undeveloped market that could double his sales of balut. His secret?

"Women like it, too," he whispers.

Source: Wall Street Journal via Dow Jones

Indians and Bearcats!

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