INTERVIEW
Figaro Coffee Group finds niche in pizza delivery
Angel’s Pizza propelled the food conglomerate’s growth in the Philippines.
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ver the span of nearly three decades, the Figaro Coffee Group (FCG) has grown its business from serving a cup of joe to Filipinos with Figaro Coffee to bringing Taiwan’s food scene to the Philippines with Tien Ma’s restaurant. But what FCG did not see coming is that its expansion into the pizza delivery business, through Angel’s Pizza, would propel its growth and encourage the company into going public today. “We decided to go public because we saw that our small food company could actually be something bigger,” FCG Chairman Justin Liu told Retail Asia. “We never envisioned to be a huge player in the market; but because of the success of Angel's [Pizza] and the loyal customer following of Figaro, we were very encouraged.” At present, the group has more than 100 branches nationwide across all its retail restaurants and the company eyes adding 29 more Angel’s Pizza outlets, six The Figaro Group Express multi-brand outlets, five Figaro Coffee shops, and one Tien Ma’s Taiwanese cuisine restaurant after generating P767m (US$14.68m) in its initial public offering. In an interview with Retail Asia, Liu shared how the company thrived over the years since 1993 and how its pizza delivery business led FCG’s expansion.
FCG's expansion into the pizza delivery business, through Angel’s Pizza, encouraged it into going public today (Photo: Justin Liu, Chairman, FCG)
You recently launched your IPO. What drove you into going public this year? We decided to go public early this year [2022], and we have been planning this since last year to be able to secure growth capital. It's quite challenging right now. Because of the pandemic, many businesses and banks have tightened their lending practices. Therefore, going public ensures long-term business continuity for our business. Also, because of the positive feedback we've had in the past years, we see that our company can become one of the strong food conglomerates in the Philippines, and perhaps expand abroad in the future. We are a very small and still rapidly growing company. We also discounted the IPO price. Therefore, we believe there's a lot of upside for public shareholders and we are very happy to share our business growth with everyone. Could you share with us how you plan on using your proceeds, any plans of expansion here and abroad, and new products? We had a successful IPO and we were able to raise P767m. The IPO market early this year was a bit challenging, but we were still able to pull it off successfully with very strong demand. At the moment, our shares are actually trading at a healthy premium from the IPO price. For the proceeds, so with the money that we raised, we're looking to basically spend about 50% of it for our production 24
RETAIL ASIA
We saw that our small food company could actually be something bigger
and commissary development. We are also looking to expand our stores nationwide. So we will be spending about 39% of the proceeds on store openings. The expenses, the capex used for commissary, and store openings will go hand in hand because we have to expand all over Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao where we will have to put commissaries there, as well. And 10% of the proceeds will be used for debt repayment, whilst the last 1% will be used to improve our IT infrastructure and digitalisation. We introduced a lot of new products for Angel’s Pizza. Everyone is familiar with our best selling product, which is the creamy spinach that actually contributed to our growth and it went viral during the pandemic. It's encouraging because a lot of other pizza players now are getting into the spinach pizza craze, which we also encourage, to push innovation and new pizza variants. In addition to this, we also launched our Hallelujah Mozzarella Pizza, which has more than double the portion of pure Mozzarella Cheese. It has been a hit, especially with the kids because everyone really loves mozzarella. We also introduced two new pizzas recently, which is our big Kahuna Hawaiian with huge, whole slices of pineapple, instead of just tidbits. We didn't stop there, we produced our Triple Threat. The Triple Threat is basically a pizza, which combines three flavours in one bite—All Meat, Pepperoni, and Hawaiian and the pizza is square cut, so people can really
