WHEN setting up a business, one either introduces a new concept or finds a niche or a gap in the industry on which to pounce.
Lester C. Yu is fond of health drinks. It dawned on him one day that there was a huge unexplored market for affordable health drinks.
“At that time [when we were conceptualizing a business about fruit shakes], existing fresh fruit shakes players were situated at high-end places like Makati and Ortigas offices, malls, and commercial buildings. We saw the untapped ... middle class market. At that time, we were also anticipating that the market was gearing up for healthier products,” Yu tells SundayBiz.
Health craze
Believing that the less middle class would also appreciate healthydrinks, he set up Fruitas.
Yu is the founder and owner of fruits shake kiosks all over Metro Manila, with 250 stalls to date. When he put up Fruitas in 2002, it was the start of the health consciousness era in the country, he says.
It was around that time that the movie “Super Size Me” was shown. The movie was a documentary of a man who only ate fastfood hamburgers morning, noon and night time for weeks, which resulted in weight gain and a host of health problems.
Entrepreneurial spirit
After finishing Industrial Engineering at De La Salle University, Yu joined Westmont Bank and, after four and a half years, became a branch head.
But the entrepreneurial blood ran thick in his veins and soon, Yu went into business starting out as an importer of toys and kitchenware.
He eventually shelved the business to focus on the health industry.
“Because of limited resources, we decided to focus on Fruitas especially since we were starting to feel its potential as a business,” he admits.
The Fruitas stalls were a far cry from that of Lush, another Yu venture and a competitor of Zagu, which was the craze in the 1990s.
Although the Zagu craze fizzled out, along with Lush, there still was a huge market for flavored powder drinks with black pearls (sago), he recalls.
Juice Avenue
Since he set up Fruitas, Yu was creating new ventures almost every year.
In September 2004, he put up Juice Avenue, another fruit kiosk targeting the upper market with its smoothies – a juice concoction with milk or vanilla icecream.
The following year, he set up Buko ni Fruitas. It now has 150 outlets.
As the name suggests, it is basically coconut mixed with fruits, or strips of buko mixed with various concoctions.
Although Yu had to sell the Lush outlets, he noted that the market for such drinks was still strong. So he set up Black Pearls in 2006. Today, it has up more than 90 outlets.
“After a few years of operating Fruitas, we saw a certain market segment that Fruitas was not able to tap. It was the mass market. Setting up Black Pearl was a way for us to serve that specific market,” he explains.
That same year, he put up the Mango Farm. Its first branch opened on December 1.
Two years ago, Yu set up Cocktales, a dessert place “reminiscent of the dessert bars in New York.”
The bar serves desserts shakes, stirred fruits and coffee. It also serves lunch and dinner meals like pasta, sandwiches and rice meals.
So far it has five outlets – SM Megamall, Mall of Asia, Trinoma, Robinson’s Ermita and Il Terrazo on Tomas Morato.
And what has the 35-year-old in store for the future?
“We still plan to expand continuously through the following tools/processes: Creation of new concept brands, mergers and acquisitions, and international expansion,” Yu says.
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Published in Philippine Daily Inquirer Sept. 19, 2010.
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