By Alessandra Patterson
Cebu has long been known for its excellent food: especially its take on the famous Lechon Cebu. Slowly but surely it developed into a global tourist destination because of its pristine beaches, sumptuous food and landmark churches.
One of the food chains making a name in the country is Bounty Agro Ventures Inc., which started in Cebu. It has expanded its roast chicken chain Chooks to Go by diversifying into other types of foods-to-go and is gearing up to conquer the international market.
BAVI and its sister company, Bounty Fresh Foods Inc., are the biggest egg producers and the second largest poultry integrators in the Philippines. BAVI also operates the largest and fastest-growing roasted chicken chain in the country, with more than a thousand retail outlets, to date.
To sustain its massive operations, BAVI relies on a network of 19 business centers, 70 distributors, over 500 broiler contract farms, 16 hatcheries, nine feed mills, 19 processing plants and a network of close to 1,300 company operated stores roasting about 100,000 chickens every day.
Huge investments in people development and a forward-thinking company culture were the keys for BAVI to serve the huge market demand for quality and flavorful cooked food-to-go— through its chicken rotisserie lines that started with its flagship brand, Chooks-to-Go. BAVI is continually expanding its consumer base with the addition of new brands, Uling Roasters, Reyal and Marô
Established in 2008, Chooks-to-Go has grown to be the Philippines’ largest rotisserie chain with over 1,000 retail stores serving oven-roasted chicken. It has enabled the farm-to-table freshness concept to reach millions of Filipino households as the best value-for-money meal, along with its fresh and frozen poultry products.
Giving a wider selection to the traditional Filipino palate is BAVI’s charcoal-roasted chicken line, Uling Roasters. This second addition to BAVI’s ready-to-go food concept offers fresh recipes to the classic Filipino favorite, litson manok. It offers the traditional inasal and the flagship and best selling variant UR Special that uses special spices sourced all the way from Africa. From a few stores in Zamboanga in 2013, Uling Roasters now has close to 200 outlets nationwide and growing.
Reyal, which was launched last year, is BAVI’s version of affordable, roasted “butterfly-cut” chicken served with sumptuous honey garlic sauce combined with chili oil and a generous sprinkling of crunch garlic bits. With the huge acceptance of the new roasted chicken variant, BAVI expects to have over a hundred stores by year-end.
The latest addition to the brand is Marô, which serves freshly cooked viands. Marô offers a wide range of Asian cuisine from beef, pork, fish, and of course, the Filipino favorite chicken. Since its launch in 2015, BAVI is slowly expanding Marô in key central business districts and university areas nationwide.
Filipinos overseas will soon have access to their favorite food in the Philippines wherever they are in the Asian region with the rollout of BAVI rotisserie stores overseas this year.
