Fruitas Holdings Inc., the leading food and beverage community store and kiosk operator, is venturing into cloud kitchen or food delivery to reach more customers and expand market coverage.
Fruitas president and chief executive Lester Yu said Thursday the company would soon open three cloud kitchen operations in E. Rodriquez and Maginhawa St. in Quezon City and Tisa-Labangon in Cebu City.
A cloud kitchen is a delivery-only restaurant that has no physical space for dine-in. It relies entirely on online orders placed through online food aggregators.
“As the nation and the economy moves out from under the COVID pandemic difficulties, the company is aggressively pursuing optimized distribution through expansion better suited to current market realities,” Yu said.
“We have been strategically acquiring food brands over the past two and a half years. It makes sense to put all of our food brands together in strategic locations to provide access to as many customers as possible within reasonable distance,” he said.
Fruitas said it would continue to team up with third -party service providers under the new venture. Aside from cloud kitchen, the company also has an online store―Babot’s Mart which is now available on e-commerce website Shopee and Lazada.
It teamed up with other third-parties to complement its own food and beverage offerings including UCC Philippines for its 3-in-1 coffee, Villa Socorro Farms for banana and camote chips, Chef Tony Popcorn and Nacho King, Bahay Pastulan (Good Shepherd) in Tagaytay City for peanut butter and coco jam and Japanese brand Fuwa Fuwa.
The company said it planned to further expand the list to provide a more complete and convenient buying experience to customers.
The group had 720 stores nationwide, including 106 community stores under the Babot’s Mart, Soy & Bean and Balai Pandesal brands as of end-August.