The Philippine Franchise Association is encouraging food entrepreneurs with strong growth potential to test the franchising market by joining this year’s Franchise Asia Philippines Expo on July 22 to 24 at the SMX Convention Center in Pasay City.
PFA president Alan Escalona said the group decided to introduce the Food Street Pavilion at FAPHL’s 2016 edition to provide a good venue for owners of food concepts to meet possible investors and partners.
“This is part of the PFA’s advocacy to support the growth of small but ‘highly franchiseable’ food concepts. By participating in the FAPHL, which is Asia’s biggest franchising event, micro, small and medium enterprises will also get to test the market and benchmark their operations with best practices from established franchise concepts,” Escalona said.
FAPHL 2016 overall chairman Richard Sanz said the PFA would subsidize the participation of select MSMEs that would get to exhibit at the three-day International Franchise Expo.
“The Food Street Pavilion is like an incubation center for emerging food concepts with potential to become big in the franchising industry. A six-square-meter booth and four-square-meter booth will only cost P20,000 and P10,000, respectively,” Sanz said.
Franchise Asia Philippines 2016, acknowledged as Asia’s largest 4-in-1 franchise event, is now on its 24th edition and themed “Building Inclusive Growth Amidst a Hypercompetitive World.”
The event will have a two-day international conference on July 20 to 21 with Sen. Paolo Benigno “Bam” Aquino IV, chairman of the Senate committee for trade, industry and entrepreneurship as keynote speaker at the opening.
PFA chairman emeritus Samie Lim said franchising remained the best expansion route for retailers. This, he added, is why the PFA has been promoting franchising as a strategy for growth for MSMEs.
“We want our MSMEs to get a real feel of the market, see the reaction of people on their concepts, meet personally with prospective partners and investors and try marketing their brands and concepts in a real-world setting,” Lim said.
