Two entrepreneurs in their early 30s are setting the bar higher in the restaurant sector in Fairview, Novaliches—one of the thriving residential districts in the country’s largest city.
Ron Melvin Ramirez, a 30-year-old chef teamed up with his friend Kurt Glenn Cortuna, a 32-year-old commercial leasing businessman, to establish Wrong Yakiniku at Pontiac Street corner Camaro Street in West Fairview, Quezon City.
The business partners invested P6 million to build the 187-square-meter restaurant with 90 seats, state-of-the-art Korean BBQ charcoal grill sets with exhaust, an amply-supplied bar and furniture made of narra and mahogany hardwood. The restaurant has 10 parking slots in front of the building.
Despite the odd name, Wrong Yakiniku attracts all types of customers for the right reasons. Spacious, modern and cozy, the restaurant serves freshly-cut meat imported from the United States and lets customers grill the meat and vegetables on Japanese charcoal.
“The meat tastes better when grilled on Japanese charcoal. We don’t want to use gas. It should be charcoal for grilling,” says Ramirez who has a 10-year experience as a chef.
Wrong Yakiniku employs 18 individuals, including attentive waitstaff who are clad in semi-formal kimono.
“We don’t serve marinaded meat. We want to show to our guests how fresh the meat is. This is why we use only salt and pepper,” says Ramirez.
“We mixed two concepts—Japanese and Korean. We serve yakiniku or samgyupsal. To distinguish our restaurant from other stores, we named it Wrong Yakiniku,” says Ramirez.
Ramirez says to attract all types of customers from students to call center agents to family members, Wrong Yakiniku offers three sets of Korean barbecue with unlimited Japanese buffet for P299, P399 and P499. The restaurant also serves cheese personally concocted by Ramirez.
Among their customers in the first month of operations are politicians, celebrities and professionals, says Ramirez.
Ramirez, who studied Hotel and Restaurant Management at Centro Escolar University and a culinary course at Magsaysay Center for Hospitality and Culinary Arts, says they expect a return on investment within six months following the grand opening on July 8.
The restaurant has a captured market—the large residential district of West Fairview. “We are the first Japanese-Korean restaurant that offers unlimited buffet in West Fairview. Because of the heavy traffic, our customers choose to stay and dine in West Fairview,” says Ramirez.
Ramirez was a research and development chef at Bistro Group before he left to establish his own business in 2017.
His father, a seafarer, asked him to follow in his footsteps, but Ramirez chose to stay in the country and worked as a dishwasher at Italianni’s, a member of the Bistro Group, after taking a culinary course at Magsaysay.
“I wanted to rise from the ranks,” says Ramirez, who was eventually assigned to the kitchen where he became a top chef for nearly a decade.
“I love cooking, but I rose from the ranks starting as a dishwasher,” he says.
After leaving the Bistro Group, he established a Japanese restaurant in Padi, Bulacan which also captures the large residential market of nearby Sta. Maria town.
Last year, Ramirez, Cortuna and two other partners established Japanese restaurants inside food parks in Quezon City, but the food park concept eventually lost its appeal. Ramirez says while they regained their investments after six months, they decided to put up an independent restaurant instead.
Their two partners went on to other ventures. Ramirez and Cortuna, who both love eating and drinking, decided to pursue their dream and came up with the Wrong Yakiniku concept.
Cortuna was the one in charge of designing and building the store, while Ramirez prepared the menu and trained the staff. They raised P6 million from their savings and bank loans to finance the project.
Following the soft opening in June, the restaurant quickly attracted customers and was mostly full of first-time and return customers from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.
Ramirez says he expects the business to pick up further starting September, a trend he observed in the restaurant industry.
“We expect to recoup our investments within six months if we are able to sustain our business,” says Cortuna.
This early, the business partners now entertain expansion ideas and are open for franchising. “We work to make the business successful. We are open for franchise,” says Cortuna.
The young restaurateurs advise other millennials to pursue their business passion with boldness and perseverance. Having full confidence in one’s business partner is also important, says Ramirez. “You have to be focused and hands-on the daily operation. You have to trust your partner 101 percent,” he says.
Cortuna agrees, saying their partnership clicked because they both love what they do. “You have to enjoy what you do to be successful at it. For us, we both like eating and drinking,” he says.
“We work hard and sometimes sleep for only two or three hours a day, but that’s okay because we enjoy working in this business,” says Ramirez.