Max’s Group venturing into new types of food, beverage service

MANILA, Philippines - Max’s Group Inc., the merged entity of Pancake House Inc. and the Max’s Group of Companies, is venturing into a new type of food and beverage service seen to further boost revenues in the coming years.

In an interview, Max’s Group director and chief finance officer Dave T. Fuentebella told The STAR that the company is set to take over the food and beverage (F&B) operations of several resorts in the country.

“We’re not venturing into other business in the future, but now what we’re doing is we’re white-labeling and actually supplementing a resort operator by doing their F&B, so that’s another channel that we can use to increase our sales. We’re working on that as another channel to drive incremental revenue,” he said.

Aside from the ongoing partnership with a high-end beach resort in Batangas, Fuentebella said the several more collaborations with resort operators are likely to follow in the coming months.

“So far one is in place and we’re currently in talks with other operators who actually like the concept. The need is there and the competency is ours. For us, let them run their establishment and then we will run the food side,” Fuentebella said.

Fuentebella said there are currently some resort operators that own the property but do not want the headache of F&B.

He said the challenge for these resort operators is how to manage the fluctuating demand for food and beverage during weekdays and weekends.

“They either have to invest in a whole restaurant operation or under-invest during the weekdays. It’s either they will not serve the weekend crowd or be overcapacity for the weekdays. So for them, they say we just want the Max’s Group to run their F&B,” Fuentebella said.

“Through our commissaries, we are able to put the right processes to make food and afford that to the customers there. So if their demand is low, the food is stored in our commissary. And when we forecast that it will be high for the weekend, then our commissaries can deliver it there,” he said.

Max’s Group has a total of four commissaries serving its different brands as of end-June. 

The firm said it plans to consolidate the commissaries into three by the end of next year.