The mother-daughter team behind Cravings

Cravings Food Services Inc. has come a long way.

It began this month 13 years ago when Susana Pascual-Guerrero put up a small bakery counter selling croissants and baked goods along Katipunan Ave. Today, it is a gourmet cooking restaurant and bakery chain with daughter, Marinella Guerrero-Trinidad, running the business as general manager.

The business success of CFSI owes much to the mother-daughter synergy. Pascual-Guerrero remains active in developing new dishes. Guerrero-Trinidad makes sure the business remains profitable. In their own respective ways, both have made sure that food quality and services are consistent and standardized in the eight outlets of Cravings as well as in its four other eatery businesses.

The garden

Take for example, CFSI’s vegetable and herb garden. Within six months after it was started in November 2000 on the rooftop of the corporate office in Katipunan, the weekly harvests were enough to supply the entire salad bar requirement of the Cravings outlet on the ground floor. A supplemental 1,200 square meter garden was then planted to vegetables in a nearby subdivision at a cost of P100,000.

"A garden is important because you can cook all year round with ingredients growing right from your own backyard," said mother, Pascual-Guerrero. "If a chef applies the Buddist-inspired philosophy of Zen to cooking, she will not only choose ingredient that are fresh and in season but she will also cook frugally by recycling leftovers and eliminating wastage."

Daughter, Guerrero-Trinidad, is equally sold on the garden because it makes business sense. "Fresh vegetables for our soup, salad and spread bar bring down the cost of food and improve the quality of the food served. In turn, all kitchen wastes are recycled as fertilizer for the garden," she said.

Housekeeping

Key to CFSI’s good housekeeping is the implementation since 1996 of the 5S, a Japanese system of sorting, straightening, scrubbing, standardizing and sustaining principles that go beyond mere workplace orderliness.

"The 5S coupled with waste segregation increase the employees’ awareness of how efficiently resources are being utilized. These are the first steps towards EMSA or a environmental management system that the company has embarked on if we are to reach our goal of getting an ISO 14000 certification within the next three years," said Guerrero-Trinidad. "All these programs are tools that will make our business eco-efficient, the current corporate buzzword."

To fund the 5S and waste segregation programs, CFSI sells non-biodegradable materials used in the daily preparation of food that can be recycled. CFSI also holds a regular warehouse sale where unused items, appliances and equipment are sold to employees at severely marked down prices.

CFSI’s 5S program is considered so successful that it is used as a model by the Philippine Trade Training Center. CFSI hosts on-site visits by owners of small- and medium-sized enterprises during PTTC’s ’s nationwide productivity missions.

Profit centers

Within the CFSI organization, there are no cost centers. Every unit, including centralized backroom operations such as accounting, is considered a profit center. Each unit makes money by charging the outlets for its services. If the outlets are not satisfied with the service, they are encouraged to look outside or outsource the service.

"Each manager is considered an entrepreneur," said Guerrero-Trinidad. "As such, each manager must generate enough money to support his or her operation."

The commissary is the exception. Although they can buy their meat and vegetables elsewhere, if the prices are better, all outlets are required to source 40 processed products such as in-house spices from the commissary to ensure that the food taste is consistent.

To foster the best qualities that it looks for in its products and services, CFSI holds an annual contest among its outlets and offices. At stake are two awards – the MODELO and the TRAPO awards. The first award stands for "Maayos na Outlet Dapat Ehemplo sa Lahat ng Oras" and the second award is short for "Tambak at Rumi na, Alikabok pa! Pamahay na Out of Control".

Plans

As it celebrates its 13th year in business this month, the mother-daughter partnership takes another step forward. Guerrero-Trinidad calls it an "evolution that does not end".

This month, CFSI is spinning off its coffee bar called Coffee Beanery in part to feed on the current coffee drinking craze and in part to exploit the natural partnership of coffee and cakes.

Although the coffee bar will stay in all CFSI outlets, it will now be considered as a separate unit and, therefore, another profit center. Subsequent Coffee Beanery outlets will be stand-alones and will be located in malls with high pedestrian traffic. Because it wants to develop Coffee Beanery as a meeting place, CFSI is looking at locations near the escalators. "We want people to see us as a landmark, a friendly place where they can meet up," said Guerrero-Trinidad.

By November next year, CFSI intends to offer the Beanery as a franchise.

Initial estimates place the franchise cost at P2.5 million, which is recoverable in a year’s time.

By that time, CFSI’s mother-daughter partnership would have come up with another money-making idea.