What UCC is what you get
Not all good ideas catch on overnight. In a way, the UCC story in the Philippines is all about timing. And great taste.
For Hubert U. Young, who brought the Japanese brand here in 2000, it was a matter of foreseeing that Filipinos would go for something different. Now with 20 branches, UCC has become a special niche for a special type of coffee lover, but it’s more than that: Young, managing director of Aji-N-Chinmi-Co., Inc., positioned the local version beyond its coffee products origins and added a full menu, making it a hybrid of Filipino and Japanese tastes.
An example of this tasty hybrid: UCC just added four types of rice pizzas — Seafood Rice Pizza, Chicken Teriyaki Rice Pizza, Yakiniku Rice Pizza and Bacon Sausage Mushroom Pizza — to the menu. Better yet, you can try one of the pizzas for free with a minimum purchase of P3,000 using any Citibank Credit Card from now until Dec. 31, 2011. It’s part of Citibank’s Dining Privileges program, offering discounts and freebies at over 5,000 restaurants across Asia with the use of your local Citibank card.
Coffee runs in the Young family, if not in the blood. His dad’s company represented American coffee brand Hills Brothers here until Nestle took it over in the mid-‘80s. In the ‘80s, Hubert had learned about coffee working with Hills Brothers in San Francisco — all about crops, commodities, manufacturing. He wanted to bring a foreign coffee brand back here, but it wasn’t until importation laws were liberalized in the late ‘90s that the coffee craze began: suddenly Starbucks and a slew of other American brands came in. Young went in a different direction: Japan. He knew about UCC (the Ueshima Coffee Company, begun in 1932) from visits to Hong Kong, and thought it would click here. “No one was paying attention to Asian brands then,” he says. “But in the last couple years, a lot of Asian brands are sprouting all over. I saw this as early as ’99. I believed in Asian brands.” Ahead of the coffee curve, Young even went against the tide of whooshing espresso machines. “Everyone was into espresso, but I was hardheaded; I said no, I will show this as an Asian brand, Japanese-style coffeemaking, which is the siphon — which nobody was doing then. So it’s a market I eventually owned.” The Japanese method relies on careful filtering of boiling water upward, almost like a lab experiment, rather than steam-pressured drip-down brewing. “Now, anyone in this country says ‘siphon coffee,’ they think UCC,” says Young.
Another thing missing back then: a decent place for business people to meet, talk and relax. “Back then, when we started, people were going to hotel cafes and lobbies for business meetings. They were paying an arm and a leg for a cup of coffee that was so bad, but people were paying. So I said, let’s come up with a venue where business people can go, give them ambience and the service of a hotel, outside a hotel.” Young saw the gap, and filled it.
With its exotic blends — Blue Mountain, Kilimanjaro, Hawaiian Kona, bold Sumiyaki — UCC has taken its time to find its loyal niche. On a typical day (say at the Rockwell branch where we met, surrounded by lush greenery), the UCC crowd consists of suit-and-tie types meeting over coffee, while families tend to fill the place for Sunday brunch. “It was more of an education at first, we were educating the market. What was difficult is the price was (comparatively) expensive. We were selling for P110 a cup when Starbucks at the time was like P50. So I decided then, since Filipinos love to eat breakfast, let’s own the breakfast market, give them good ambience, and give them the coffee for free. You order the food — Filipinos love bangus, corned beef or tapa or tocino — and once the coffee is free, they had no choice but to try it! I was confident that once they tried it, they would get hooked on it.”
The menu — with dishes like Seafood Spaghetti Soup and Hamburger Curry Rice — got people to sit down; the coffee got them to stay and linger, enjoying the full UCC experience. “We wanted to send a message that we were a Japanese shop. No one else here was doing this, Japanese spaghetti or curry rice. We put a little Japanese flair in Filipino dishes, like adding a side Japanese salad.”
Seeing that rice burgers and rice pizza were huge in Hong Kong and Japan, Young took another chance. “When Citibank said do something, I said let’s do the rice pizza. In fact, we developed it just two months ago. I wanted to be different from everybody else. It’s brand-new, and for Citibank it makes them different from everybody else.”
While Filipinos tend to pick bold robusta roasts like barako, UCC offers a subtler coffee journey. “Blue Mountain (from Jamaica) is still the most prized coffee here, but not necessarily because it’s expensive (P129 to P399 per cup). It’s the most well-balanced coffee: balanced in the sense of sweetness, acidity, softness, body and mellow taste, and a very good fragrance. Just like wine. So if your preference is more of a dark roast, strong body, I would recommend the Sumiyaki (P129), which is a charcoal-roasted coffee, using Japanese charcoal.”
According to Tina Perez, VP for Citibank Credit Payment Products, UCC’s rice pizza promotion is just another way that Citibank ensures the best dining deals in town. “The promo is applicable in all UCC branches. For Citibank Dining Privileges as a whole, aside from giving Citibank cardholders discounts and freebies, we also offer the Best Deal Guarantee. If a Citibank cardholder steps into a restaurant and finds a different credit card offers a better deal, Citibank will refund the difference. They just have to call Citibank and they will pay them the difference. We also have partner restaurants in other countries, Citibank Dining Privileges is present in 5,000 locations across Asia. So Philippine-issued Citibank cards can get dining privileges across Asia, and vice versa.”
We’ll raise a mug to that.
UCC managing director Hubert Young with Tina Perez, VP for Citibank Credit Pay- ment Products: “When Citibank said do something, I said let’s do the rice pizza,” says Young. “I wanted to be different from everybody else.” * * *
UCC now has 20 branches in the country. It’s one of the partners with Citibank’s Best Deal guarantee: If diners can find a better deal at a restaurant under the Citibank Dining Privileges program, the bank will offer a refund for their meal. Local diners can avail of Citibank promotions in 5,000 partner restaurants around Asia. For more info on other dining promos, visit www.citibank.com.ph or call 995-9999.
UCC’s Rockwell branch: “I wanted to come up with a venue where business people could go, give them the ambience and the service of a hotel, outside a hotel.” 
