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MANILA, Philippines — Rocky Road, ube, cheese, mango, to name a few — with summer just around the corner, many Filipinos would undoubtedly crave for ice cream, and among the brands on top of mind is Selecta.
With its many flavors, distributors and celebrity endorsers through the years, who would have thought that Selecta was originally a “small, backyard” business?
John Concepcion, who served as Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of RFM's ice cream division, Selecta, for 35 years, recalled to Philstar.com Selecta’s humble beginnings.
“It was a small, backyard, family ice cream company, with an exceptional group of people with a singular business to become a dominant market leader in the Philippines,” he said at an exclusive interview following the recent reopening of Japanese-concept restaurant Yabu in Rockwell Makati last month.
Yabu is among the restaurants under Standard Hospitality Group (SHG), where Concepcion is the Founder, President and CEO.
Related: Yabu Rockell Makati reopens with new Crispy Katsudon with 'unli' rice, cabbage, soup, fruits
Selecta was originally founded by Ramon Arce when he began pasteurizing carabao’s milk near his Novaliches home. Carabaos were then in abundance in Novaliches, which used to be a part of Caloocan. RFM Corp. bought the brand from the Arce family in 1990.
“Last year, after 35 years, I decided to retire from Selecta and spend time more for my passion project, which is growing SHG,” Concepcion announced in his speech during Yabu’s Rockwell Makati reopening.
“I look at SHG as my Selecta 2.0. It’s my baby. I’m going to put my effort in growing SHG. So building SHG, I entered the restaurant business because of my passion for food and I saw a huge opportunity in the casual dining segment.”
According to him, in 1990, a casual dining joint like McDonald’s and S&R offered meals at an average of P150. But now, casual dining establishments are on the average of P350 to P800 per meal. Fine dining is P1,000 and up, he said.
“Sabi ko, ‘So wait! There’s an opportunity to get that market’… And true enough, we saw the middle class grow, the company grew, and everybody started to eat out, and it’s now just a crazy industry out there.”
Although Concepcion has retired from Selecta, the brand's ice cream still figures prominently in SHG restaurants, such as the ice cream base of Yabu's desserts Matcha Cookies n' Cream, Honeycomb Crunch and Black Sesame Chocolate.
Having experienced how a single-dish brand like the ice-cream-focused Selecta could grow exponentially, Concepcion and SHG are on a roll to grow single-dish dining concepts in the country.
“I said, ‘You know, what if I get all of these single dish concepts and put it in a one place? But give it a dining experience where a server serves you and brings the food to you and you pay the bill. It's not like a food hall, right? So we call that a master's kitchen and with that, we bought in brands like… Hachibei for Yakitori… And it's been a huge success, very good success for us here, and then we also have two cafes, so we got into the cafe business 10 years ago with a license from Hong Kong. It's called Elephant Grounds.”
Today, the SHG owns restaurants in 45 locations.
“So for 2025, we will open 12 stores. We're opening our third store in Kiwami Mall of Asia. We'll open four Yabu stores and two new Japanese concepts, very exciting market that's coming out second half of the year,” he enthused.
Consistency in providing good-quality food and service has been “the key” to SHG’s growth, said Concepcion. It pays, according to him, that his company is very hands-on in keeping and growing their brand’s reputation.
“All of them are based in Manila and all of them are company-owned. We like to take in control so we manage and protect all of them all the time,” he affirmed.
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