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THE MOVIES may have always been the highlight, but movie snacks have always been a great part of going out. And one of the best-known movie snacks out there, Taters, turned 30 this year.
The event was celebrated with a day of games at the SM Mall of Asia Gamepark on Aug. 20. The company’s offerings — including hotdogs, burgers, popcorn, and fries — were overflowing that day, while influencers and guests shot some hoops or won at the pool tables.
“The idea came from an opportunity that arose from my grandfather,” said Taters Chief Operating Officer Joseph Brian Tanchanco in an interview with BusinessWorld. His grandfather had been an executive at the Ayala Corp., and in 1994, his retirement package included a space at then-relatively new Greenbelt 1 (which has been closed for demolition earlier this year). At that time, the family noted a dearth in good movie snacks.
“We offered something more premium, something better to the Filipino consumers,” said Mr. Tanchanco, pointing that popcorn flavors back then were limited to butter, barbecue, and cheese. His mother whipped up recipes for sour cream, white cheddar, and other flavors; their first offerings were popcorn, peanuts, and fries (sandwiches and heftier snacks came later). The idea caught on, and malls beyond Greenbelt asked them to come in. “The malls were very positive with the reception of the brand.”
While now having more than 100 branches within the country, there’s still a touch of home as the recipes turn out to be still family approved. “When my mom started the business, the first gen(eration), as a kid, I was actually one of the food tasters. R&D!,” said Mr. Tanchanco.
One might think that there’s little room for innovation in “sinful” snacks (the greasier, the better), but we noted healthier options like “churkey” (that’s chicken and turkey) dogs, and tofu chips. “My mom’s actually healthy,” said Mr. Tanchanco, who noted as well the vegetarianism of not only his mother, but his grandfather and sister. “She really wanted to have healthy options for snacks.”
“We’re always blessed to have opportunities like this,” he said, after BusinessWorld noted their luck in springing on the idea of healthy movie snacks first. “But it’s a gamble. Who would think of healthy snacks while bowling?”
SWIVELING IN THE PANDEMICHe said they had a vegetarian food outlet in Greenbelt too, but it closed in the pandemic.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdowns of 2020 and beyond were instrumental in reshaping their business. “Super-solid, super confident. Overconfident to a certain degree,” he said about the business before the lockdowns.
While known for being a constant sight near the cinemas, the pandemic closed the movie houses, and their outlets were emptied. “Suddenly, nobody wanted to watch movies,” he said. Even after the pandemic, movie sales were still down, as people sat comfortably and safely in front of their screens at home.
So they swiveled.
“People still wanted these snacks,” he noted, so they concentrated on home delivery, building branches close to communities. And they started weaning Taters customers out of cinemas: they began opening kiosks on the shopping floors of their partner malls.
When the pandemic smoke cleared, they would open branches in gaming and play centers like in SM. Aside from cinemas, they’re now also found in bowling alleys and amusement parks and food courts. “It was a big gamble. But we said to ourselves, ‘if we’re going to do it, we have to listen to our customers’.”
Listening to their customers led to offering new items, especially for bowlers (turns out they like drinks and pizza). “… we’re going to evolve, naturally, with our customers,’ he said.
Evolution involves adding on to their baseline snacks, such as overloaded fries resembling Canada’s poutine, and theme-based toppings on their hotdogs and burgers (a Japanese-inspired line is coming up on the holiday season).
They’re not the only ones playing this game, and even movie houses now have their own concessionaires. But they have an edge, namely, “Adapting to change,” he said. “Probably, if you have product excellence, and service excellence, these two things are very memorable to people.”
During the anniversary event, Mr. Tanchanco dodged our question about how many branches they had, because a map marked with their branches had been set up as a game and the winner had to count all the branches on the map to win a prize (as we mentioned above, it’s more than a hundred). Still, scanning the map, we noted that Taters branches were scarce north and south of the map of the country (the Ilocos region and Mindanao). “We plan to expand with our mall partners as they grow,” he said.
To Mr. Tanchanco though, the real dream is to go international. “For me, that’s my own goal,” he said, and he’s working on it on a seven-to-eight-year plan. “My very first priority to make that happen is really all about having the right systems and digital infrastructure.” — Joseph L. Garcia
