To save their F&B ecosystem, The Moment Group built another one

When Abba Napa, Eliza Antonino, and Jon Syjuco founded restaurant powerhouse The Moment Group (TMG) in 2012, they hit the ground running—launching three restaurants within their first eight months and, on average, opening a new one every two months since. Nearly a decade later, the group has fine-tuned a playbook that’s garnered them 45 locations, 12 food brands, 2,500 employees, and countless accolades for their pioneering work as restaurateurs. It was a winning formula. That is, until it wasn’t.

According to data released by Euromonitor International earlier this year, the shifting restrictions of the early pandemic saw sales from the Philippine food service industry nosedive 43.8% from $15.19 billion in 2019 to $8.54 billion in 2020. Larger chain restaurants closed locations, while smaller operations shuttered completely. Worst hit were the full-service restaurants—TMG’s bread and butter. In fact, the USDA Foreign Agriculture Service expects that sector will continue slipping to the end of 2021, with sales further declining by 21%.

“It was painful for us to see our team leaders and members struggling,” said Napa, TMG co-founder for creative development. “A big chunk of the struggle was the psychological impact, especially at the onset of the pandemic.”

TMG was born of a desire to create shared experiences allowing people to converge. But after months of intermittent lockdowns and mandatory distancing, converging just wasn’t feasible. So, Napa and her co-founders got to incubating. Their winning formula, they realized, didn’t need a rehaul. It just needed some creativity.

“This was a challenging process for us to wrap our heads around as we went through it, but we realized that converging didn’t just have to mean around a table,” Napa said. “We can converge over a bed tray, a cubicle desk, sitting on the grass in a park, or even over our own laps while in the seats of our cars—with those we are sheltering in place with, or virtually, with those we are sorely missing. So, throughout the greater part of 2020 and even 2021, we did not stop creating food that could work for this kind of a moment.”

Leveraging the same quality food, but innovating on channels, the TMG team mapped out a new strategy for their group. Once again, they hit the ground running.

Same same, but distant

TMG’s cook-at-home line, Moment the Grocer, saw the group’s most popular dishes turned into frozen food products ready to be sold through select grocers and online marketplaces—including their own new digital storefront. On Momentfood.com, buyers can select food options from among these frozen meals, or straight off the menus of their favorite TMG brands. A number of new offerings, partly inspired by bento boxes and tailored for delivery, were developed too. Rounding out the ecosystem, TMG built Mo’Go, their very own fleet of vehicles, to manage deliveries for the group.

The experiment was a massive success that spawned their own spin-off ventures. With rising demand coming in from their online delivery platform, the team began work on delivery-only brands like noodle purveyor Papa Pancitan and fried chicken concept Cuckoo. TMG also teamed up with 7-Eleven to launch a line of ready-to-heat convenience store meals called Manam Express, a reimagining of their classic Filipino fare: sisig, kare-kare, bistek, and pancit. Those meals can now be found in over 2,000 locations across Luzon. Creative concepts and rapid expansion—par for the course, for Napa and her co-founders.

After nearly two years of rolling restrictions, several trends ignited in 2020 will likely continue shaping the Philippine food service industry well into the future, Euromonitor International found. They list stronger delivery, takeaway, and drive-through channels among the most relevant offerings post-pandemic.

Just as they did in 2012, TMG set a new standard for the industry, this time with a playbook designed for a post-pandemic world. 

But for all their innovation, TMG’s founders still hold their brick and mortar spaces dear. As 2021 draws to a close, the company is poised to open yet another establishment, Huchi, a Southeast Asian dine-in concept hawking Vietnamese pho and Thai-style stir-fried noodles.

“We had a great little space and we wanted to recreate an experience for the current times,” Napa said. “And what else shows hope for the future and a return to a safe and happy new normalcy if not creating a new dine-in food brand experience?”