Tea.logy, an up-and-coming milk tea company, has a growing crowd of loyal patrons at its branches at Il Terrazo mall in Quezon City and another at Mercato Centrale weekend bazaar at Bonifacio Global City. The early success got the partners planning for bigger things for their venture.
The three young women behind Tea-logy — Sheryll Ann Sobremonte, Rachel Yu and Raissa Lacson — credit their success, in part, to prudent measures they have laid in place to reduce costs.
Here they share what they call the “little things that counted a lot.”
From Sobremonte: “When it comes to promoting our brand, we are entirely below the line. Instead of placing advertisements in print, broadcast or outdoor media, the company engages its customers on social media like Facebook, frequently invites our circle of friends and family over for taste tests, and generally relies on word of mouth to attract more customers.”
“We used word of mouth because we believe it is more focused. We think it works because wherever we are, our target market compliments us; they like our branding, even our merchandising materials.”
“We manage our waste. Our ingredients, like the toppings we use, are meticulously counted. Our portions are single-serve only, and if we do run out of a certain topping, we have alternatives like tapioca, nata de coco and pudding. We are flexible in that sense.”
From Yu: “When we place an order with our supplier in Taiwan, we ask them to deliver our goods to a person who is based there. The person then places our goods in the container van along with the rest of the shipment for my family’s business, and then we get it once the container arrives here in Manila.
“We buy our materials in bulk but make sure that sobrang sakto for our projected turnover as we don’t really want to overstock on materials. If we expect our inventory to last for so many months, then that’s just what we buy, plus a small allowance for price change.”
Tea.logy also realizes savings from having only part-time employees and from outsourcing both their accounting and delivery service (they enlisted with City Delivery, which has an online service and delivers for over 150 restaurants and food shops across Metro Manila).
Photo: from the Tea.logy Facebook page
Adapted from: Entrepreneur Philippines, March 2011