Interview with Manila Guide: Where To Eat?

Food lovers are (all of) us—so we’ve been looking to forward to what Manila Guide has in store for us since they relaunched at the World Food Expo last August. Starting out as a city guide in 1998, Manila Guide was reborn as the “ultimate online dining guide” by the CALCMENU Team, led by Sandro Grandjean. One of the key managers, Jo Elize Comendador tells us more about the inner workings of ManilaGuide.com

Congratulations on your re-launch at the recent World Food Expo! That must have been a big investment for a product launch for a new site. Is Manila Guide the core product of your company or do you have also other services that sustain your company?

Thank you very much. We are truly happy to finally have introduced our services to the market, and the World Food Expo was one great site to do just that since all food enthusiasts, restaurateurs, food and beverage managers – pretty much everyone in the food business was there so it was easier for us to reach our target market.

Our company, CALCMENU Philippines, has a lot of other services aside from this online dining guide. We also develop desktop and web-based software applications for the food and hospitality service industry as well as handle other Food Recipe websites.

Tell us more about Manila Guide.

Our website Manilguide.com is an online guide which answers the perpetual question: “Where shall I/we eat?” It provides a way for people to search for restaurants according to their preferences in cuisine, ambiance, budget – to name a few—and to express their views and experiences in these restaurants through ratings, comments and reviews. We have over thousands of restaurants in our comprehensive listings complete with their branches, information like the price range, menu, promos and even a map.

Our mission is to provide the low-down on all the food haunts in the cities around the metro and nearby provinces. We tied up with restaurants to try to provide site visitors with all the information they will need to have the best dining experience.

The website was started out by CALCMENU Philippines Inc/EGS Switzerland owners Mr. Sandro Grandjean and Marc Enggist sometime in 1997. It was launched in 1998 as initially a guide around the cities, providing information on restaurants, events, hotels, business, nightlife, etc., but things didn’t turn out quite well and so it was set aside for a few years. It was until 2008 of this month that we decided to re-launch it and to just focus on restaurants, with plans of expanding to other things as we go by – that is why we also decided to keep the name ManilaGuide. So far it is going very well since Manilaguide.com has gained thousands of users and members in its community while still continuously growing.

What’s a typical day like for you/your team?

Right now while on beta stage, our typical day usually involves improving the website. The day usually starts and ends with us doing some checking on the website for errors and other concerns, answering inquiries, coming up with promotional strategies for the site and brainstorming for new features and services. We know days will get better but crazier as we go along and we’re looking forward to more days like these.

Who are your core users? How did you spread the word about Manila Guide?

Our core users are mostly food enthusiasts who love to find new or different places to try out and who love to talk about their experiences on it. Foreigners and travelers also frequent the site, as well as restaurateurs who want to gauge how their business is faring in the market.

Spreading the word about Manilaguide required us to enter online social networks like Facebook and Twitter to name a few as well as public promotions like the one we did at the recent food expo. We also rely on Online Search Engines, link exchange, exhibition, and on word of mouth. We will also be advertising through different media later on if necessary.

I’m sure a lot of aspiring techpreneurs are pulling their hair out on how to make money from their web applications. Have you hit upon the right revenue channel?

We have some ideas about how to go about it since we have been developing websites for more than 10 years now. However, things keep on changing in that field and we need to adapt and reevaluate our options constantly. We have several possible schemes for revenue in mind and we will be testing and trying them. Manilaguide is definitely a great promotion tool for restaurants and since it has and will have more and more value in the future, we hope to convert this into revenue.

How did you come to decide the features that are live right now? Are you happy with it or are you planning for more intense future versions?

Our features are decided upon by what we think our site’s visitors and clients would need and what they find convenient. We tried to put ourselves in their shoes and thought of what certain features we would be looking for in a dining guide. We wanted it to be concise-so the visitors can take in all the information about a restaurant in one glance—and convenient—we’d like to spoon-feed our members. Like for restaurateurs, we’re sure that they would love to be able to advertise their restaurants and thus we have provided them with their own profile page wherein they can upload all their information, pictures, menu and latest promos.

We are certainly planning to have more intense features for our members and partners. We are continuously working on providing an easier guide to dining. Just watch out for these new features.

Anything exciting brewing in the next 12 months?

There is a whole lot of new and exciting stuff lined up for the delight of Manilaguide.com visitors and members these next months. We are working to on introducing a reservation system – but since it is quite an advance technology and a unique concept, we do not want to provide more details about it for now.

We are also aiming to do something that will recognize the best restaurants and food enthusiasts featured in Manilaguide. Visitors can also watch out for new features, which can be considered firsts in the Philippine dining scene.

How did you raise funds to begin Manila Guide? What areas/cities do you cover now—and how far do you want to expand in the next 5 years?

Manilaguide is developed by CALCMENU Philippines Inc. and EGS Switzerland. We are in the food service business since 1989, so the website is a normal extension of our business. We want this to become the #1 source of information for anyone looking for a place to eat and more. Right now we cover cities in Metro Manila and neighboring provinces like Batangas, Laguna, Pampanga, Bulacan, Rizal and Cavite. Although we definitely have plans to expand to other cities and countries.

What do you think holds back the growth of a Silicon Valley-like hub in the Philippines for internet companies because there are still so few?

Little is being done to promote and encourage this growth. Internet access in the Philippines is still very poor compared to Europe, Japan, Singapore, etc. Internet is slow and expensive. In Switzerland (an expensive country), an Internet connection for home use is 3 times cheaper and 20 times faster than here in the Philippines. On top of that, it is not reliable as we saw the major disturbance that was created by the rupture of a cable near Taiwan a year or so ago. Of course, the main issue is also funding. It is very difficult to find investors for local companies which are willing to create a start-up in the field.

Thanks for taking the time to answer our questions. Any final words for young web companies starting out?

It is important to think “global”. Create a website that touches on the interest of as many people as possible, or a localized website concept that can be easily reproduced in other communities. Translate your website in other languages, not everyone can understand English.


Posted on September 06, 2008 filed under Interviews by

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