With $1,200 and an idea, Jake Deleon created what has become a category leader in the Filipino grocery market. His Fila Manila, launched in November 2020, has quickly gained market share and can already be found on the shelves of major retailers like Whole Foods Market and Sprouts Farmers Market.
Not yet two years old, the Cherry Hill area brand counts the Kraft Heinz Co. as a backer and will launch in Target this October.
Fila Manila came to market with three sauces: an adobo, a caldereta, and a kare-kare. The best-selling adobo is made with tamari soy, garlic, onion and other spices. The caldereta has a tomato base, while the kare-kare has a peanut base. The brand has since expanded to other categories.
“They're very iconic, very representative of the cuisine,” Deleon said.
The idea for Fila Manila and its signature sauces occurred to Deleon in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. He had read a story about how many U.S. frontline health care workers were Filipino. A first-generation Filipino American immigrant, that struck him and so he began digging further into the Filipino community in the U.S.
Filipino populations in the U.S. have been steadily climbing over the past two decades and as of 2019 totaled more than 4.2 million, according to data from the Pew Research Center. That accounted for 19% of all Asian Americans, making Filipinos the third largest Asian population in the U.S. at the time.
“I thought about that. My mind went to my world of [consumer packaged goods]. I was like, wait a minute. If this is true, if we're such a large part of the community … why is it when I go to the Wegmans, the Targets, the Whole Foods, the Walmarts, the Safeways of the world, there's actually no Filipino stuff on the shelf?”
So he decided to change that.
Fila Manila wasn’t Deleon’s first foray into consumer packaged goods or the grocery market, though it was his first focused on Filipino cuisine. An industry veteran, Deleon had spent the first part of his career in marketing working for some of the world’s biggest brands, including Procter & Gamble and Starbucks. At P&G, Deleon worked on snack and pet food brands, including in Asia. He eventually joined Starbucks, where he was on the team working with new Frappuccino flavors as well as its rapid expansion in China.
Fila Manila wasn’t his first startup. After living abroad for years, Deleon returned to New Jersey where he launched cold-pressed almond juice brand Origin Almond. It found moderate success, landing on the shelves of Whole Foods and Walmart and garnering venture backing from Kraft Heinz. But when Covid struck, revenue dropped off by about 80% since sales were concentrated in retail. Deleon sold off his remaining inventory and shuttered the company.
While Origin Almond wasn’t the success he hoped, paired with his corporate background, he had ample knowledge to navigate a second startup.
“In true immigrant grit, I used my $1,200 stimulus check at that time and I built the first prototypes,” Deleon said of his Fila Manila launch, noting his family immigrated to New Jersey, where he grew up.
He adapted the recipes for his first sauces from his family’s. Deleon’s background helped dramatically cut the formulation time. He said it took just about six weeks to develop and commercialize the recipes.
He also tapped the Rutgers Food Innovation Center to fine tune “some of the technical aspects,” he said.
By November 2020, he had launched Fila Manila in the market. Leveraging his past connection with a Whole Foods buyer, he secured a retail partnership with the grocer and its products are stocked in Whole Foods throughout the Mid-Atlantic and on parts of the West Coast.
The following spring Fila Manila launched on Amazon.com. Soon the brand landed top in its category, a position it still holds in the adobo sauce category. Deleon said they did that without putting dollars into advertising or customer acquisition.
While Filipinos aren’t Fila Manila’s primary consumer, they are driving the brand’s success by sharing it with their non-Filipino friends.
“They're the ones who are rallying for us because they're so excited to see a representation of their cuisine on the shelf. They just want to support it because it represents who they are,” Deleon said.
Fila Manila is stocked in about 1,000 stores across the nation, including all Sprouts.
In October, the brand will launch in Target, making it the first Filipino food product to hit shelves at the retailer, Deleon said. Fila Manila will be launched in Targets in the Northeast and Midwest regions.
The six-employee company operates largely on a remote basis. The company works with co-packers on both the East and West coasts.
The brand has garnered interest from venture capitalists and raised an oversubscribed pre-seed round for an undisclosed amount last year. The round was led by Austin-based VC Sputnik ATX. Kraft Heinz was also among the investors.
Fila Manila is now undertaking a bridge round, also for an undisclosed amount, which Deleon expects to close before the end of the year. A seed round “in the millions” may be on the horizon for next year.
The pre-seed and bridge funding is going toward improving profitability of the brand’s existing products and product innovation.
Deleon said that product innovation isn’t the usual model for consumer packaged goods brands, which typically focus on one SKU as they build brand awareness. But Deleon’s goal of owning the Filipino grocery category, he believes, necessitates striking out into other segments.
Already the company has branched into other segments. It is debuting two condiments, including a banana ketchup, which just this week snagged an Expo East 2022 Nexty Award. That marks the brand’s third Nexty. In addition, Fila Manila will launch another condiment, likely in the fourth quarter, though it’s not yet shared what that flavor will be.
Earlier this year, Fila Manila introduced two spreads, an Ube Purple Yam Jam and a Coconut Jam. Deleon is already thinking ahead to non-pantry staples.
“Our vision at Fila Manila is pretty simple – it's to represent the next generation of Filipino flavors. What that means from a consumer standpoint is down the road, if hopefully we get good enough and big enough, a consumer will think about Filipino food and Fila Manila becomes top of mind. Then we've achieved our mission.”
In the early days, how did you grow brand awareness without initial marketing dollars?
It was a really tricky time for the country. Fall of 2020, Covid was obviously still very [dominant]. … If you think about launching at a retailer for a food brand, typically you do things like in-store demos. During that time, we couldn't do demos. But I was allowed to stand there with a mask and tell people this is what we do. It was very gritty.
How are people using Fila Manila sauces?
When we first launched that sauce product line, I called it a simmer sauce because basically the idea is you combine it with a protein and veggies and simmer it. … Some people are using it as a marinade, some people pour it on scrambled eggs, some people make a stir fry.
What is banana ketchup?
Banana ketchup exists in many cultures, not just Filipino. It's almost like a tomato-less condiment. In the Philippines, it was made during the war time because there were not enough tomatoes, but an abundance of bananas. So we converted that recipe from just using pureed bananas with spices to make something that tastes almost exactly like ketchup but more tropical, more fruity. It's really delicious.
What’s the story behind the brand name?
The explanation is that Filipino American, the short form for that is “FilAm,” so basically we combined that with Manila which is the capital of the Philippines.
