MANILA, PHILIPPINES – As Max’s Group, Inc. introduces a new kind of restaurant hub meant to be part of its sustainability push, one can’t help but think that this is done to ride on the eco bandwagon, but the truth is actually far from that. It turns out, the restaurant group has been exploring more sustainable means for years and is now proudly sharing the news to their patrons and prospective investors.
This development comes at a good time as the Philippine Securities & Exchange Commission streamlines its requirements for sustainability reporting, a move they deemed necessary as the country ranked low in the 2016 global index for sustainable countries published by the Hinrich Foundation. As its new multi-branded site located in Cubao, Quezon City becomes fully operational, the people behind the group shares the steps that they’ve done to make the hub a reality.
MGI President & CEO Robert Trota shared that the new hub which houses different brands including Max’s Restaurant, Yellow Cab, Pancake House, Krispy Kreme, Jamba Juice, and Teriyaki Boy is actually the nth iteration of an idea they had long ago. Different features in the hub have been individually experimented on through different branches they’ve built in the past, and the group has finally found a way to congregate them all under one thoughtfully-designed roof.
Greener Galley
The total size of the hub at Main Ave. in Cubao is 1,446 sqm, and of that lot, the actual space used for the dining and kitchen area itself is only about 600 sqm. Trota shares this already means huge savings in construction materials and the labor needed to build it. Different features have also been built into the hub to make it more eco-friendly.
Each dining area inside has been built with low dependency on air conditioning in mind: higher ceilings, wide trellises that help diffuse the heat of the sun, as well as Low Volatile Organic Compound plants around the hub to aid in purifying air. The hub also makes use of high-efficiency LED lighting.
Technologies to make use of the environment exist too, including solar panels that supplement the hub’s consumption.
“Our solar panels can fully-power 20 households per year, helping reduce our energy footprint,”states MGI Director Carolyn Trota-Salud.“Accordingto our CSSR(CorporateSustainability, Synergies, and Relationships) team, we foresee the avoidance of over 30,000 pounds worth of carbon dioxide emissions from coal.”
Flood mitigation technologies such as permeable pavements, a rainwater harvesting system, and low-flow plumbing features have also been installed. These features help the hub effectively utilize water as it reuses stormwater runoff.
Additionally, waste management components such as a sewage treatment plant for high performance cleaning with low operating costs, and an MRF(MaterialsRecovery Facility) for recycling waste are also part of the hub’s operations.
“As more and more restaurants here and abroad are making conscious efforts to save the environment and preserve natural resources, our newest multi-brand hub plays a pivotal role in combining our goals of building a sustainable future and providing thoughtful dining experiences for our customers,”continues Trota-Salud.
Shared Services
Conventional restaurants are built in a way that each brand would need its own set of facilities to make a customer’s dining experience seamless and enjoyable. This of course includes things like its own kitchen, its own restrooms, waste facility and more.
The advantage that Max’s Group has in this regard is that it has several brands working with them whose ingredients mostly come from the same offsite commissary, and streamlining things like workflow, manpower, and stocks is easier. With these in mind, they were able to reevaluate certain facilities, and now has come up with a larger shared facilities for all the brands within the hub.
So instead of having six different loading bays, kitchens, restrooms and whatnot, they were able to create a way for all of these to be in one convenient location, big enough to house all the needs for different brands. Everything that happens in the entire hub now flows through one larger space than six separate ones. This helps them trim down on many things including power usage, space, and so much more. What this means for customers too is that cross-ordering is totally possible.
“Propelling MGI’s future entails safeguarding and evolving our brands’ heritage through forward-looking strategies,”shares MGI President and Chief Executive Officer Robert F. Trota.“Aswe usher in a new decade, launching this Main Avenue multi-brand site cements our stakeholder commitment to strike a balance between both continuity and renewal, powering our growth through the one-of-a-kind convergence we believe only MGI can offer through its brands most-loved by Filipinos.”
Trota-Salud adds,“Mindfulness is a core principle that guides how we want MGI’s role in society to be more purposeful. That’s why we built this Main Avenue site around integrity, honesty, and passion. We care about people, the environment we live in, and the good of the planet.”
Max’s new multi-brand site is located at the intersection of EDSA Southbound Lane and Main Avenue in Cubao, Quezon City.
