Ronald Daniel (Ricaforte) Mascariñas, president and general manager of Bounty Agro Ventures Inc. since 2002, started out in life with only one ambition. “I just wanted to have a college diploma so I could get a job, any kind of job,” he said.

Orphaned of his father at age 8, he grew up with his siblings being taken care of and fed solely by their school teacher mother, Patria.

“It was not an easy life. My mother worked full time in one school, and as soon as her duties were over by four o’clock in the afternoon, she served part-time in two other schools,” Mascarinas said.

“Our eldest was 10, then 9, then I at 8, and then 5 years old, and finally 3 years old,” he recalled. “I am the middle child.”

A week after he graduated from high school, his mother sent him to Manila “so I could stay with her brother. She wrote to him and asked that he help me find a job so I could work and study at the same time. My uncle said he would introduce me to a hotel manager so I could be a bell boy.”

Before that initial plan could materialize, he found out that he passed the UP College Admission Test and had even qualified for a Cocofed scholarship grant.

BAVI has farms all over the country including 21 processing plants for all of the company’s needs. Surprise scholarship

“I ended up enrolling in UP Los Baños. It didn’t look like a strange place to me because it had an agricultural terrain similar to that of my hometown. While my course was Agriculture, I initially specialized in animal health. Again, it was something I was familiar with because in Mindanao, I raised pigs and chickens.”

While he did not aim for honors, “if it were my major subject. I aimed for a flat one.”

Right after graduation in 1982, he was employed by Ayala Corp. which had just bought Purefoods the year before.

Like other first-level fresh graduate employees, he would have been employed as a specialist. But he ended up as assistant manager. He had pointed out to the human resources department that even if he did not have any managerial experience, which was the requirement of the job, he had worked in the UPLB experimental farm.

Mascariñas hopes to instill love for country by supporting sports. He is shown here with Kobe Paras (third from left), one of the promising basketball players included in the Gilas Pilipinas pool. Also in photo are (from left) Ayala Foundation Inc. Corporate Communications senior director Celerina Amores and president Ruel Maranan, and Bounty Agro Ventures Inc. Corporate Communications assistant manager Daryl Zamora. Pure hard work

It was an auspicious start. Fast forward through the years and he became the youngest senior vice president of Purefoods. He was 38 years old. He would be in the same company for more or less 20 years.

By the time he was moved to the head office, in 1998, he became the president of the Philippine Association of Broiler Integrators. “I made sure not one big player would monopolize the discussions. Everyone had to have a say,” he pointed out.

At the turn of the millennium, after Mascariñas retired, the Cheng family, owners of Tyson Agro-Ventures which produces Bounty Fresh chickens, talked to him about setting up a new company. The result of their talks was the creation of the Bounty Agro-Ventures in 2002. It was a small integrator.

In 2008, on its fifth year, Bounty Agro-Ventures decided to develop its own retail brand and thus was born their roasted chicken which in time would be called Chooks-to-Go.

ON how Chooks-to-Go developed its taste: “Our basic rule for any product is it must always be different. It must be drastically different from the rest. It doesn’t have to be the best. If you’re different, people will try you. People will remember you.” Tastes like ham

Daily Tribune sat down with Mascariñas who shared the strategies that led to the fast growth of Bounty Agro-Ventures and its Chooks-to-Go oven-roasted chicken, among its other best-selling products.

Daily Tribune (DT): Who thought of the name Chooks-to-Go?

Ronald Ricaforte Mascariñas (RRM): It’s a name that came from our ad agency. Chooks is the Australian slang word for chicken. In 2008, our store was called Bounty Fresh Oven Roasted Chicken. So, when we were going to produce a television commercial, we realized it was quite a long name. In 2009, we became Chooks-to-Go.

RRM: We now have more than 1,500 stores selling our three brands. Chooks-to-Go is bigger than the number two up to number 10 players combined. That’s because we have production facilities all over the country.

DT: How did you develop Chooks-to-Go? It is so delicious.

RRM: Our basic rule for any product is it must always be different. It must be drastically different from the rest. It doesn’t have to be the best. If you’re different, people will try you. People will remember you.

RRM: Basically, the roasted chicken market in the Philippines is charcoal-grilled. So, to be different, we are using an oven. We started with an electric oven. Now, we used a gas oven. One hundred percent of all chickens in the country will always come with a sauce. Ours does not have sauce. So, we always insist our chicken tastes delicious even without a sauce.

DT: Who developed it — this roasted chicken that tastes so good even without a sauce?

RRM: We talked to multinational flavoring companies. We described to them the flavor profile that we wanted. So, a multinational firm developed the formula for us.

DT: How did you describe the taste that you wanted?

RRM: Their guideline was simply that it should be similar to ham because we consider ham as special, something special for a special occasion. They can have it anytime of the year at a cheaper cost.

DT: I am trying to imagine the volume of sales. How much do you sell in a day?

RRM: We sell on the average over a hundred thousand roasted chickens.

DT: How does this work? What is the over-all strategy?

RRM: In a store, we only have one person manning it. There’s a refrigerator to preserve the raw material. We have the system — the oven.

RRM: It has been marinated already when it arrives in the store. We have 21 processing plants all over the country. For example, we have farms in Davao, and we have a processing plant in Davao. We have farms in General Santos and there is a processing plant. It’s the same thing in Zamboanga, Dumaguete, Iloilo and the other places. So, they have the same formula all over the country.

RRM: In Mindanao, yes. There’s one halal plant in Batangas. Also, we are the only one in the country producing what we term as no-antibiotic-ever chicken. We produce our own feeds, we have feed mills all over the country only to serve our needs. It’s legislated already that chickens should not be given antibiotics. We started in 2017.

RRM: In retail, location is important. Our old competitors are located in good locations, so that would be their advantage. Where passengers alight from the jeepney is very ideal. Where the person gets off, the store should be right there.

DT: Tell me about your Corporate Social Responsibility.

RRM: Our major thrust now is to restore our people’s love for our country. I became committed to this undertaking when I started to be involved in Gilas. For the last two years, we were not sending the best players to the competitions because of various reasons, like there was an ongoing Philippine Basketball Association Conference, or something perceived to be more important was going on somewhere. That was when I realized the sense of nationalism is no longer the priority. So, we would like to revive it. If the country needs a player, a school or a ball club should be willing to lend their player for the love of country.

DT: Which corporations are helping Gilas?

RRM: Basically, these are two — Smart and Chooks-to-Go. Kaming dalawa (There’s two of us).

DT: So, you’re really focused on basketball.

RRM: Yes, basketball being the most popular sport. I believe we should use it as a platform for instilling the spirit of nationalism. Our endorsers are Kobe Paras, Terrence Romeo, Calvin Abueva and Kai Sotto who is only 16 years old and 7’2” and is considered the future of Philippine basketball. He may be the first Filipino to play in the NBA.

We have lots of Gilas players who have served our country. We take care of these players for life. We see former players who had their heyday but who are now undergoing difficult or challenging times. Many of them had short-lived careers in the PBA. We give stores to players who served in the national team. This way they will have a livelihood for life. We gave one to Gabe Norwood.

DT: Do you have another cause outside of love of country through the Gilas?

RRM: Because of our reputation for helping our national athletes, Ayala Foundation handpicked us to be their partner in distributing Philippine flags. I believe they chose us because of our reputation for instilling national pride among our youth.

DT: Are you helping Filipinos in the grassroots level?

RRM: Yes, we are helping the indigenous people. If you look at the marginalized people, they really need help.

RRM: I am fortunate former Gen. Allen Capuyan, the head of the office that has to do with the indigenous people, was my best friend in high school. He is now based in Davao, and he heads the IP program. We really need to find out what they need. We saw that the IP is politicized.

DT: I’m sure your mother was happy to see that you had done well.

RRM: All those years, she never left Butuan. Yes, as long as she saw that my siblings and I were doing well, she was happy. Her favorite was Uling Roasters. Every opportunity that I could go to Mindanao, I visited her.

DT: What can we expect from you this 2019?

RRM: We will continue to develop new retail brands in the next five years. We’re also actively looking for acquisitions. While we are growing our dressed chickens, we want the retail side of the business to grow also.

RRM: Make food exciting anytime everywhere. We’re basically about take-out food. We want take-out food to be accessible to the Filipino. No dine-in, all take-out.