Fruitas to acquire CocoDelivery and venture into new store concept

Listed Fruitas Holdings Inc., which focuses on small kiosk format stores, has recently taken full ownership of CocoDelivery Inc. by buying over the remainding shares, in a bid to expand its delivery channels to cover all its products.
With the procurement, CocoDelivery’s hotline, 8COCO could serve as the main delivery hotline for Fruitas’ full food and beverage products. It looks to increase the total sales brought upon by Fruitas’ current delivery channels.
The delivery channel, including its current partnerships with CocoDelivery and Grab, and Sabroso’s own delivery service, currently accounts for a high single digit percentage of [Fruitas] total sales.
Fruitas’ products include its fresh fruit juices, Buko Loco’s pure coconut water, Soy & Bean’s soy products, De Original Jamaican patties, and Sabroso Lechon, among others.
Fruitas President and CEO Lester Yu said, “Fruitas expects to immediately realise synergies from this acquisition, maximising the utilization of the combined motorcycle fleet of [Fruitas] and CocoDelivery and consolidating the marketing of [Fruitas’] delivery service.”
CocoDelivery was first launched in October 2018 with the aim to deliver fresh coconut water in Metro Manila.
Meanwhile, Fruitas has also recently announced that it is venturing into the soy product and grilled chicken business. It will launch a fresh kiosk store concept under the Babot’s Farm brand for its new grilled chicken business, which it has slated to be a fast growing segment. This venture will make use of the company’s acquisition of grilled food provider, Heat Stroke Grill and food store Kuxina Ihaw Na, located in the company’s Le Village food park in Quezon City. For the fresh store concept, Fruitas will be introducing 3 major verticals of fresh products to be sold under Babot’s Farm: a buko (coconut) beverage line, a new soy line under Soy & Bean and fresh dairy. The soy line will make use of Fruitas’ recent acquisition of The Tofu Store’s operator SoyKingdom Inc. Fruitas currently operates more than 20 food and beverage brands and it had 1,068 stores in its nationwide network at the end of 2019.