Key Sentence:
- MacroAsia Launches Virtual Kitchen Controlled by billionaire Lucio Tan – it launches virtual kitchen service to meet growing food demand.
- Airline service providers suffer increasing losses due to travel restrictions imposed to contain the pandemic.
Focusing on the virtual kitchen business will allow the company to leverage underutilized capacity in its in-flight kitchens. MacroAsia Launches Virtual Kitchen which serves fewer dishes and fewer people travel, within the confines of Covid-19.
“With the addition of production capacity for food, especially with the addition of new food handlers outside the airport. The group is beginning to make its seal as a virtual kitchen for institutional customers. And food brands,” MacroAsia said in a statement to the Philippine exchange on Friday.
The virtual kitchen business called MAC Chefs Depot will start contributing to sales in the second half of the year, after supplying critical customers at the end of the second quarter. According to the MAC Chefs Depot website, the group can prepare up to 70,000 dishes from its three kitchens.
MacroAsia, which provides ground handling services at Philippine airports, has been particularly hard hit by the pandemic.
The company’s net loss rose 9.4 percent to pesos 524.4 million ($10.4 million).
While gross sales fell 46 percent to pesos 876 million.
The airline management teams within the group have taken steps to save money. And control costs to overcome the crisis and the resulting business downturn,” said MacroAsia. “The recovery of the air travel business will follow in the footsteps of airlines and the travel industry. Which will benefit from an easing of quarantines and travel restrictions in this country and elsewhere.”
Apart from MacroAsia, Tan is the majority shareholder of Philippine Airlines, preparing a restructuring plan to revive the losing airline. In June, Tan gave PAL a bridging loan as the airline plunged deeper into the red, with a single net loss of 73 billion pesos for all of 2020.
Tan – who became a majority shareholder in PAL in 1995. When he was appointed chairman regained control of PAL in 2014. After acquiring a majority stake in San Miguel Corp. on the airline. Including a net worth of $3.3 billion, Tan, 86, was ranked the Philippines’ third-richest on the World Billionaires List published in April. His business empire includes tobacco, liquor, banking, and real estate.