With America’s ever-increasing interest in diverse and international foods, chef Jordan Andino and his partners have launched ambitious plans to expand their Flip Sigi restaurant concept across the nation. What started as a local Filipino restaurant in Manhattan now aims to become a nationwide Filipino dining experience.
The Toronto native has embraced his time on both the California and New York food scenes to develop his own unique style of Filipino-meets-French cuisine. Andino quickly rose in food circles to his current level of fame with his signature techniques of embracing both cultural food traditions and classical culinary techniques to create an all-new fusion which he serves at his Flip Sigi restaurants.
“Our success is primarily because of the karma that comes from good will. I feel that’s the best way I can describe it,” said Flip Sigi Co-Owner Jordan Andino. “During the pandemic me and my two partners made a concerted effort to donate meals to hospitals across the five boroughs. I think the good will and the connection we formed with the doctors and nurses helped our brand association and our brand recognition and loyalty.
Among the key decisions for Andino was whether to launch the national expansion with a franchise unit or corporate store strategy. “The way we look at it we want to own as much of Flip Sigi’s future as we can. We have plans to eventually franchise but right now we’ve found the best way to deliver our product and concept is to own and operate as many of our own locations as we can. Our goal currently is ten locations, following that we will begin considering franchising to meet our larger aspirations, but our goal for now is to own and operate ten locations eight of which will be outside of New York City.”
Flip Sigi’s expansion into Chicago came on the heels of Andino and his team’s creative approach to test potential marketplaces. And being that one of Jordan’s partners is a Lettuce alum who ran the Shaw’s division, it only made sense that Chicago was their first expansion city in the Midwest.
“How we decide where to expand to is to host a pop-up restaurant in a city, focusing on specific locations due to their demographics. We typically look for a large southeastern Asian, or even more specifically Filipino demographic. Once we find a large concentration of Filipinos we will look to see if there is a feasible area for us to run a pop-up and depending on the pop-up’s success, we will move to opening a full restaurant. We did a pop-up in Wrigleyville in Chicago, and it was more successful than any of our predictions. We tripled our projected sales and after seeing those results, we immediately went to work finding a location for our new restaurant. We were lucky that the space we did the pop-up in was available for us to open a permanent restaurant.”
Andino brings a resume of success to Flip Sigi’s national expansion. In addition to attending the Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration, he also studied under the restaurant greats at The French Laundry, Spago, and Jean-Georges.
With that restaurant business background Andino remains focused on keeping his restaurants menus fresh and new to help increase sales as well as customer engagement. “We keep our ears to the ground and listen to customer reviews, but we also look at our numbers to try and see what is popular among our customers,” said Andino. “The first way that we do it is through monthly specials which we plan in advance for the entire year and launch them accordingly. We do this based on timing, annual events and specific weather and the seasons. Based on that we mix and move our menu two to three times a year based on what our consumers are telling us. Our second way is through looking at our sales data to see what can be added or improved on. A perfect example of that is that we had a lull in breakfast sales and found that by adding items to our menu it really helped to grow our sales.”
While working to keep their menu fresh and up to customer’s expectations, Flip Sigi has also developed ways to deal with possible supply chain issues during their expansion. “We haven’t had to cut down our menu because of the supply chain but we have had to adapt it,” said Andino. “One of the things we did is buy in bulk and have our vendors hold it, while we pay a short-term storage fee. We have also adapted by changing the cuts of our meat. For example, if we are using chuck flat for our short rib we will bounce between bone in and other similar cuts that can mimic that texture and flavor without mimicking the cost.”
As for their keys to success when it comes to expansion, Andino says it’s all about the staff and the people around you. “The first and foremost point, we don’t hire based on technical skill in a restaurant we hire based on personality,” said Andino. “If someone comes in with no technical skills but they have a magnetic personality and energy, we will immediately hire them and train them. Number two is having the right people to help spread my recipes and my concepts and my two partners have played an integral role in that. Yes, I am the one people want to see and meet, but in the end my two partners are the ones who run the restaurant and make sure that it is successful.”
Andino’s national rollout is supported by the national media brand that he has built. Andino has built his brand on the back of a number of TV appearances including Chopped, Rachael Ray, Beat Bobby Flay, Worst Cooks In America, and Voltaggio brothers’ Battle of Brothers.
For those looking to learn more about Flip Sigi’s national rollout, more information can be found online at their website. To learn more about Jordan Andino, please visit his website.
