Roni Bandong is on a mission to bring Filipino food out of the shadow of its South East Asian neighbours. She describes the cuisine as a melting pot of flavours influenced by Malay, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, South American, American and Arabic cultures. “If you think of all the taste profiles – sour, salty, sweet and sometimes bitter or spicy – that is Filipino food in one bite.”
In a bid to introduce Brits to that melting pot, she produces the RoniB’s Kitchen brand that includes sauces, oils, pastes and the award-winning Filipino Banana Ketchup.
The brand was founded in 2017 by Bandong, who previously provided language services to conferences and events, and her retired police officer husband Steve McSorley. But its origins can be traced back to when Bandong first came to the UK.
“I noticed that Filipino food was very much underrepresented,” she explains. “With a friend who is also based here in the UK, another passionate foodie like myself, we decided to start supper clubs to promote and share our love for Filipino food.”
A game-changing opportunity came in 2016 when Bandong was asked to join a supper club cook-off on Kirstie Allsopp’s Channel 4 TV show Kirstie’s Handmade Christmas. She won the competition, which brought the realisation there was a place for Filipino food in the UK.
“This was the trigger for me,” she says. “I decided to create products that home cooks can use to cook Filipino food.”
She was still working a corporate job, so recently retired McSorley got to work making sauces in a three-litre pot in their kitchen in Surrey. Based on family recipes, the first four products were Adobo Sauce, BBQ Marinade (now called Filipino Style Ihaw Ihaw BBQ Sauce), Garlic Chilli Oil and Black Bean Chilli Oil. “Steve was making the sauces at home entirely by hand,” says Bandong. “Including filling the jars and labelling them.”
The couple began their retail journey by selling at local farmers’ markets, visiting a different one each weekend. Sales were supplemented by an Amazon store, while retail listings started with Williams & Bunkell, an upmarket fishmonger in Claygate, Surrey, which continues to stock the brand today.
“At the time, we were distributing it ourselves,” Bandong says. “We would visit the shops and speak to the owner or manager and introduce the products.”
Seven years later, RoniB’s Kitchen – still a two-person operation – has scaled up considerably.
It now has a production partner and, although still dealing directly with some stockists, works with distributors including Diverse Fine Food, Gorgeous Food Company, Artisan Food Club, Scobie & Junor and Mahalo Soul. The brand has also secured a deal to supply Spinneys, which trades as Waitrose in the UAE.
From being stocked in a handful of local butchers and fishmongers, RoniB’s Kitchen’s products are now in more than 50 independent shops around the UK, 30 in the UAE, two in France, one in the US and one in Switzerland.
“We are still a small team,” says Bandong. “What we do is work with other small businesses. We have our manufacturing partner, accountant, e-commerce and email marketing agency, and a mentor. We used to work in our house but built a small garden office at the back, and that is where you will find us most of the time.”
TV appearances have helped raise the profile of RoniB’s Kitchen, including James Martin’s Saturday Morning show in April this year and success on Aldi’s Next Big Thing in 2024. That resulted in a 1,000-store nationwide listing for the brand’s Filipino Banana Ketchup. “Banana ketchup is the ketchup of the Philippines,” says Bandong.
Creation of the condiment is typically credited to pioneering Filipino food technologist María Orosa y Ylagan, who died in 1945. Tomato ketchup had been introduced to the Philippines at the end of the 19th century by US soldiers during the Spanish-American war. It became popular with Filipinos, but their country was struck by a shortage in World War II because of a scarcity of ingredients. Orosa, who in 1934 became head of the Philippines government’s Plant Utilisation Division, was challenged with creating a tomato ketchup substitute. She developed a recipe that blended banana, an abundant local fruit, and spices.
Bandong’s own banana ketchup recipe took two years to develop because she insisted on keeping the product all-natural. A particular issue was the natural colour change of bananas, to which she found a solution by using beetroot powder. Filipino Banana Ketchup was first launched into foodservice. When the couple later decided to sell it at markets and festivals, it rapidly became a bestseller.
In May this year, at the Farm Shop & Deli Show, the ketchup became the winning product in the Dragons’ Pantry event. “Winning Dragons’ Pantry is such a great validation that what we are doing is on the right track,” says Bandong. “It creates credibility in the industry and also opens doors and connections for small businesses like ours.”
Looking ahead, RoniB’s Kitchen is considering ways it might work with other producers on co-branded products, and is keen to continue building distribution. “Naturally, we would love to land another major supermarket listing and are in the early stages of speaking to a couple of the nationals,” says Bandong. “We are always looking for new stockists, whether here in the UK or beyond.”
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