{"id":272793,"date":"2018-03-28T06:06:32","date_gmt":"2018-03-27T20:06:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=272793"},"modified":"2018-03-28T06:06:32","modified_gmt":"2018-03-27T20:06:32","slug":"local-company-takes-ihopajisen-saipan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/local-company-takes-ihopajisen-saipan\/","title":{"rendered":"Local company takes over IHOP\/Ajisen on Saipan"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Pacific Foods CNMI president Ralph Yumul, leftmost, is joined by Ajisen restaurant staff. (Mark Rabago)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A newly formed local company has acquired the IHOP and Ajisen restaurants on Saipan from Pacific Pancakes and Oishi CNMI.<\/p>\n

Pacific Foods CNMI, led by its president Ralph Yumul and his brother, former senator Ray Yumul, and another investor, formally took over the two franchises yesterday.<\/p>\n

Ralph Yumul, who is also a former representative, said the over $800,000 acquisition cost is a combination of loan and purchase price.<\/p>\n

Negotiations took over six months as they initially only wanted to buy the Ajisen restaurant because of the large amount involved.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter so many negotiations it became a package deal,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Ralph Yumul said the acquisition would not affect employees of the two restaurants, as they will retain their current staffing of over 30. They\u2019re looking, though, at cutting operational expenses.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe major part of it is trying to control the expense. Operating a restaurant in the CNMI is very expensive,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

One of the things being mulled is closing IHOP an hour early. Unlike Ajisen, the former doesn\u2019t really do well during dinner. Currently, IHOP is open from 7am to 10pm daily, while Ajisen is from 11am to 10pm.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re also looking at expanding IHOP\u2019s Chamorro breakfast menu and guaranteeing that breakfast is served 12 minutes after being ordered.<\/p>\n

Limited parking is also an issue at the current site, Ralph Yumul said. Moving one restaurant to another site would solve the problem. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s easier to move Ajisen because it\u2019s smaller,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a homecoming of sorts for the Yumul brothers as the family\u2019s YCO Corp. used to operate two Jollibee restaurants on Saipan before closing the last branch in 2008 as the franchise term expired.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been over 10 years since we operated Jollibee. It\u2019s very exciting for me so when the opportunity came to acquire Ajisen and IHOP I quickly jumped on it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Now that a Saipan business owns IHOP and Ajisen, Ralph Yumul is inviting Saipan residents to try out their new restaurants.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s locally owned, so come on down and support local businesses,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A newly formed local company has acquired the IHOP and Ajisen restaurants on Saipan from…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":272794,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[13116,20584,1318,20585],"class_list":["post-272793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-ihop","tag-pacific-pancakes","tag-ralph-yumul","tag-unlike-ajisen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272793\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}