Leon Jr. 🦁

Concerned citizen.

[Leon Jr. 🦁 @wanderingleon]

Tuloy na tuloy pa rin ang Pasko! Maraming salamat, @Netflix_PH! ☺

#NetflixPH #NetflixNocheBuenaBasket

[JP et. al. @dumidyeypee]

Feel free to share this. Hope they will be found. 🙏🏻

[Leon Jr. 🦁 @wanderingleon]

🎞️ Greater Manila Theaters Association, 1989

Source: Manila Standard, June 28, 1989

[DaVinci @BiancoDavinci]

foldable street “beds” in Thailand.

[Leon Jr. 🦁 @wanderingleon]

📅1990 - @Jollibee launched ChickenJoy Take-Me-Outs, Coleslaw, Jolly Hotdog and Peach Mango Pie.

Source: Manila Standard, January 31, 1991.

[Leon Jr. 🦁 @wanderingleon]

Yung huling branch na naaalala ko dito sa NCR ay yung sa Rizal Park sa bandang Kalaw, na kalaunan ay naging Wendy's. Wala na din yung Wendy's dahil dinemolish na yung gusali.

[radar PH @radarph_media]

Weekends came with a rare but exciting question from their parents: “Saan tayo kakain?” For Filipino kids in the 80s and 90s, the choices were often simple. Jollibee—or Cindy’s.

Choosing Cindy’s meant biting into one of its juicy burgers, twirling sweet-style spaghetti, or sharing a plate of palabok before asking your parents if you could have dessert from the bakeshop. With its memorable slogan, “The Place to Be,” Cindy’s wasn’t just another restaurant. For many families, it was part of growing up.

Then, almost without anyone noticing, it disappeared.

Not completely. There were no dramatic bankruptcy headlines or farewell announcements. One day, Metro Manila simply stopped seeing Cindy’s branches beside the country’s fast-food giants. It quietly folded its flag in the burger wars while everyone else kept expanding.

For many Filipinos, it felt like Cindy’s had lost.

In reality, it simply chose not to keep fighting.

Founded in Tarlac City in 1972, Cindy’s was one of the country’s earliest homegrown fast-food success stories. During the 1980s and early 1990s, it expanded aggressively across Luzon, becoming one of the few local brands that could realistically compete with the rapidly growing Jollibee. Its burgers, fried chicken, spaghetti, chicken barbecue, and palabok earned loyal customers long before international giants flooded the market.

But the industry changed quickly.

Jollibee accelerated its nationwide expansion, while McDonald’s poured massive investments into the Philippines. Television advertising became more expensive, mall rentals soared, and supply chains became increasingly dominated by companies with far deeper pockets. Competing wasn’t just about serving a better burger anymore—it became a battle of capital, marketing, and scale.

Instead of exhausting itself in a fight it was unlikely to win, Cindy’s made a decision that many businesses struggle to make: it changed its identity.

In 1996, the company shifted its focus from operating large fast-food restaurants to strengthening the business it already knew well—its bakery. Rather than chasing burger sales, it concentrated on breads, cakes, pastries, and neighborhood bakeshops, particularly across Northern and Central Luzon.

To Metro Manila, it looked like Cindy’s had vanished.

To the company, it was survival.

The strategy worked.

Today, Cindy’s continues to operate as Cindy’s Bakery & Restaurant, with more than 90 branches and over 100 independent dealers across Luzon. Several locations, particularly in Tarlac and Pangasinan, still serve the classic burgers, spaghetti, palabok, and chicken barbecue that older Filipinos fondly remember.

Its story offers an unusual lesson in Philippine business history.

Not every company loses because it makes bad products. Sometimes, it simply recognizes that it cannot outspend a rival. Instead of dying gloriously, it survives by becoming something else.

One can’t help but wonder what the fast-food landscape would look like today had Cindy’s continued investing in its restaurants. Could Filipinos have grown up debating whether to eat at Jollibee, McDonald’s, or Cindy’s? Would there have been another national burger giant standing beside the Bee?

We’ll never know.

What we do know is that while Jollibee won the burger war, Cindy’s won something else.

More than 50 years after opening its first store, it is still around—just no longer where most Filipinos expected to find it.

#radarPH #radarPHBusiness

[Leon Jr. 🦁 @wanderingleon]

.@dunkinph Super Snack promo, offered from 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM in June 1989, featured a croissant sandwich and a medium Coke for just ₱20.50. 🥐🥤 #tadonggeniuskuno #DunkinPH

[Leon Jr. 🦁 @wanderingleon]

Sharmaine invasion 🟠

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

40,000 Dutch fans have taken over Houston.

[Leon Jr. 🦁 @wanderingleon]

Ang Tatay Kong Nanay (1978)
Director: Lino Brocka
Screenplay: Orlando Nadres
Cast: Dolphy, Dolphy, Niño Muhlach, Phillip Salvador
#FathersDay

[Leon Jr. 🦁 @wanderingleon]

Between 1940 and 1950.

📷 Photographer: Harrison Forman Gift to the library by his wife Sandra Carlyle Forman, 1987 | American Geographical Society Library, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

[Leon Jr. 🦁 @wanderingleon]

State Theater on Rizal Avenue in Sta. Cruz, Manila. The marquee advertises the 1940 film South of Pago Pago starring Victor McLaglen, Jon Hall, and Frances Farmer.

[Leon Jr. 🦁 @wanderingleon]

.@risahontiveros website, 2009

[ABS-CBN News @ABSCBNNews]

UPDATE: Senator Risa Hontiveros said that she is “seriously considering” running for the position of President come the 2028 elections. | via @feanneperez

[Leon Jr. 🦁 @wanderingleon]

In 1997, there was the PH Tourism Highway Program which aimed at making land travel tourist friendly, easier, and more affordable. @TourismPHL https://t.co/fPbpUEixKG (Screenshot from the DOT website, 1999, via @internetarchive) #LoveThePhilippines #itsmorefuninthephilippines

[Leon Jr. 🦁 @wanderingleon]

.@TourismPHL website, 1999 via @internetarchive

#LoveThePhilippines #itsmorefuninthephilippines

[Little Susie @CatholicSusie]

Once a photographer, always a photographer (even if you're Pope now). 📸

[Jai Cabajar @jaicabajar]

Gets ko yung need na isama pa rin ang physical education pero sana meron ding classes pano mag apply sa BIR, Pag-ibig, SSS, etc. Kahit elective lang :))

[The OED @OED]

OED #WordOfTheDay: salakot, n.
A type of lightweight Filipino hat traditionally worn by farmers as protection against the weather, typically domed or conical in shape, with a wide brim...

View the full entry: https://t.co/YHeeokiNkJ

[Reuters @Reuters]

A group of indigenous Taiwanese left to paddle to the Philippines on a hand-built wooden canoe across the Bashi Channel, reviving a maritime route dormant for hundreds of years and re-establishing ‌a lost cultural connection https://t.co/W5tQdwBPg1

[Leon Jr. 🦁 @wanderingleon]

📺 @ABSCBN Drama, 1997 🎭

#throwback #kapamilyaforever

[Leon Jr. 🦁 @wanderingleon]

.@ABSCBN Youth Programs, 1997

#throwback #kapamilyaforever

[Leon Jr. 🦁 @wanderingleon]

Top Schools in the National Secondary Achievement Test, SY 1999-2000, DECS @DepEd_PH #throwback