DECS, a legacy dimsum brand, used to confine itself to its niche market, particularly the Chinatown in Binondo and the Greenhills area. But it grew exponentially after introducing innovations and a partnership with the country’s leading supermarket chain operator, SM Markets.

SM Markets is the umbrella brand for SM Supermarket, SM Hypermarket and Savemore.

In a statement, Kayne Chua, president of DECS Dimsum Dynasty Inc., said sales exceeded its targets by about 30 percent. SM Markets also said that since their partnership, DECS dimsum sales tripled.

The original owner Diao Eng Chay opened its first store in Binondo in the early 1930s. In 1990, the third-generation owners sought to bring their heritage recipes to more customers by branching out and starting a new company called DECS. The new brand thrived by serving good quality dimsum to Filipino and Filipino-Chinese customers through a handful of pop-up stores across malls in Metro Manila.

In 2014, Chua, the great grandson of the original Diao Eng Chay owner, was working with SM Retail’s mini-mart chain Alfamart as a merchandising manager. There, he had the opportunity to work with SM Markets Vice Chairman Herbert Sy.

As a veteran businessman, Sy saw the potential in DECS. Sy urged Chua to revive DECS and modernize the legacy brand for it to keep up with the times and expand beyond Greenhills.

Chua grabbed the opportunity as he took over the family business and started revamping and expanding the business on a much larger scale. With the help of SM Markets, they reinvented the dimsum brand to appeal to modern consumers.

In November of 2015, DECS opened their first stall in SM Supermarket Makati. DECS’ new look breathed new life to its already popular name and, after several months, the restaurant expanded to other SM Supermarket branches as well as in Savemore and SM Hypermarket.

Now, DECS is already SM Markets’ most popular dimsum brand with its signature dimsum like pork siomai, hakaw, siopao, and other dumplings available frozen and ready to heat.

Their innovation tapped new segments of the market that their ready-to-eat selections did not reach. Company sales grew by 88 percent from 2020 to 2021. And with continuous support and guidance from SM Markets, DECS’ bestselling frozen dimsums are being sold in 84 locations nationwide.

With the strong partnership, DECS rolled out frozen and ready-to-heat versions of their popular products for shoppers to be able to enjoy their products wherever and whenever they prefer. Incidentally, DECS launched their frozen products months before the pandemic hit the Philippines in 2020 making it easier for DECS to transition their business and keep up with the disturbance of the pandemic.

“By modernizing a legacy brand such as DECS, SM has helped improve our sales, product, and operations. By selling in SM Markets, we are able to learn from their business, adopt their best practices like using the stores’ POS which saves us a lot of effort in collecting payments, and allowed us to scale and reach more customers. Not to mention the strategic location of each store that caters to our target market,” said Chua.