The short answer
Iloilo Supermart was founded in 1948 by Que Hua Pho, known locally as "Papa George," who acquired Hoskyn & Co. and rebuilt it as Washington Supermart. Hoskyn’s Department Store, opened in 1877 by Henry Hoskyn, was the first department store in the Philippines. Today the chain is led by Chairman and CEO Alejandro Que, and it is the largest homegrown supermarket chain in Western Visayas.
For generations of Ilonggos, Iloilo Supermart has been more than just a grocery store. It is where families do their weekly shopping, where students line up for snacks after school, and where fresh produce, local brands, and community stories all meet under one roof.
But almost nobody knows how far back this story actually goes. Iloilo Supermart is not just a mid-century local grocery success story. It is the direct descendant of the very first department store in the Philippines, a business that has occupied the same corner of Iloilo City for close to 150 years.
@chris_garin The History of Iloilo Supermart #iloilo #iloilosupermart #iloilocity ♫ original sound - Chris Garin
To put 1877 in context: this was the height of Iloilo’s sugar-trade boom, a period when the city was one of the wealthiest and most cosmopolitan ports in the Philippines, sometimes called the "Queen City of the South." Sugar barons and merchant families were building fortunes on the back of the export trade, and Iloilo had the wealth, population, and foreign trading presence to support something genuinely new: a fixed-price department store, decades before most Philippine cities had anything like it.
Who owns Iloilo Supermart?
Iloilo Supermart is owned by the Que family, part of the broader Que Group of companies. It was founded by Que Hua Pho, known locally as "Papa George," and is now chaired by Alejandro Que, who serves as Chairman and CEO.
The Que family keeps a fairly low public profile. They are not the type to court headlines, but their success speaks for itself. Most Ilonggos know they are behind Iloilo Supermart and quietly understand the family has done well for itself, and the sheer breadth of what they have built only confirms it. The Que Group’s holdings go well beyond the supermarket itself.
The family also owns Coffeebreak, which was effectively the Starbucks of Iloilo long before Starbucks or any of the big international coffee chains ever set foot in the city, and Waffle Time, the beloved waffle-dog stall that has become a fixture on street corners across Iloilo and now has locations nationwide, known for cheap, satisfying flavors like German cheese franks and Canadian bacon. Waffle Time is the clearest proof of how far the family’s reach extends: it was started in September 1998 by architect Johnny Que with a single outlet inside The Atrium, the family’s own mall, and it has since grown past 400 branches around the country.
On the restaurant side, the group also runs Floyd’s Famous BBQ and Bourbon Street, both familiar names on Iloilo’s dining scene. Alongside those sit Tinapayan, the bakery present in nearly every Iloilo Supermart location, known for its garlic bread along with a full lineup of cakes, and a drugstore chain usually found attached to or near every branch, making it one of the more familiar "brand within a brand" experiences of shopping there.
Behind the scenes, the group also operates its own distribution arm, Prime Distributors (Iloilo) Inc., running out of the main warehouse right across Christ the King Memorial Park in Ungka, Pavia. It handles supply logistics for the retail brands, and it is part of why the chain has been able to keep such consistent pricing and availability across its branches over the decades.
What was Iloilo Supermart before it was Iloilo Supermart?
This is the part of the story most people, including longtime shoppers, do not know.
Before it was a supermarket at all, the site and the business lineage trace back to Hoskyn’s Department Store, which opened in Iloilo City in 1877. It was founded by Henry Hoskyn, a former employee of Smith, Bell and Company in Manila, and it holds a genuinely significant place in Philippine retail history: it was the first department store in the country, and it is credited with introducing fixed-price merchandising to the Philippines. Before Hoskyn’s, haggling was simply how you bought things. The store sold everything from groceries and hardware to jewellery and machinery, and it ran for more than 70 years.
After World War II, in 1948, the Que family acquired Hoskyn & Co. and rebuilt it as Washington Commercial, which soon became Washington Supermart. That business is what eventually grew into the Iloilo Supermart chain Ilonggos know today.
The original Hoskyn’s Building still stands, at the corner of Calle Real and Guanco Street in Iloilo City Proper, a physical link to a story that most people assume started decades later than it actually did.
When did Iloilo Supermart start?
The Iloilo Supermart chain as most people know it began in 1948, when the Que family took over the Hoskyn’s site and relaunched it as Washington Supermart. Counting the Hoskyn’s lineage it replaced, the retail history on that ground stretches back to 1877, nearly 150 years of continuous commerce in the same part of the city.
Where was the first Iloilo Supermart?
The first Iloilo Supermart branch opened at the corner of Delgado and Valeria Streets in Iloilo City. It was also here, in 1974, that Que Hua Pho opened a small stall that would eventually grow into Tinapayan, the bakeshop brand still associated with the group today.
How did it grow into the biggest supermarket chain in Western Visayas?
Iloilo Supermart’s growth followed a steady, deliberate pattern rather than a rapid national rollout. In the 1980s, the chain expanded into the Jaro and Molo districts, following Iloilo City’s own growth outward from the historic center.
Then in 1994, Iloilo Supermart opened what became its flagship location, The Atrium at the Capitol, the chain’s largest branch at the time and a landmark shift toward larger-format retail. The location itself is part of the story. It sits in one of the most central spots in the entire city, within reach of the Provincial Capitol, St. Paul’s Hospital, Assumption Iloilo, and St. Paul University Iloilo, in the middle of a genuinely busy city center where students, hospital staff, government employees, and residents all cross paths daily.
Since then, the chain has continued expanding into surrounding municipalities and newer commercial districts, keeping pace with where Ilonggo families were actually moving and shopping. Branches now reach across Iloilo City and the wider province, including Jaro, Molo, Mandurriao, Villa in Arevalo, Tabuc Suba, La Paz, Tagbak, Ungka, Jibao-an, Pavia, and Oton, alongside the downtown Valeria, Delgado, and General Luna locations that started it all.
Today, Iloilo Supermart is the largest homegrown supermarket chain in Western Visayas.
What other brands does Iloilo Supermart own?
Beyond Coffeebreak, Waffle Time, Floyd’s Famous BBQ, Bourbon Street, Tinapayan, and Prime Distributors, the Que Group’s retail footprint includes a handful of other names Ilonggos will recognize: Homestore, Medicine Corner, ISX Superstore, Paper Chase, Right Choice, Value Plus, Pet’s Choice, and of course The Atrium at the Capitol, the flagship branch itself.
If you have shopped at any of these in Iloilo, you have shopped within the same family the Que Group built out from that original Hoskyn’s site.
What does "Aton Guid Ini" mean?
If you have ever set foot in an Iloilo Supermart, you have almost certainly heard the jingle, whether you realized what it was or not. It plays over the store speakers and on local radio, and it has been stuck in the heads of Ilonggos for two decades: "Iloilo Supermart... may bargain araw-araw... Aton Guid Ini!"
"Aton Guid Ini" is Hiligaynon for roughly "this is truly ours," and it has been Iloilo Supermart’s slogan since 2004. A year later, in 2005, the brand released a jingle composed and performed by local artist Raffy Buenavides, one that has stuck in the memory of Ilonggos who grew up hearing it in-store and on local radio and TV ads.
The slogan captures exactly why the brand has held its ground against national and international chains entering the region. Iloilo Supermart is not just a place to shop. It is positioned, deliberately, as something that belongs to Iloilo itself.
The full jingle beyond this fragment still does not appear to be published anywhere online. If you know the rest of the lyrics, I would love to add them here.
How has Iloilo Supermart stayed on top despite SM and Puregold?
Ask most Ilonggos where to go for the cheapest possible version of a product, and Iloilo Supermart is usually the first answer that comes to mind. There might be cheaper sources out there for any given item if you go looking, but that is not really the point. Iloilo Supermart is the reliable default. If there is a branch nearby, it tends to just become the go-to, the only real exception being when the distance to one genuinely is not worth it. Walk in for your groceries and you are not going to overpay, and for a lot of families, that is reason enough to make it the first stop rather than the last resort.
That mental default has held up even as national chains have pushed harder into the region, with SM opening Savemore, Hypermarket, and Savemart locations across the city and province in recent years, and Puregold expanding its own footprint alongside them. It is not that Ilonggos are unaware of the competition. It is that Iloilo Supermart still tends to sit at the top of the list when it is time to actually go buy groceries. That is not a small thing to hold onto in a market this competitive, and it says something about the trust the brand has built over the decades.
The chain also keeps growing to meet that trust. A newer branch in Jibao-an, Pavia recently opened, and there is a possible upcoming location in Mohon, Arevalo as well, more evidence that Iloilo Supermart is not standing still even as the competitive landscape shifts around it.
It is also, whether most shoppers realize it or not, the latest chapter of a retail story that started with the first department store the Philippines ever had. That is a heavier legacy than a typical neighborhood supermarket chain, and it is part of why "Aton Guid Ini" resonates the way it does. This genuinely is theirs, and has been, in one form or another, for almost 150 years.
A note on this update
This is a rewritten version of an earlier post that described Iloilo Supermart’s founding only vaguely, as being started by "local entrepreneurs" in "the mid-20th century." That framing missed the far more interesting and verifiable story: the direct line back to Hoskyn’s Department Store and the Que family’s acquisition in 1948. If you have additional details, especially the full "Aton Guid Ini" jingle lyrics, an exact current branch count, or a clear answer on whether "Papa George" and the "Boy Que" referenced in some local reporting are the same person, I would love to update this further.