The short answer
JD Bakery Café opened in Iloilo City in 1975 as JD Bakeshop, founded by Jose “JD” Delegencia and his wife Felisa. The initials are his. It added Ilonggo dishes and became JD Bakery Café in 1993, and it is still family-run, now by the Diez family, who also operate Emilion, Mestizo and JD Burger Project.
They say Ilonggos are the hardest crowd in the country to please when it comes to food. We chase a very particular taste, we want a certain level of deliciousness, and yet we won’t pay a peso past what we think a dish is worth. There’s even a saying among restaurateurs that if you can make it in Iloilo, you can make it anywhere in the Philippines. Mang Inasal is exhibit A: it started right here in Iloilo City before conquering the entire country. And then there’s JD. It’s not the most delicious thing you’ve ever put in your mouth, and nobody would claim it is. But it has been here since 1975. So why do Ilonggos love it?
For most of my life, JD was just the place you went for cheap snacks. Bread, a few local sweets, something to grab on the way home. Nothing you thought hard about. You bought food there because it was cheap, it was good for the price, and you got exactly what you expected. That, it turns out, is the whole answer, but it took me years to see it.
The Origins: Why Is It Called JD?
JD started life as JD Bakeshop, opened in 1975 by the late Jose ”JD” Delegencia and his wife Felisa. The ”JD” is simply Jose Delegencia’s initials. In its early years it wasn’t about meals at all, it was about bread, specifically hot pandesal and freshly baked loaves, and it built a reputation as one of the bakeries that helped set the standard for quality baked goods in the city.
The turn toward comfort food came in 1993, when the business added a full menu of Ilonggo dishes and rebranded as JD Bakery Café. That’s the version most of us grew up with: baked macaroni, pancit palabok, chicken a la king, and the fried chicken that eventually became the thing people drove across town for.
To put 1975 in perspective: that same year, up in Cubao, Tony Tan Caktiong opened a little Magnolia ice cream parlor that wouldn’t become Jollibee until 1978. McDonald’s wouldn’t even land in the Philippines until 1981. So while JD is often thought of as an old local favorite, it’s worth remembering it opened before the giants did. It was already feeding Iloilo while the country’s biggest food chains were still just getting started.
Who Owns JD in Iloilo City?
JD is still very much a family business. It has never left the hands of the family that started it, but a lot of people don’t realize that same family now runs more than just the bakery café you know.
The business remains owned and led by the Diez family, and it’s the reason the brand has stayed consistent for half a century. Emilio Diez, the son-in-law of founder Jose Delegencia, was actually named Ilonggo Entrepreneur of the Year by the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry-Iloilo in December 2024, crediting the business’s five decades to discipline, persistence, and innovation. A younger generation, including names like Tyrone and Miles Diez, has since pushed the company into new formats and new locations. Along the way the family built a broader restaurant group operating under the Emilion name, and if you eat out in Iloilo regularly, you’ve probably given them your money without realizing several of your favorite spots trace back to the same family.
A few of them you probably already know. There’s JD Burger Project, the burger joint they started years ago, which at one point ran a wild Buy 1 Take 1 promo that got a lot of people through the door. These days you’ll even find some of those burgers served in regular JD locations. Then there’s Mestizo (or Mestizo by Emilion), their more upscale restaurant tucked between General Luna and the Iloilo River, doing a Spanish-Mexican-Filipino menu of tacos, burritos, and tapas with seating that opens right onto the Esplanade. It’s honestly one of my personal favorites in the city. And the name behind it all, Emilion, is the family’s fine-dining flagship up on the third level of The Grand Dame Hotel, an elegant spot known for its buffets and its Japanese menu that’s the group’s most formal offering and the restaurant that gave the whole group its name.
It’s a good reminder that a lot of Iloilo’s dining scene is quietly held together by a handful of local families who kept reinvesting instead of selling out. The Diez family is one of the clearest examples.
The Recent Aggressive Expansion: Franchising
For most of its life, JD grew the way old Ilonggo businesses did, one carefully chosen location at a time. Branches appeared in Jaro, in Molo, near St. Paul’s, and eventually inside the malls as Ilonggos started spending weekends there. There’s even a branch inside Iloilo Airport, which has turned JD’s bread into a standard pasalubong for anyone flying out.
More recently, though, the pace has changed, and changed hard. JD has pushed well past the city proper, with branches now reaching as far as Barotac Viejo in northern Iloilo and even across the provincial line into Antique, at Robinsons Antique. What used to be a strictly Iloilo City name is now something you can run into on a road trip across Panay. I love that, honestly. Even when you’re driving out of town, you know there’s a spot where you can get their cheap all-day breakfast. At around 115 pesos, it’s way cheaper than Jollibee’s overpriced breakfast and, to me, tastes better too.
The interesting part is the shift in philosophy. For decades the family famously turned down franchise offers, worried that letting outsiders run the kitchen would dilute the quality they’d spent years building. That caution is a big reason the brand stayed so consistent. But before any of this expansion happened, they revamped the stores themselves, giving them a cleaner, more modern look. And you can tell it wasn’t just cosmetic. The quality upgrade is something you actually feel when you walk in. That’s part of why finding a JD out of town is such a relief: you know it’s a real, proper stop, right down to clean restrooms. From there, the recent wave of new locations, moving outside the city and into neighboring provinces, marks a clear change in appetite. The brand that once guarded its recipes and grew one careful branch at a time is now expanding aggressively, and the demand was clearly always there waiting for it.
An Ilonggo Comfort Food Staple
There’s no shortage of places to eat in Iloilo now. Flashier spots, trendier menus, restaurants built to go viral. JD doesn’t play that game, and I think that’s exactly why it has lasted. It has stayed rooted in the kind of food Ilonggos actually grew up eating: straightforward, complete meals that are good for the price and don’t need to be explained.
That’s the whole appeal. You don’t go to JD for a gimmick. You go because you know exactly what you’re getting, it won’t cost much, and half a century in, it still delivers. The fried chicken people love, the pork BBQ, the chicken curry, the baked mac, the bread that started it all. Just JD, doing what it’s done since 1975.