Growing up in New Jersey, Jake Deleon spent countless hours in the kitchen with his mother and grandmother, hand-rolling lumpia, the Filipino egg roll, that the family sold to neighbors for extra income. So when Deleon, a first-generation Filipino American, walked through a grocery store during the pandemic in 2020 and noticed an absence of Filipino foods, he saw more than a gap in the market. He saw a missing piece of cultural representation for the third largest Asian origin population in the U.S.
He used his U.S. government stimulus check to test the concept for a Filipino foods business.
“I bought some materials on Amazon, and I put together in my kitchen the first minimum viable product,” Deleon said.
That first product was a Filipino adobo cooking sauce, which is sweet, savory, and rich with umami, based on family recipes and refined through taste testing with friends, family, and of course, his mother and grandmother. He sent a prototype to Whole Foods and received a prompt reply.
“They said, ‘Jake, we’ll take the entire thing. We’ve been waiting years for someone to do this,’” Deleon recalled.
He launched Fila Manila, a name combining “Phil-Am,” short for Filipino American, and Manila, the geographic heart of the Philippines, in stores in the fall of 2020, just two months after the idea was born. Today, the Arlington, Va.-based company sells cooking sauces, banana ketchup, and ube coconut spread made in U.S. manufacturing plants using Deleon’s family recipes.
Deleon brought Fila Manila to the Amazon store in the spring of 2021, and the brand has seen approximately 50 percent year-over-year sales growth ever since. Amazon now represents about 25 percent of Fila Manila’s overall sales, with 10 products listed in the store. The brand also sells through Whole Foods and other major grocery retailers.
What helped drive that growth was recognizing that most customers were unfamiliar with Filipino cooking. After emailing about 50 Amazon customers, Deleon made a surprising discovery: two out of three were not Asian. “They told me, ‘We’re not Filipino, but we learned about your cuisine through friends, family, and coworkers,’” he said.
To reach those customers, Deleon tapped into several Amazon seller tools. He started with Amazon Ads, targeting adjacent search terms like “Asian condiments” and quickly saw a 3x return on investment. He runs new product launches through Amazon Vine to generate authentic reviews from trusted shoppers, which was particularly impactful for banana ketchup, helping overcome consumer confusion about non-tomato ketchup. He also uses the Enhance My Listing tool, a generative AI-powered feature launched by Amazon in 2025, which helped make Fila Manila’s ube coconut spread more accessible to unfamiliar shoppers and one of the brand’s top sellers.
When counterfeit and unauthorized sellers began listing copycat products, costing the brand roughly 20% of its business, Deleon turned to Amazon Brand Registry and Amazon’s Transparency program to identify and remove fraudulent listings. “Our sales jumped immediately 20 percent,” he said.
Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) handles storage, packing, shipping, and returns, and Deleon noted the company actually improved its margins after transitioning to the service.
But margins are not the only focus for Fila Manila. Community has been a priority since their founding during the pandemic, when the company cooked and donated homemade meals to first responders. Every year, the brand continues to give back to the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community through initiatives like donations to cancer care programs.
Looking ahead, Deleon is developing new variants of banana ketchup and other Filipino food products that have yet to be introduced to American dinner tables. His mother, who inspired it all, remains his biggest fan.
“My mom is blown away about how many people are enjoying Filipino food through Fila right now,” Deleon said. “Our big vision is that maybe five or 10 years down the road, when people think about delicious Filipino food, the first brand that comes to mind is us, is Fila Manila.”