Starting a restaurant or a food business is not as easy as it looks. You need mentors to guide you and the professional network to grow your venture. This is what Let’s Eat Pare aims to provide as the top food community in the country today.
Let’s Eat Pare provides a platform for both business owners and their target audiences, where they can freely engage and exchange views on everything food. It’s a hub that connects food industry players with one another to make business easier.
One of its latest projects was Let’s Food Crawl Pare, a restaurant and bar hopping event in Poblacion, Makati. Done in partnership with Globe myBusiness, the event shed light on the district’s rich food scene and provided a stage for Let’s Eat Pare’s home-grown food vendors to showcase their offers.
Check out the event’s featured food vendors below and learn how they started and grew their businesses, from Let’s Eat Pare’s passionate community and beyond:
Photo sourced from Smart Snack
Carlo Errazo started Smart Snacks out of his need to eat healthy and lose weight years ago. Today, he aims to fill the need to provide healthy snacks, in the form of dehydrated fruits, for professionals who do not have the luxury of time.
In doing business, Carlo takes every avenue to showcase and market his products, saying “We are very active [on] Facebook; that’s where we take orders. We see the value of being online because that’s where people are right now. We also do bazaars. It gives us an opportunity to meet our customers and get feedback from there.”
In January, Eli Cabanilla and his wife started Gavrie’s Grace of Cakes with only a small capital on hand. Now, their cakes, cookies, and other baked products are selling big thanks to their affiliation with Let’s Eat Pare’s community.
Eli also credits their growth to his wife’s baking skills and their affordable price point. He banks on the taste of their products, which were made from premium ingredients, saying, “Our products are made from premium ingredients, and we don’t have high markups. It’s affordable and delicious at the same time.”
An accountant by profession, Allan Santos started Zip-Sup by riding on the hype of the Christmas season and selling his special cold brew coffee as a gift option for the holidays. Now, he’s driving sales by using the online platform that Let’s Eat Pare provides to extend his business’ reach and further profit growth.
“After the holiday season, we started looking for ways to sell. That’s when we decided to get accreditation from Let’s Eat Pare. We grew, and as of today already have resellers, most of which are members of Let’s Eat Pare,” Allan says.
Years ago, Daddy Mikks’ owner Mikko Cordova was told by his nutritionist to lose weight by eating spicy food. He then added chili garlic sauce to his meals, but later realized that its oil content was simply too much. This inspired him to make a healthier alternative in the form of oil-less bottled chili garlic, which now dons his brand.
Inspiration can come from anywhere, as Mikko can attest. In fact, his products weren’t initially intended for sale, saying “I only realized I can sell it when my family and friends started asking if they can buy the chili garlic I made. I wish I started sooner.”
Rele Hernandez was working from home, thinking of what new meal to cook for his family when he came up with the idea of wrapping longganisa in lumpia wrapper. He soon shared his idea, a fusion of two dishes, with his peers, who encouraged him to turn it into a business venture and offer his products in different flavors at Pop’s Lumpianiza.
“Each province has its own flavor of longganisa and we use those as filling. Now, we are looking at different viands like sisig to become filling. With this product, you get to taste the crunchiness of lumpia and the taste of longganisa in one,” Rele says.
Catherine Anne Dente, the owner of Annechalap’s Kitchenette, started a business that features her family’s special recipes and her love for food. Her business offers different signature dishes like Japanese Beef with Truffle Butter and granola-based treats.
Although she has only started, Catherine’s products have been well-received, especially by the Let’s Eat Pare community. She says “I’m new to this business. My co-vendors in Let’s Eat Pare are helping me grow by giving constructive feedback and advice. We help each other and it’s easier when there’s a support system.”
Nothing tastes better than a spoonful of aligue! That’s what Buddy Isleta, co-owner of Puro, banked on when he started his business, which provides jars of pure aligue to the market. Now, his aligue jars have found their way to the kitchen shelves of high-end restaurants and premier chefs across the Philippines.
“[Contrary to] popular belief, aligue is healthy. Researchers now know that shellfish is one of the healthiest foods you can eat. Puro’s crab tomalley only has two grams of fat and 18 calories per tablespoon. As part of Puro’s marketing strategy, I engage people who have these misconceptions,” Buddy says.
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