The business that chicharon built

It’s hard to miss the Lapid Foods office along Concepcion Agila St. in the Quiapo district. It’s the three-story concrete building that looks more at home in a subdivision than in a one-lane winding street lined with old wooden houses. At one side of an ample garage for 10 cards is a marker dedicated to the father of Lapid Foods proprietor, Jose Lapid, Jr.

Lapid Sr. was a horse-rig driver turned meat stall vendor in the Quinta Market. With his earnings, he sent all nine of his children through school.

"My father would often remind me that it was better to give a customer a little more in weight than what he ordered than to shortchange him. My father was a very honest man," said Lapid, who rose to the level of solicitor-4, (the equivalent to a judge) in the Office of the Solicitor General before he quit to go into business for himself.

Trigger

The decision to go into business came in 1988 when wife, Erlinda, a food technologist, learned that California Manufacturing Co. was looking for a supplier of ground crispy pork skin or chicharon for its soup pack.

"It was a hard and scary decision to make for both of us," said Lapid Foods treasurer Erlinda Lapid. "We thought of selling a lot that we had amortized since we were courting to capitalize the business. It was the only real asset we had. We agreed I would keep my job and that my monthly salary would support the family’s overhead like food."

In the end, Lapid used his separation pay from government to capitalize the business. "Aside from knowing how to make chicharon from my father, all I had going for me was my determination to do well. I knew that I had to go into business if I wanted to give my family a better life," he said.

Lapid Foods bid for and got the CMC contract for 250 kilos of chicharon. The next year, the company put up its first retail outlet.

"The first three years were years of experimentation," Lapid said. "I had the right product; now I had to upgrade the image of the product from street food to high-end."

Differentiation

For Lapid Foods, the secret to making chicharon with a fresh pork taste and uniform crunchiness lies in controlling temperature during the process of drawing out the moisture from the pork fat. Equally important is limiting the product line to two– pork skin or balat and backfat with skin or laman.

"It is important not to clutter the business," said Lapid. "Besides, other types of chicharon made from, say, intestines or bulaklak leave a certain kind of smell on the oil rendered."

Each batch of the company’s finished product called pellets are randomly checked for quality. Because of process changes, the product’s shelf life has increased fourfold to two weeks.

Delivered to the company’s four outlets, the pellets are then popped or deep-fried in front of the customer.

"When we were just starting, we discarded or gave away what could not be sold at close of business," said Lapid. "When you get down to it, nobody would have known the difference if we sold yesterday’s leftovers today. It would still taste fresh. But I would known that it was not fresh and that’s not acceptable since I guarantee my customers that the chicharon they buy is freshly popped every single time."

Huge demand

Aside from the retail segment, the company also has institutional accounts such as Jollibee Foods Corp., which uses ground chicharon for its pancit palabok; and CMC and Monde Denmark Nissin Biscuit Corp, which use the ground chicharon and/or virgin pork oil (rendered in the process of drawing out the moisture from the pork fat) in their soup packs.

The busiest day of the year for the company is New Year’s Eve when Chinese-Filipino families buy food that expand and are, therefore, considered lucky food.

Despite increasing demand, the company intends to stay close to its original specialty store concept."

"We are not interested in franchising because we feel that we would not be able to maintain the product quality," said Lapid. "We also want to retain our market niche. We don’t believe in chopsuey or pleasing everybody. We have had copycats using the Lapid family name, which have come and gone. We intend to be in business for a long time."