Recipe for success

It looks like the financing program for micro and small enterprises is seriously underway, with the Office of the President setting aside for micro lending in 2017 an initial P1 billion from its budget for the Pondo para sa Pagbabago at Pag-asenso or Fund for Change and Progress.

Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez said the objective is to allot P1 billion per region in the coming years for micro lending. The move is meant to fulfill President Duterte’s promise to end the usurious “5-6” lending (with 20 percent interest) in the informal economy.

But beyond ending 5-6 (good luck on that), if the government wants the micro financing program to succeed, it should also provide assistance in basic financial management and entrepreneurship.

For a longer-term boost to aspiring entrepreneurs, the government may consider introducing basic business management or Entrepreneurship 101 as part of the regular high school curriculum. No complicated math formulas, just practical financial management: how to tap money in circulation to make an honest buck, market assessment, all the government requirements for starting small.

A push for micro and small enterprises is ideally also accompanied by a review of rules governing large players. The current business environment gives big players an overwhelming advantage that can nip the entrepreneurial spirit of micro players in the bud. Stack ’em high, sell ’em low is obviously impossible for micro entrepreneurs operating from their backyards.

The current environment stunts the development of local artisanal products – and we have a lot of good ones. Small producers simply can’t compete with big players, and most are scared of the unknown that is the export market. These types of start-ups and micro enterprises need breathing space from the economies of scale.

With limited financing, they can’t afford to wait a long time to collect payment so they don’t sell their products to certain large malls. Neither can they afford to lease space in a typical mall, where rent, power costs and layers of VAT can gobble up the little that they might earn.

We need laws to promote and protect these types of business operations. This will prove good not only for livelihood but also for travel and tourism. With a few exceptions, the world’s most visited cities are dotted not with shopping malls that look alike but with artisanal shops that provide a distinctive look and ambience. On weekends in these cities, flea markets selling artisanal items and organic produce are top tourist draws. Think Paris, Prague and Barcelona.

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For a budding micro entrepreneur, rudimentary business savvy and awareness of basic requirements and opportunities can spell the difference between success and failure.

The other day I attended the 80^th anniversary celebration of the iconic Aristocrat Restaurant along Roxas Boulevard, one of my favorite success stories in Filipino entrepreneurship.

I happened to share a table with Butch Reyes, one of the many grandsons of founder Engracia Cruz-Reyes, a.k.a. Aling Asiang. Reyes remembers accompanying his grandma to the market to pick only the best ingredients for her food business. And he remembers how Aling Asiang moved up from an ambulant food cart occupying a space of two by four square meters to its current sprawling flagship.

According to a book I read about Aling Asiang, she started out selling lunch packs that she lowered down over a wall to students on a school campus near their home in Manila. With 14 children (three died young) and, later, with kids from another family, she was more used to feeding a crowd than a small group. Unable to finish formal education and with a large family to feed together with her husband, lawyer Alex Reyes, who would become a Supreme Court justice, venturing into the food business seemed to be a natural course for her. She reminds me of many other moms these days who try to work from home while caring for their families.

Her recipe for success was the three M’s: masarap, malinis, mura (delicious, clean, cheap). Plus she promoted Pinoy comfort food such as the adobo sandwich amid the proliferation of American-inspired hotdog, burger and corned beef during the Commonwealth. With demand growing, Aling Asiang set up a food cart named after her son Andy. But her son, at the time an Ateneo law student, protested the use of his name. Disappointed that her son felt embarrassed among his wealthy or aristokrato classmates, Aling Asiang renamed her cart the Aristocrat.

There was another problem: authorities kept chasing away the ambulant food cart, from the open space between the Manila Hotel and Army Navy Club and around Ermita.

This was where the lawyer-husband stepped in: he said if Aling Asiang wanted an end to the harassment, she had to go legit. So she found the space at the street corner where the flagship now sits, and began paying rent.

Back in the day, such property deals were sealed with a handshake, with no need for official documents. Butch Reyes told me Aristocrat still leases the entire space from its original owner, Compania Maritima, which promised Aling Asiang that her restaurant could occupy the area at friendly rates for as long as the clan wanted.

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The restaurant was destroyed in the Battle for Manila during the war, but it was rebuilt. (Operating 24 hours, it temporarily shut down last year after daang matuwid closed the entire stretch of Roxas Boulevard and adjacent roads for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.)

With growing success, the clan opened a beach resort in Las Piñas near the boundary with Parañaque, beside Ja-Le Beach. Sporks had not yet been invented, however, and cutlery was being pilfered. That was when Aling Asiang developed Aristocrat’s iconic chicken barbecue with Java rice, to be eaten with the hands.

In the 1950s, amid reports of UFO sightings, the 1920s-era adobo sandwich was reinvented into its squished version, the flying saucer.

Butch Reyes told me that the restaurant has retained many of its original suppliers, such as the one for the puto for dinuguan (slow-cooked meat not innards are used, and sinuso or cow udder when it was still available).

Quality control, innovation, abiding by the rules, access to resources for expansion, patience and persistence have propelled certain other local entrepreneurs from ambulant sidewalk start-ups into multibillion-peso operations.

Aristocrat has retained Aling Asiang’s original recipes for its top items, including pancit luglug (circa 1920), as well as her three M’s.

Budding entrepreneurs, armed with micro financing, can learn useful lessons from such recipes for success.