Food entrepreneur expands business

CEBU, Philippines - The favorable market for food business in Cebu prompted entrepreneur Ingrid Espina-Gamboa to expand her cookies and brownies kiosk to a chic stand-alone cafe.

Gamboa, whose family owns the decades old MyJoy fastfood restaurant and Wanna Eat restaurant at the Cebu I.T. Park, ventured to have her own business and enter the lucrative market for desserts in 2006 with an investment of P100 thousand to open a small kiosk at the Ayala Center Cebu.

Eight years later she opened a posh 100-square meters cafe to expand the choices of Cebuano patrons as well as tourists and transients.

Positioned as a unique cafe destination, Butterbean Cookies Incorporated offers a chilling place, with wide selection of cakes, pastries, coffee, chocolate drinks, ice cream cakes, and others, while providing a designer boutique adjacent to the store called "Corals."

In an interview with Gamboa, she said that she is confident of the new concept cafe's success. Aside from its hard-to-find dessert selections, the idea of putting an exclusive designer-line boutique owned by her sister Marge, gives the cafe an advantage.

The young food entrepreneur is not threatened by the entry of dessert cafe giants in Cebu, saying the wider the choices of diners, the better for Cebu becoming a true-blue metropolitan destination with the strong presence of thriving local businesses.

"The palate of Filipinos are now globally inspired. Aside from growing tourists, local customers are becoming sophisticated and from mere going to restaurant or a cafe to eat, quench their thirst and coffee cravings, experience is now becoming very important," Gamboa said.

Updated of the customers' evolution and changes in preference, Gamboa invested more on setting up a soothing ambiance for her cafe, "to make every customer's visit an experience" she said.

"The market is now very diverse across all age group. We see those who just come here for the desserts in the afternoon or late in the evening and we also get a lot of those who are dining out and simply to chill and feel 'experience'," said Gamboa. (FREEMAN)