FOUR young Thomasian entrepreneurs have come up with an artful recipe to turn a typical café business into a city’s first.
Like a freshly brewed coffee and a pastry that just got out of the oven, Caffera Café, which opened just this September, is a fledgling business that is just starting to make its name in the coffee blending and pastry making industry at the heart of Quezon City’s self-branded food trip stopover, Maginhawa Street.
Senior entrepreneurship students Jyka Espinoza, Jizel Hacutina, Gabriel Valera and Kevin Yu stirred up their undergraduate thesis into Metro Manila’s “first photography-themed” café. This new-fashioned café was a product of their battered ideas that gave rise to something that would be close to the youth and the young-at-heart.
“Young people, especially at this age, are fond of taking photos using their smartphones so why not offer them something where they could feel a sense of belongingness. There are some cafés that run alongside a photography studio but we are the first ones to open a photography-themed café,” Espinoza said.
The do-it-yourself (DIY) furnished café is a quaint hub that adorns its walls with vintage cameras, hangs incandescent lights designed with inverted camera lens mugs, mounts various photographs, some taken by Espinoza, a photography enthusiast.
Caffera Café serves hot and cold coffee blends in camera lens mugs and pastries topped with small camera fondants.
Sweet beginning
Soon after they had finalized their business plan in their junior year, these young businessmen started raising capital for their coffee shop. Before the café was conceived, their patience and determination made them source out additional capital by selling cinnamon rolls and having a shirt printing business.
“We used our initial earnings for some of our expenses and each of us had a contribution of 20 pesos a day as extra capital,” Valera said.
“The capital we used to start this business was equally divided to each of us. Some came from our savings and some came from our parents, as well. We intended to use DIYs for the interiors as much as possible to save for our other expenses,” Espinoza added.
The group decided against putting up a cafe around the University since space rentals there were quite expensive. They thought the better option was Maginhawa Street, home to a fine mix of specialty restaurants and coffee shops.
Valera studied at the Philippine Barista Coffee Academy to have a formal training while Yu set his hands on the craft of baking. These penchants suited them well in running the perfect business for themselves.
Success ingredients
In a business ran by a group of individuals, conflicts are common. However, these four senior students seem to have gotten the right ingredients to have a harmonious working relationship.
“Some people say you should separate friendship with your business partners but as time goes by we are learning to forge the best bonds,” Espinoza said.
“When we encounter problems in our business, we always talk to each other personally. It’s better that way than ranting about it to other people,” Valera added.
Like any typical business, Caffera has also received some bad comments from a few people, but the owners look at them as an opportunity to get better. It is also a constant challenge for them to balance their academics and manage Caffera, but they are able to do all these by carefully delegating their time well.
“Usually we go here after our class but whenever we don’t have classes, each of us takes a shift,” Valera said.
They’re also getting support from their parents. In the building where Caffera is located, a restaurant and a nail spa contain the group’s menu to promote the startup.
They vow to continue the business even after graduation.
“To become successful you must be self-motivated, you should have a goal and you must be able to work agreeably with the people around you,” Valera said.
