Friday, March 17, 2023

7:00 AM | What Is It With All These Milk Tea Shops? and Other Notes on Saturation

If you’ve been in Dumaguete long enough to see trends take place and evolve, you will note that Dumaguetnons love to copy—perhaps in a very similar way it occurs in all other places, but in a small city like Dumaguete, copycatting can be quite conspicuous. That “smallness of place” may also be the trigger for this tendency: someone sees something as an aspirational goal or as a successful enterprise, copying feels like a sure bet. It’s hard to please the Dumaguetnon, so if something appeals to them, one better jump on the bandwagon.

Someone buys an Econo, for example, and then suddenly the city streets are awash with that uniquely 1990s motorcycle with white hoods [and comes in blue or red]—to the point that Dumaguete was once dubbed by national media as the “motorcycle capital of the Philippines.” Today, that Econo is now the Wigo.

Someone opens an internet café—and then suddenly, every corner has an internet café. Someone opens a yoga studio—and then suddenly we have a proliferation of yogis. Someone makes great ube pan de sal—and then suddenly ube pan de sal is everywhere.

Then there’s milk tea.

We’ve noticed that, for the longest time, there has been a lot of milk tea places popping up around the city. As far back as memory goes, Chowking was the first to jumpstart the milk tea craze in Dumaguete. The franchise introduced the concoction of black tea, evaporated milk, and chewy pearls to the Dumaguetnon public as early as the late 2000s, followed by Zagu which occupied a stall at Lee Super Plaza and at Robinsonsplace Dumaguete—and also wherever a Zagu could occupy, it did. These were our introduction to “pearls,” at an accessible price point that vibed well with the naturally kuripot Dumaguentnon.

What we eventually loved was Gong Cha, which set up a stall at the groundfloor of Robinsons, and which sold nothing else but milk tea in different kinds of flavor. Renz remembers asking himself: “Can a milk tea place earn enough to support paying rent for a mall stall?” The answer apparently is yes. Then there was Infinitea, which occupied a coveted spot at Paseo Perdices. It was a huge hit, and was always full—but it did not survive the pandemic crunch. [Now another milk tea is occupying its old location.]

Afterwards, the deluge of milk tea shops in town could be compared to mushrooms sprouting: from famous international franchises like ChaChaGo, to local franchises like Sebucha, to original enterprises donning exaggerated puns to name their business venture. Our favorite pun is QRSTea; and our least favorite is the rather tongue-in-cheek Zu Boh Ti Tea.

Someone in Twitter also made this observation: why is there a proliferation of coffee shops in Dumaguete all of a sudden? Ian remembers a time when the very idea of a coffee shop was so alien to the Dumaguetnon public. When Silliman Avenue Café [lovingly called SACs by its patrons] opened its gleaming venture along that street in the early 2000s, it was veritably the first of its kind in Dumaguete aside from Lee Cimbali at the Lee Super Plaza supermarket. Asked if the venture was sustainable in Dumaguete, one local businessman scoffed: “Ngano man ko mo-adto og coffee shop nga mahal kayo ang kape, nga puede ra man ko mag-Nescafe sa balay?”Obviously, years later, this remark is myopic.

There have been many coffee shops in Dumaguete since SACs—but over and after the pandemic, you can really sense a proliferation that is almost abnormal. The success of Coffee Collective probably paved the way, and now we have others like Oh Café along Larena Drive, Brewedways Coffee at Northpoint, 85 Degrees Artisan Café along Ipil Street, Socials Café in Claytown, Black and Copper along EJ Blanco Drive, Aromar Coffee and Kape Negrense Brew along West Rovira Road in Pulantubig, It’s the Coffee Weekend at Florentina Homes also along Rovira, and so many others. Along Aldecoa Drive, we have Alsani Café and The Cabin Blend—and the other day, Ian woke up to find the empty lot in front of his apartment along Aldecoa bearing a sign announcing a coffee shop soon to be built on the property. Coffee shops don’t always come in considerable brick and mortar space—Kapeng Lokal along East Rovira Road is just a small stall that’s easy to miss, but they have a loyal clientele who order mostly through food-delivery apps; Kohi along Hibbard Avenue is also a small stall but puts on a charming front with a Japanese-inspired ambience; and Don Macchiato’s is a pop-up along Locsin Street.

Renz recalls a friend who enrolled in a senior marketing class for his business degree, and who found himself assigned an entrepreneurial project for the entire semester. His chosen venture was selling coffee, and he said that selling coffee was a money-maker because the overhead cost was low but the selling price can be stretched considerably. Another one of his friends is a declared coffee enthusiast. She’s been interested in it since 2013, and bought filters and beans as a hobby. Then the pandemic hit, and the prices of these filters shot up significantly, and suddenly she found many people interested in how to make a great cup of coffee. A lot of these probably thought selling coffee would make great business.

Renz loves tea, but Ian swears by coffee—it helps soothe his ADHD, and regularly boosts his day. We are generally happy about the proliferation of coffee shops—and how we have famous franchises in place [Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, Starbucks, and Tom n Toms] as well a roadside pickup points and online baristas selling through food apps and the Internet.

Market saturation doesn’t have to be a bad thing. It is an indication of a customer base that has disposable income. It means that everyone can enjoy a product, no matter what price points there are. It also means that competition is stiff. The food industry may be accessible and stalwart but savvy food businesses need to occupy food niches and cater to their audience right from the get-go. Dumaguete is an interesting market because of the wide gap between the working class and the rich so there are a lot of areas that you can target—but that market has to be enraptured by your marketing and your product, or else you’ll find yourself trying to capture only the specter of a customer. Competition in the market means that you and your competitors have to innovate with what you’re selling, or at the very least come up with a novel idea that sticks to your audience.

For example, fried chicken has been a Filipino food staple since the Americans brought that idea to us. Ever since then, fried chicken has remained a favorite in many restaurant fares and family recipes. We have learned to love chicken joy from Jollibee for decades now—but we’d like to applaud the entry of Crispy King into our midst. The franchise, which originated in Ormoc City and is easily recognizable with its red paint and zany word logo, is suddenly everywhere in Dumaguete. Every corner now has a Crispy King in it. But we’re not complaining. Its fried chicken, prepared in halal fashion, is very affordable [with P50, you can get a sizable piece of chicken meat, with gravy and a cup of rice as part of that affordable package]. Ian says it tastes even better than Jollibee’s chicken joy. He swears by it.

Does the proliferation of Crispy King have anything to do with the pandemic? We suppose so. It was already there before the lockdowns happened in 2020—but its spread is a pandemic-era recession miracle.

Maybe all these is just recession proliferation, but for now, let’s just enjoy our assorted milk tea, our coffee, and our fried chicken.

Labels: chicken, coffee, dumaguete, food, milk tea

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Wednesday, July 15, 2020

5:13 PM | Phantom Mug

This is my favorite coffee mug. I like how the Phantom’s mask starts appearing as the heat of the liquid spreads all over it. It looks so ... dramatic. Somebody gifted me a mug exactly like this years and years ago, I can’t remember who, but an ex broke it. Devastated me. So I bought another one exactly like this in New York exactly after I watched the musical itself on Broadway, in 2010. There must be thousands of these mugs everywhere.

Labels: coffee, life, memories

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Sunday, March 24, 2013

1:47 PM | Café Midnight

It would not be too hard to believe, sometimes, that if you bleed a Dumagueteño, you would get caffeine.

I am talking of the young sort of Dumagueteño—these creatures who inhabit the new cafes mushrooming everywhere. This increasingly discriminating crowd know their Colombian from their Java quite well, and some of them have elevated the coffee snobbery with breathy mentions of French presses and self-roasted beans, and who can then quietly condescend with a measure of grace this way: “No latte for me, milk ruins coffee”—I’m talking about you, Greg Morales.



Most of them, of course, are college students—the denizens who best define Dumaguete—who need that extra rush to the brain to get them through the midnight hours grappling with the insane volumes and reams of data needing absorption before the next day’s exams or paper deadlines. They buzz with such academic fervor, these islands of students spread everywhere in the city at night: medical students, and business students, and medical technology students, and education students—all kinds of students—bent over their laptops, dancing the fine line between spreadsheets and papers and temptations of Facebook and Twitter. Their horde wouldn’t be quite noticeable in the sum of things if Dumaguete were a bigger city: but small as the city is, the crowds that buzz in such places as Qyosko’s Café Espresso, The Bean Connection, Café Antonio, Café Mamia, Bo’s Boulevard, Poppy’s, and the absolutely last resort we call Kofficcino are more than noticeable. They create a kind of spectacle. In a city that goes to sleep, they are the only signs of waking life.

I should know this. They are my people.

This crowd, of course, requires only four things: [1] that the wifi is fast, [2] that the coffee is robust and affordable, [3] that the outlets to plug in laptops and pads are scattered aplenty, and [4] that the freedom to stay for as long as they pore over their books are unfettered. The generosity with which most of these local cafés attend to these requirements is astonishing—and I get the feeling they don’t really lose out in the bargain. (I’ve noticed that places that do skimp on wifi because they fear the slow turn-over of customers, for example, are—to use a local term—almost always gilangaw. Most likely this is because the tech savvy who do eat out feel the Scrooge-like pinch of not being able to Instagram their meal. And to quote Willie Revillame: “You don’t do that to me!”)

You sense among these people an arcane knowledge of some sort of time table: afternoons are best in Poppy’s where the hazelnut mocha is addictive and the natural light is comforting, but the café—so near Silliman—closes way too early. Around 10 p.m. or so, most of them will find their way to Qyosko or The Bean; in these popular places, the thing to do is to brave the crunch and the tight spaces for a share of the wifi and the affordable food—arroz balao and buttered garlic chicken and an assortment of all-day breakfasts, with a cup of latte to wash it all down.

Bo’s along the Boulevard, when you can afford it, seems perfect for the coffee nomad. I tend to spend hours and hours there, my productivity stoked by its easy ambience, for some reason. It helps that its barista staff are the friendliest in town—and you know their names, too: Allan, Mac, Christian… And sometimes, it is that barista factor that makes a café home. It is the same with The Bean. But what I love the most in The Bean is its devilish concoction in their moist chocolate cupcake. Every night when I am there—and it is often—that round piece of heaven calls to me like a long-lost lover, rebuffed only by the thoughts of having to endure extra minutes at the treadmill. (And yet, often, the cupcake wins.)

The Bean, alas, closes too soon after midnight. And so, for many, the only place to really grind away the night till it turns to morning is the 24-hour haven of Qyosko—where they play the best dance/house music around 2 a.m., for some reason. Around that hour, the midnight crowd surges alongside the ones poring over their books, and the place becomes full of people demanding for their burger steak or their lomi or their pochero. Where do these people come from, and why are they not asleep? is a question I have learned never to answer. But Qyosko has become home to many of us, and so have many of these cafés.

Except for the sad ones.

It’s past midnight now in the McDonald’s along Perdices Street, and I cannot think. They have turned the music up much too loud for some reason I suspect borders on the diabolical. How else can it be? The sound pounding my ears seems designed for repulsion, perfectly tuned to keep my residency in this establishment to the barest minimum, its welcome extending only as far as lining up at the cashier. We want your money, the blasting music says, but please go away soon. I understand the capitalist notion of keeping occupancy flowing, but there are subtle ways of doing it: paint your walls orange, for example. But what you have is indeed sound conspicuously designed not to make you feel welcome—and I resent that. Because I have just ordered my tumbler of perfectly banal iced coffee, and have just settled on one small table planning to read a few essays for Monday’s nonfiction class. But I cannot read. And I cannot think.

I call over one of the busgirls. She ambles towards me like a robot. “Can you please turn down the volume of your music?” I ask.

“Yes, sir,” she says in that tired way that betrays she has heard this request before, and has no intention of ever complying.

True enough, I wait five more minutes—and nothing happens. The infernal racket McDonald’s calls music continues. So I make it win the battle. I give up. I get up, and I go home. I reason away that you do not stay in a place that does not make you feel welcome. The only way anyone can repay such discourtesy is not to give it your business.

Labels: coffee, dumaguete, life

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Monday, March 04, 2013

1:51 AM | Ronald McDonald is an Ungracious Host

It’s past midnight in the McDonald’s along Perdices Street, and I cannot think. They have turned the music up much too loud for some reason I suspect borders on the diabolical. How else can it be? The sounds pounding my ears are designed for repulsion, perfectly tuned to keep my residency in this establishment to the barest minimum, its welcome extending only as far as lining up at the cashier. We want your money, the blasting music says, but please go away soon. It is indeed sound designed not to make you feel welcome—and I resent that. I have just ordered my tumbler of perfectly banal iced coffee, and have just settled on one table planning to read a few essays for Monday’s nonfiction class. But I cannot read. I cannot think.

I call over one of its busgirls. “Can you please turn down the volume of your music?” I ask.

“Yes, sir,” she says in that tired way that betrays she has heard this request before, and has no intention of ever doing.

True enough, I wait five more minutes—and nothing happens. The infernal racket McDonald’s calls music continues.

So I make it win the battle. I give up. I get up, and I go home.

You do not stay in a place that does not make you feel welcome. The only way anyone can repay such discourtesy is not to give it your business.

Labels: coffee, dumaguete, food, school

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Friday, February 04, 2011

12:30 AM | A Colombian Love Potion

A few weeks ago, I broke another coffee pot. It slipped from my hands, and shattered on the floor. This is catastrophe for a coffee addict like me. I resorted to Nescafe instant coffee for a few weeks while I made some effort in having the glass pot replaced with a new one by the brand distributor. (I was all about diminishing my carbon footprint...) But finally, I got too tired from [1] waiting for those lazy asses at the distributor's to finally make an order for a new pot for me, and from [2] drinking daily the unimaginative slush of instant coffee -- a side of hell I can't begin to describe. And so I bought a new Dowell coffee maker -- a stainless steel one this time around -- and a new Krups coffee bean grinder.

Labels: coffee, food, life

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