A startup cafe, offering seasonal menu, enlivens a rather quiet community in Catarman, Camiguin, engaging the local community to celebrate seasonal events, personal milestones and holidays in a more open and public venue.
Life partners and business owners Matt Tabalba and Rich Baladhay decided to go back to the Isla, a term used by locals when referring to island of Camiguin, feeling spent after long years of working in Cebu.
Opening PuntaIsla, the first and only coffee shop in Catarman, brought mixed feelings of fulfillment and anxiety to the upstart entrepreneurs.
“Before going back here, we’re still very undecided if we wanted to locate the cafe here or in Cebu where we have a reliable support system from a network of friends we can turn to, anytime, and where access to supplies is a lot easier compared to an island location, where choices are limited and unsteady. We named the cafe PuntaIsla because it is located here in Punta, Catarman where I grew up and Isla for Camiguin Island,” said Tabalba, who is the café’s spokesperson.
Soaking up the chill vibe of the island, the co-owners decided to just give in to uncertainty of being their own bosses, the biggest challenge both faced as first-time business owners.
A great part of that uncertainty was influenced by the so-called “Big Quit” or “Mass Resignation”, Tabalba, a former BPO agent, said.
While taking on the challenge of putting up their own business energizes the couple, worrying how the business would fare–if they would make it through the daily business grind—is another challenge that perpetually hangs like a hatchet.
As new business owners, the couple saw, at once, the stark contrast of being a paid employee with sure means of paying bills, spending for food or buying stuff, from being inexperienced entrepreneurs with perpetual concerns on finances. Having a business is a totally new thing for them, like every day is random and fluid. Anything can happen.
In the first few months, the two-man team ran the pop-up cafe inside a residential compound owned by Tabalba’s family, just to test the waters. Armed with only the bare necessities and an overflowing zest to succeed, both managed to gain a loyal following from the locals. It took the co-owners several months to put up a sturdier store and over one year to hire its first crew.
“It’s like a push and pull thing for us. We tend to delay getting help, but when things get tough, that’s the time we are reminded to hire people who can help us, only to push back the idea again when things begin to smooth out. Finally, in August this year, we decided to hire two staff. It was such a blessing – a big burden unloaded. We now have time to think of ways to improve our seasonal menu and plan for an expansion we’ve been deliberating on for sometime,” Tabalba said.
Halloween treats
Introducing seasonal meals, like the limited Halloween menu, provided an avenue for creativity for Baladhay, PuntaIsla co-founder and barista, whose undergrad course was Fine Arts. Like Tabablba, Baladhay toiled in the big city starting as crew in a multinational coffee chain. Long years spent working for the company earned him the rank of a coffee master before he finally quit the job.
The All Saints Day is one of the seasonal events pinned on the cafe’s calendar. This is the second year the cafe has whipped-up Halloween-themed beverages and curated a selection of All Hallows food to celebrate the feast of the dead.
“This is the second time, yet it’s like it is already a tradition for us. Thus, we prepared an exclusive menu we feel will stir some Halloween vibe in the community, and perhaps, interest people from other side of the island to experience what we have here. For some reason, people here in Catarman like really sweet drinks. So we tweaked some of our best-loved frappes to fit to this season’s theme,” said Tabalba, adding that Dias de los Muertos would continue to delight old and new patrons throughout the month of November.
Berry Dracula, a vanilla-based frappe mixed with blended strawberry jam and topped with whipped cream drizzled with liquid chocolate is a blockbuster hit among local patrons. Franken Macha is blended green macha and vanilla with chocolate layering and whipped cream. Both limited edition drinks are available until December.
The eerily-cold drinks are best paired with the PuntaIsla’s food entry to Halloween, Flauta del Muerto, a spin-off of the popular Mexican rolled tortilla filled with sausage, basil and good cheese, topped with fresh tomato salsa.
While the hosting of seasonal menu seems cool and breezy for outsiders, not everything was this easy for the two entrepreneurs.
Preparing for collaterals and a new menu set takes a lot of time and test runs, while daily operations are on full swing. But with the entry of the new crew, expansion ideas will not be as fleeting as they were before. Tabalba and Baladhay bared plans to set up a convenience store and a small Airbnb staycation to boost tourism in Catarman.
In expanding PuntaIsla, both are looking for opportunities to cover the underserved markets in the Visayas, setting sights on Bohol and Misamis Oriental for two new branches.
Government-assisted growth
The couple was among the latest batch of mentee graduates of the Department of Trade and Industry’s Kapatid Mentor Me (MME) program held mid-October 2023. KMME is a program that helps micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) scale up though mentoring and business coaching.
“After the KMME, we made some improvement plans. We brainstormed on a marketing plan to capture more local tourists. Now, they’re coming here in truckloads from when the action literally stopped during the pandemic. We wanted our cafe to be ready to accommodate big crowd but we wanted to preserve the relaxed vibe of the island. This why we haven’t really pushed to go full throttle on improvements,” Tabalba said.
For the planned convenience store and Airbnb facility, the co-owners are looking at sourcing financing from the DTI’s SMB Corp., an assistance the DTI is extending to startups and MSMEs.
Adding that the island’s Go Negosyo Center has been actively supporting PuntaIsla, Tabalba advised startups like him to be more pro-active in seeking assistance from people and agencies who are willing to lend a hand.
He emphasized that people who are starting up a business need not be alone. They can reach out to people who have a business and they can get assistance from the local Go Negosyo Center.
“They will really help you out. You may or may not agree with what they will tell you, but at least you’ll have an idea on how you can go about your business. I am also very heartened by how we impact on creating an entrepreneurial mindset among the young population here in Catarman. With the help of the government, I hope many young entrepreneurs will create a booming business community in our Isla,” he said.