How my mother did business
She started off by buying eggs wholesale from poultry farms, then selling them door to door. Her family was aghast, what with their beautiful, brilliant Remedios making lako eggs from house to house, with a scarf over her hair and clad in trousers, button-down shirts, and flat shoes, walking long stretches while hefting the eggs.
She took the money she made from selling these eggs and invested it in her startup processed foods business, rolling capital over and over until she had enough for the longanisas she made and sold. She imported sweet, deep-red paprika from Bilbao, Spain for those longanisas, and was a stickler for using only the best possible quality meat and condiments for her products. All her processed meat products were salitre-free and MSG-free.
Ma took out a P100 loan from her aunt, Tia Conching Tan Yngson for additional capital. Back in the early 1960s, this was a princely sum. She turned a profit from selling Remy Food Products longanisas to small groceries, door-to-door along with the eggs she was still selling, and to market vendors she’d charmed into taking consignments of her longanisas. Ma paid her aunt P200 after a month. She was always good at gestures like that.
Then, one day, having sold all her wares, Ma was walking through the Sta. Cruz district in the City of Manila when she passed the impressive facade of Prudential Bank. My mother walked in past the bank tellers, the clerks, the secretarial pool, and up to the door of the bank president’s office. She charmed her way in, introduced herself to the bank president and engaged him in a conversation about her business, and sundry other things.
Ma walked out of the Prudential Bank premises with a P150,000 character loan. She didn’t need to put down any collateral for that loan, since a character loan is granted based on the creditor’s assessment of the loan recipient’s character. Ma returned there anyway bearing the title to her small property in Manila, in front of what is now Robinson’s Place Ermita, and submitted that as collateral.
Then Ma used the loan to infuse capital so her business could expand to include tapa and tocino, as well as generate employment for workers she and Pa had hired to increase her production and output. She also used that money to build a house in Sun Valley, Paranaque, which served as both our family residence and main production facility. The kusina in the Sun Valley house was the size of the apartment we live in now, and it included a walk-in freezer you could put two cows and two pigs in, as well as a walk-in pantry that contained the condiments, packaging and equipment used in the business.
The workers my parents hired for the business were mostly inmates of the New Bilibid Prison who had served their time for crimes like murder and manslaughter. These workers needed jobs, but their criminal records made it difficult for them to get gainful employment. Some were provincial emigres to the capital who were down on their luck. All of them were loyal and hard-working, and my parents made sure to help them put their kids through school, so those workers could rest assured that their families were well cared for. The workers who wanted to continue studying to earn high school diplomas and degrees got support from my parents, as well. One of them even became a lawyer. That’s also what customers who bought Remy Food Products supported: Better futures and second chances for people who showed an impeccable work ethic and the drive to make better lives for themselves and their families. She did this before the term “social entrepreneurship” was coined.
If you ever enjoyed a Filipino breakfast with longanisa, tapa or tocino at the Hotel Intercontiental, Sulo Hotel, Mandarin Oriental, or the Manila Garden Hotel between the late 1960s and early 1980s, you were eating what my mother made and sold. If you shopped for your ready-to-cook meats from the groceries and markets and bought tapa, tocino, or longanisa in bags labeled “Remy Food Products,” you bought her goods. She also supplied the flag carrier, Philippine Airlines, according to her sister, my Tita Rosalie Tan-Tenchavez. So, if you flew on PAL in those days, your in-flight meal would have included Remy Food Products’ quality meats.
By the 1970s, my Ma was buying prime beef from Argentina, had secured supplies of prime, well-tended pork from Batangas and Cavite, and was supplying all of Metro Manila’s 5-star hotels with hundreds of kilos of tapa, tocino, and longanisa every week. She was consigning almost the same amount of each product to grocery stores, including Cherry Foodarama and Unimart. The house she and Pa had built out of adobe and marble had five bedrooms with en suite bathrooms that had bathtubs and hot and cold water. She had three delivery vehicles, including a VW van, plus her white Plymouth Valiant, which she also used for delveries as needed.
Ma was part of all the operations of her business, save the accounting and bookkeeping, which Pa did for her (she did not like math) until they hired an accountant. She sourced all her ingredients and materials personally, dealt personally with her customers, got her hands busy on the production line for the products she sold, did product development with her employees, ran deliveries, and collected the money paid for the goods.
“That’s how my ancestor, Tan Bu Co, built his fortune. It is in my blood to do this,” she told me more than enough times. “We built a house with that business, bought cars, lived a good life, and we were able to send you and your brothers to good schools.” My brothers studied at Xavier School in Greenhills, then Union High School in Manila, and I went to SSC Manila and Immaculate Heart of Mary School in Paranaque.
I have always been proud of my mother for her work ethic, her love for business, and her achievements — as a mother, a teacher, an entrepreneur, and as a creative thinker.
So, yeah, I have a very clear template to follow as I do my own little business. It is in my blood. My mother taught me this very well. Thank you, Ma. I love you. This little business is my hat tip to you.
