Great things can start from humble beginnings, they say. In the case of four sisters from Brgy.Parang-Parang, Orani, Bataan, it all started with polvoron.

With just P500 as an initial capital, sisters Pamela, Claire, Charina, and Sonia Santos couldn’t have imagined that the company they built from scratch – the BEAKRIS House of Goodies-- would grow big.  BEAKRIS is now in fact one of the most in demand producers of homemade sweets and has become a banner product of the Galing! Bataan Brand Development Program.

It wasn’t always smooth sailing for the sisters. Their business was actually borne out of necessity. Pamela was a graduating BS Architecture student when their parents’ livelihood, which was fishing, failed. With two other sisters also in school, she had to drop out of school and find a way to help the family.

First foray

She first tried peanut flavored-polvoron in 1996 from a recipe developed by Claire.  It was Charina, the youngest, who sold it to local schools. Eventually, they developed another product- the creamy yema. Surprisingly, market pick up for these products was good. Encouraged by this positive development, Pamela decided to stick with the venture.

Perhaps it was her training as an architecture student that never made Pamela too shy to try out new ideas and apply it to her business.  Aside from developing other variants for their polvoron, she also wanted to develop a packaging and label design that would distinctly make their products stand out in the market. 

Lucky for her as a Galing! Bataan product brand, she was able to get assistance from the Department of Science and Technology - Industrial Technology Development Institute (DOST-ITDI) which developed the packaging and label design for their polvoron and sweet tamarind candy products.

Still wanting to stay ahead of their competitors, Pamela pursued DOST’s Small Enterprise Technology Upgrading Program or SETUP upon learning about it and how it helped entrepreneurs like them to be successful in their ventures.  She availed herself of the program’s financial assistance worth Php 300,000.00 to acquire of a double-jacketed cooking mixer and refractometer.

A testimony

Pamela candidly narrated how BEAKRIS was able to come up with enhanced and faster procedures, and better quality products.

“We manually prepared the tamarind ball candies, cooking the sweets with low fire,” she shared.

That time, they used carajay (an open pan) and a ladle to mix the ingredients and cooked the tamarind candy for two hours. Because of the length of time and difficulty of the task, they were only able to produce one batch in a day.

Similarly, toasting of flour in producing polvoron was done manually. Continuous toasting over low fire took 45 minutes to one hour. This practice sometimes produced uneven toasting which resulted in poor appearance and taste of polvoron.

But these practices were junked as soon as BEAKRIS received support from SETUP. They were able to acquire a double jacketed kettle which made the preparation of polvoron and tamarind candies much quicker and easier.

The automated mixer, meanwhile, managed everything from cooking, heating, mixing, tilting, and lifting. They can now produce four batches or more per day with assured quality of finished products.

The refractometer helped them a lot in measuring the concentration of sugar of tamarind mixture, thus standardizing the taste, particularly the sweetness, of their products.

“Malaki ang naitulong ng SETUP satulad naming maliliit na negosyante. Hindi madali sa amin ang makapag-acquire ng equipment, lalo na kung hundred thousand (pesos) ang halaga. Pag nangutang kami sa iba may interest pa. Dito [SETUP], walang interest,” the 46-year-old Pamela narrated. (SETUP offers a lot of help to small entrepreneurs like us. It is not easy for us to acquire equipment, especially if it costs a hundred thousand pesos. Borrowing money from other facilities means interest. SETUP does not charge us any interest.”

“Bukod sa naka-acquire na kami ng equipment [through] DOST-Bataan, naituro din sa amin kung ano ang naaangkop na equipment or technology.” (Aside from having acquired equipment through DOST-Bataan, we also learned which technology is appropriate [for our business]).

Pamela is managing the day-to-day operations of the firm whose name was derived from their eldest sister Sonia’s two daughters, Beatrice and Kristine.

Always in quest for improvement, BEAKRIS realized later that it needs to improve on texture as the sugar granules give the polvoron a gritty feeling in the mouth.

After the initial SETUP support, BEAKRIS was still using it sold La Germania oven bought in 1997. There was already an increasing demand for its cakes and the old oven was no longer apt for commercial production.  Also, because it is small, the oven yielded unevenly baked cakes and pastries, and it over roasted peanuts.

Thus, Pamela again applied for SETUP support through DOST-Bataan and got a Php 205,000.00 funding in 2012.  BEAKRIS used the amount to acquire industrial oven, sugar pulverizer, and food processor. The industrial oven baked cakes and roasted peanuts on a higher scale, the sugar pulverizer ground sugar into perfect powder, and the food processor cut and ground spices uniformly.

In its roasted peanuts alone, BEAKRIS increased production volume by about 150 percent.  With all the improvements that happened in their business, Pamela adamantly voices her gratefulness to DOST for all the assistance extended to her company.

“Very thankful ako sa DOST. Kung wala ang SETUP, siguro hanggang ngayon manu-mano pa rin kaming nagluluto ng tamarind [candies]. May [malalaking] orders kami dati na hindi naming maserve kasi limited langang capacity namin noon,” she shared. (I am quite thankful to DOST. Without SETUP, we might still be preparing tamarind candies manually. We had big orders before but we were not able to serve because of our limited capacity).

“May impact magmula sa production hanggang sa sales. Kung hindi kami nabigyanng intervention [ng DOST-SETUP], hindi rin naming maiimprove ang quality [ng products].” (It made an impact from production to sales. If there was no DOST-SETUP intervention we will not be able to improve the quality of our products.)

Indeed, BEAKRIS has gone far. From a backyard enterprise selling polvoron, it has grown into a House of Goodies that offers delicious Pinoy delicacies. This is one proof that, with a lot of perseverance, P500 can go a long, long way.