A father-and-daughter tandem is at the heart of this passion project that serves not only coffee and food, but also hope and inspiration to aspiring entrepreneurs in search of their own niche in the evolving food business.
Ahmot and Trish Baranda together with Gian Baranda, nephew to Ahmot and a cousin to Trish, established Cafe Agapita, one of today’s trendiest cafe and breakfast joints south of Manila. With the rest of Ahmot’s family—his wife and son – the project came to life… small at first, but big in promise and anticipation.
It took the owners a year to launch the Cafe, which is literally a hole in the wall. The passion of founders was what has sustained the project amidst challenges.
It was the constant prodding of restaurateur friends that influenced Ahmot, who owns a small rental business of chairs, tables and tents, and an events place in Silang, Cavite, to reluctantly yield and start a tiny coffee station right inside his rental business office. He threw in a few furnitures into the tight space, that was his office, to create space for coffee drinkers.
“The idea was broached by a friend one day when I had some coffee roasted. And just like that, the desire to have a small coffee shop came as a stirring concept. But this dream, this concept of a cafe was never a grand idea to begin with. We just thought the cafe will help tide us over during times when the events business is slow. I didn’t plan to be a restaurateur since I’ve always thought restaurants as fuzzy business but this is where fate led us. A blessing, indeed,” the older Baranda said.
After nearly three years in business, the Cafe owners has spruced-up its menu, as requested by clients, with an array of filling rice meals. Now, the Cafe serves all-day breakfast meals, pasta, pastries and breads paired with steaming hot coffee marketed as the Ca-Aga brand, a proprietary blend of homegrown Cavite coffee crafted by the owners themselves.
The Brewing Station
Most businesses had their modest origins, and the Cafe is not exemption to that. A few days before Christmas, on December 23, 2019, was when Cafe Agapita started brewing coffee in a 3×3 brewing station.
Tiny as it is, the first few patrons were mostly friends and relatives and acquaintances who hang out for love of coffee. The Cafe capitalized on this common habit of Caviteños in the early morning and during after-lunch rendezvous with friends.
Each with a story to tell over coffee, the crowd swelled—from friends of friends to the occasional “dayo” or traveller, a bunch of hikers, and tourists bound for the high lands.
“We really want to bring the warmth of family and the comfort of home through this Cafe. We want to people to feel at home while they are here,” said Ahmot’s daughter Trish who is a fresh Entrepreneurship graduate from De La Salle University in Manila.
From the tiny coffee kitchen where the popular “pantulak” (beverage) is brewed, the Barandas started to offer “pambara”, a local colloquial term referring to an assortment of breads and pastries that go well with coffee. All breads and pastries are freshly baked and sold at the same day. The pastries and breads sustained the Cafe during the pandemic.
The warmth of the new cafe spread like wildfire through the “modern word of mouth”, quoting Trish.
From the office ground floor, the tiny brewing station stretched into a fully-equipped coffee bar and extended the structure 2 flights up with a cozy loft on the tip of the house-like edifice. Glass panels surround the building – earth-friendly and sustainable.
Lush Greenery
One of the unique sellling propositions of Cafe Agapita is the foliage of verdant plants and shrubs, the mixture of flowering plants and trees complementing the breezy al-fresco dining. The earthiness of the place blending with uncorrupted nature has become a refuge for the weary urbanites.
Spacious and uncluttered, the Cafe’s expanse is ideal for social distancing especially when diners and restaurants were allowed to slowly open-up under a strict distancing protocol during the pandemic. Quite distinctive of all the structures in the Cafe’s expanse are bespoke wooden accents that emits a rustic vibe to the place.
In one of the dining segments of the Cafe is an event’s area that doubles as dining space during peak hours. This part is trimmed with chunky wooden tiles made of Ipil, a Philippine hardwood. The furnitures within the dining space are also made of Ipil wood. The area is enveloped by tall shrubs.
Near the parking area, right before the Cafe proper is a corner for fresh produce – fruits in season and fresh leafy vegetables are sold to visitors who relishes fresh picks to take home.
However, two weeks after the soft launch, Taal Volcano disrupted businesses in the upland. Not sparing Silang, the calamity damaged most of the greeneries in the area. It took months before the plants recovered from the ash fall, Ahmot said.
Despite the initial setback, the incident worked like an “angel in disguise”, pushing Cafe Agapita to newfound popularity as many of the day tourists who momentarily shunned Tagaytay spent their leisure time at the Cafe. Business was good until the pandemic.
Social Meda Savvy
As more business sectors reopen, the Cafe expanded into its first spacious dining area outside the main structure to accommodate more diners. And a second expansion that transformed the events hall into an open space breakfast and lunch room.
The Cafe’s quaint setting is just perfect for social media hype. The social media push was more of efforts of customers and diners who posted photos of their visit at the Cafe, Trish said.
While the place is already charming, the owners, inspired by the numerous posts of visitors in various social media platforms, have set out to put up so-called “Instagrammable” corners, where visitors are encouraged to take candid photos of their brief stay.
The owners believe that this stream of posterity shots posted in Instagram, FaceBook and similar apps are unspoken testaments of satisfied customers. They boosted the Cafe’s presence in social media and further pushed promotion of the business.
“We did a lot of pivot to face challenges. The very first major challenge was Taal and then came the pandemic. While we are known here in Silang, we thought we can do better than that, however, we did not set out to place advertisements because that will become a cost center that we cannot afford that time. The bloggers helped. The real break was when we were featured in several shows on GMA 7,” the younger Baranda said.
“Now, we’re starting to tap social media influencers to help us promote the brand. These are local online celebrities. We are happy that they are giving us the mileage we deserve,” added Trish who also have a regular daytime job in a local marketing start-up located just within the area.
Customers who are part of a cause or event have knocked on Cafe Agapita for support. That was the start of the Cafe doing sponsorships on its own small-scale capacity.
Just recently, the Cafe was chosen as part of the Mutya ng Pilipinas 2022 Sustainability Tour.
While the Cafe is open to all social strata, the Cafe owners noted that the social profile of majority of the diners are from the A and B crowd, who are, in all likelihood, might have been attracted to the muted elegant vibe of the place. Affluent families and entertainment celebrities frequent the Cafe especially on weekends. Even politicians are said to drop by, once in a while.
The Inspiration
Cafe Agapita is not just a random name for a coffee shop-cum-diner. The brand was named after the family matriarch “Nanay Agapita”, who founded the catering business “Nanay’s Catering”, a famous catering service in this part of Cavite.
“The reason why we built Cafe Agapita is because there are no coffee shops in this area. To many, the Cafe is not just a coffee shop, it has become a destination. Our cafe is also our way of paying homage to my grandmother from whom the place was named,” Trish said.
Nanay’s Catering was one of the first few suppliers for the Cafe’s rice meal series, supplying the well known “tapa” or meat strips served by Cafe Agapita.
Nanay Agapita’s penchant for serving food was as generous as her love to feed people, Trish recalled. During fiesta or feast day of Our Lady of Candelaria, the patron saint of Silang, the Baranda household is always open to random guests and visitors, a tradition the family had for decades.
As for expansion, Cafe owners are keen on setting up a branch either within Cavite or Laguna later in 2023, although the concept is still in the works.