Ivana, Batanes—The love story between Nanay Elena Canstaño-Gabilo and the people of Sabtang Island in the province of Batanes dates back nearly three decades ago.
Countless anecdotes and narratives have been written about the humble store that was once a worn wooden table serving water to weary travelers from Sabtang. They have become urban tales which visiting tourists told their friends after visiting the island.
It may seem a farce to many, but to those who have witnessed, drank and ate from the Honesty Coffee Shop, it is very much true and alive.
“I pity those voyagers,” Nanay Elena said, as she prepares to retell her story. “They travel very early in the morning to work in the town and I just thought, maybe some of them are thirsty from the early travel. So I asked the mayor if he could put a faucet for the travelers, but my request was denied because the area, he said, was not a household.”
Living near the port, one could hear the hustle and bustle of boats docking and the rustling of people as they arrive, she says.
Every dawn she woke up to the sound of engines and the voices people who traveled from the nearby island to work, while some people set out early to buy supplies, and others came to trade their goods.
The daily routine in the port made her worry some people might not have their first meal of the day yet, and lacking support from the local officials, she herself decided to place bottles of water on an old wooden table just across the small port to provide relief to the thirsty.
The travelers, then, were not aware who the Good Samaritan was, but they were very appreciative of the gesture, Nanay Elena recounted.
Two weeks passed, and as she placed the bottles of water on the table, she felt a nagging feeling that water might not be enough as she worried that some of the passengers might feel cold from the sea breeze after traveling early in the morning.
Many travelers found comfort in the hot beverage she offered the following day with a thermos of hot water, a jar of instant coffee and several cups laid out in the not so empty table, anymore.
She still remembered that the hot water jug was a precious gift from a pen pal in the US.
While the coffee was not free, Nanay Elena did not place a tag on the beverage and left it to travelers to pay whatever amount they saw fit.
“And that is how my coffee shop started. I wasn’t aware it was already a coffee shop in itself already, since it was just a table, several cups and a jar of coffee served during the wee hours of the morning. The people themselves baptized my tiny shop Honesty Coffee Shop but many of the locals call it the Honesty Store,” she said.
“I realized, I’m not losing if I was able to buy another jar of coffee. It’s likely that there may be people who did not pay, but I never thought of it that way. And since nobody is looking after our small store, I continue to believe in the honesty and sincerity of the people buying from our little store,” she said.
She may not have profited much, but what is surprising, she said, was that she was able to buy another jar of coffee from the proceeds and added biscuits to the menu. And the cycle continued every single day until a big typhoon hit the island in 2000. The typhoon destroyed their small “kubo”, along with it, the makeshift cafe.
It took her family almost a year to completely rebuild what was lost. Although they tried to salvage the “kubo”, they have built a nice new house in a residential part of the town not too far away from the port, with the small Honest Coffee Shop fronting the residence.
Before the cafe and the fame that went with it, Nanay Elena had just retired from public service as a Grade 5 and 6 Mathematics teacher at Ivana Elementary School where she spent 36 years of her teaching career.
As a young teacher, fresh from passing the licensure examination, Nanay Elena spent her first year of teaching at the Itbayat Elementary School in Itbayat, Batanes from 1956 to 1957 and was assigned to teach at the Chavayan Barrio School in Sabtang from 1957 to 1964. She even became a regional finalist for the Outstanding Elementary School Teacher in Region 2 back in 1989.
After living a very frenzied life as a public school teacher, Nanay Elena was not accustomed to being idle and caring for the daily boat passengers was an antidote to her almost prosaic routine.
Tatay Jose, her husband of 64 years, was a local politician and farmer. He served as barangay chairman for a long time and supported her desire to help people from Sabtang.
The couple’s five children are also very supportive of their parents’ advocacy. Three of their children have followed Nanay Elena’s footsteps and became teachers as well. While the couple celebrates the joys of parenthood, they are forever scarred with the loss of two young daughters, though the couple remember them with great fondness.
The cafe owners attributed the enduring success of the coffee shop not solely on customer’s honest patronage but also to the tireless efforts of micro-entrepreneurs who have expanded the cafe’s menu from just coffee and biscuits to breads and cookies from neighborhood bakeries and native snacks like camote and banana chips from other islands.
As a thriving social enterprise, second-party retailers were encouraged to display and sell their products in the store free of charge.
After nearly 30 years, the coffee shop which has fended on its own, unmanned except for the daily replenishment of goods, continues to operate, without servers or lookouts.
A wooden box with slot for bills and coins serves as the only payment platform. Buyers are encouraged to write in a notepad, sitting right next to the box, what and how many products they bought and the value of the goods purchased. This has encouraged many visitors to also donate their change to the Honesty Coffee Shop.
From food, the coffee shop diversified to selling non-food items with the addition of a souvenir shop, owned by one of Nana Elena’s daughters. The Honesty Souvenir Shop takes on the same retail format as the Honesty Coffee Shop—no frills and unmanned. It also allows other entrepreneurs to sell their products in the souvenir shop.
In all of 28 years that Honesty Coffee Shop has been around, it has garnered several recognitions for its unique proprietorship. The first was a Special Citation Award given by the local government unit of Ivana in 2008.
It also received the Outstanding Ivatan Award for Proprietorship from the provincial government of Batanes and a Plaque of Recognition for Couple Entrepreneurs Award from the Department of Trade and Industry in Region 2.
The most recent was a National Award granted by the Philippine National University to Nanay Elena in recognition of her outstanding accomplishment as a successful businesswoman and as an outstanding alumna, given on April 23, 2023.
Almost 90 years old and still very spritely, Nanay Elena looks forward to the continuation of her legacy and expects that people see the virtue Honest Coffee Shop personifies.
She hopes the honest retail format exemplified by Honesty Coffee Shop will take roots in other special places not only in Batanes province.