After a not-so-successful stint in the publishing and production businesses, partners Antonio Arevalo and Imelda Estareja decided it was time to try another business. Arevalo was convinced that he would be able to make a fortune out of making condiments and cider out of the surplus fruits from farms. The idea clicked and their Golden Cucinero and Herbit brands of homemade products are now gradually making their presence felt in the highly competitive market.

The business had its roots during the time when Arevalo and Estareja partnered to put up Analyzer, a magazine that dealt with the issues of the day. In addition to the magazine, Arevalo also dabbled in radio and had a radio show on DZXL and Radyo ng Bayan. While Estareja and her editorial team would be so busy trying to meet their editorial deadlines, Arevalo, whom they call Ka Tony, would be cooking up a storm in the kitchen of their editorial office (which was in an apartment building).

“During those days, Ka Tony loved to tell us stories to a point that we couldn’t get things done anymore,” Estareja recalls. “We even jokingly put a signboard on our office door that read, ‘The boss is not allowed to enter during office hours’. In retaliation, he would cook merienda for us and he would talk us into letting him get him into the office. It was during one of those talk-and-merienda sessions that he introduced his condiments to us.”

Arevalo, who had learned from his mother the hobby of fermenting condiments, started making them himself way back in 1998. He would make them from fruits that were available locally—batuan (the round, sour fruit of a forest tree found in Negros province), strawberry, santol, guyabano (soursop), bignay (a local wild berry), among others. Once he had gathered enough of the finished products, Arevalo would then give them away to his friends.

When Estareja noticed that Arevalo was just giving away a lot of the condiments he was producing, she suggested that perhaps the two of them should make it a regular business instead. So, sometime between 2000 and 2001, the business partners came up with a line of condiments—vinegar, soy sauce, and patis (fish sauce)—under the Golden Cucinero brand. Their startup capital was only P1,000.

Arevalo explains their decision: “We went into this business with an advocacy—to make use of the surplus fruits in the Philippines and to transform them into condiments and cider. Imee [Estareja’s nickname] and I originally wanted to use the concept to develop a barangay livelihood program but the idea fizzled out. People didn’t want to go into the business of fermenting a high quality product.”

To get their business started, the partners transformed part of the Analyzer editorial office into a kitchen. They then trained the magazine’s layout artist and a hired help to assist Arevalo in fermenting the condiments. Over the next six years, the Golden Cucinero regular staff grew to 12, complemented by as many as 10 regular part-timers when the volume of orders gets big. Golden Cucinero has not gone into mass production, making the products only on demand.

But Estareja says that the Golden Cucinero products stand out among their competition in terms of quality and taste. She says that in particular, their soy sauce is made of pure soya beans and caramel.”

“The big manufacturers also use food coloring, so if you try to wash the bottles after the soy sauce runs out, the stain remains,” she says. “In contrast, the bottles we use can be easily cleaned and can be used to store water. And when you cook adobo using our soy sauce, the end product is golden brown and not dark brown or even black.”

Estareja recalls that one doctor had wondered why the intestines of people were always dark in color when he did surgeries, then found out later that the cause of the darkening was the industrial dye being used in some soy sauces.

In the case of Golden Cucinero vinegar, she says, it doesn’t use acetic acid at all, using instead the fermented juice of local fruits like guyabano, santol and kamias; acetic acid, she explains, is the chemical compound responsible for the characteristic odor and sour taste of vinegar. As for its patis, Golden Cucinero makes use of fresh tamban (a variety of fish), which is first cooked before being pasteurized. Estareja says this is the Thai way of producing patis.

She explains: “People say that the smellier the patis, the tastier it is. We’d like to contest that. If the patis doesn’t smell pleasant anymore, it must already be rotten and shouldn’t be consumed.”

In addition to the condiments, Arevalo has also developed a line of ciders under the Herbit brand, a sub brand of Golden Cucinero. It makes use of local fruits like strawberry, santol, guyabano, and bignay. All in all, Arevalo has already developed 21 products in such a short time.

Estareja admits that perhaps it was a mistake for them to come up with 21 products right away. This is because if they decide to increase their output for all of the products, they would have to put up at least P1 million for each of them—a whopping P21 million.

Since they cannot afford to have their products distributed in supermarkets, Estareja says they are concentrating their marketing efforts on companies that are concerned with the health of their employees, as well as on small retailers.

“After being in the business for eight years, it’s actually only now that we are being noticed by caterers and large companies,” she says. “This is because in the condiments business, it seems that what matters is not so much how your products taste but how long you have been in the business.”

In the meantime, Arevalo and Estareja have started another business on a friend’s suggestion: put their ciders and their other products in capsule form. After a year of research and development, they have come up with their very own ginger garlic capsule under the Herbit brand. They claim that this product can ease the symptoms of high blood and arthritis.

“We plan to export our line of condiments sometime in the future, but before we do that, we first would like to make a name for ourselves here in the Philippines,” Estareja says.

CONTACT DETAILS
GOLDEN CUCINERO HOMEMADE PRODUCTS
13 Tampoy Street, Project 2, Quezon City
Telephone: (02) 435-0906