Stories > The Knead For Love And Empathy
The Knead For Love And Empathy
Hit by a loss of income due to Covid-19, Filipina Kwin Garcia-Anino turned her baking passion into a business that also benefitted a community of local weavers.
BY RACHEL AJ LEE
he aroma emanating out of Maria’s Kitchen allures local residents with its freshly baked breads, cakes and tarts every day. Its best-seller is ube cheese pandesal (UCP), a bread roll filled with purple yam and melted cheese.
The brainchild of two sisters, Kwin Garcia-Anino and Kristine Garcia, and their friend Zyra Porca, the bakery has become somewhat of a social media phenomenon in their province of Laguna – located southeast of the Philippines capital of Manila – in the past two years, as online browsing and shopping gained ground.
A PASSION FOR BAKING
The bakery’s current popularity, however, belies its initial set-up. Then a financial advisor and event organiser, Garcia-Anino had turned to home baking in an attempt to deal with income losses when the Covid-19 pandemic hit. Thanks to her passion for cooking and kneading dough, she spent many hours poring over cookbooks and watching culinary programmes.
The best-selling UCP, she shares, was “in fact something we saw online”. It was one of the many food trends, such as whipped dalgona coffee, that had taken the Internet by storm as people stayed home during the lockdown and showcased their kitchen experiments on social media.
Through baking, Garcia-Anino and her friends were able to eke out a decent living. As orders started to pick up, however, she realised that the amount of single-use plastic boxes initially being used for deliveries – especially for long distances – were detrimental to the environment.
“THIS HANDWOVEN PANDAN CRAFT HAS BEEN OUR PRIMARY SOURCE OF LIVELIHOOD FOR A VERY LONG TIME, AND THE TRANSITION – AND PASSING OF KNOWLEDGE – FROM ONE GENERATION TO THE NEXT HAS HELPED US TO PRESERVE THE BUSINESS OVER THE YEARS,” SAYS NENITA D. RACOMA, PANDAN LEAF WEAVER AND COMMUNITY SPOKESPERSON.
Interestingly, her search for more sustainable packaging led her to someone in her family – her 57-year-old mother-inlaw, Lenecia Anino, from the province of Luisiana, located a four-hour drive from Manila. Coaxing pandan leaves into pliant material and meticulously weaving it into bags and boxes, said Anino, was an art form before she started school.
But even before they can be woven into baskets or boxes, pandan leaves must undergo several processes. The initial gathering of pandan leaves is known as pamamandan, while the process of cutting the leaves into the desired size is called paglilinas. The leaves then undergo pagbibilad – cleaning and drying – before being pressed and flattened through a process called pag-iilo. The final step, paglalala, is the art of weaving.
“For every pandan basket my mother-inlaw wove, she used the income generated as her allowance in school,” explains Garcia-Anino. “My husband, Eugenio Anino III, also learnt how to weave, but he was mostly in charge of the traditional machine used to flatten the leaves.”
WEAVING A NEW IDEA
Thanks to her discovery, Garcia-Anino came up with a new idea: to use pandan-woven baskets as sustainable packaging for her baked goodies. She began her search for Luisiana-based pandan weavers, who could help with her efforts to go green.
It was then that she realised the pandan weavers were also struggling to make ends meet, with many of their orders cancelled due to the pandemic. “I felt for them. We had also experienced what it was like to have nothing, and were familiar with the feeling,” Garcia-Anino recounts.
“It wasn’t easy going back and forth, but it’s all worth it. Just looking at the weavers’ happy faces when I pick up the pandan boxes, and knowing that they have something to look forward to, is more than enough.”
Kwin Garcia-Anino, co- founder, Maria’s Kitchen
Besides depleted income from a lack of tourism, customers from nearby communities were unable to purchase crafted items due to restrictions. “The pandemic decimated the price of our products due to limited demand, causing our income to dwindle to a trickle,” says Nenita D. Racoma, a 60-year-old weaver and community spokesperson.
“This handwoven pandan craft has been our primary source of livelihood for a very long time, and the transition – and passing of knowledge – from one generation to the next has helped us to preserve the business over the years,” she adds.
REVIVING A FORGOTTEN ART
To place orders for baskets, Garcia-Anino would call or text the pandan weavers the size, number of pieces required, and when they were needed. She would then make a bumpy, hour-long drive down to Luisiana to pick up the pandan boxes. In the dry season, two to three weeks’ advance notice is given, while during the wet season, it takes around four to eight weeks for the orders to be ready.
“We sometimes have difficulty obtaining supplies when it rains, so we usually stock up before the rainy season. For example, last year, in anticipation of Christmas, we placed our orders in August,” she explains.
“It wasn’t easy going back and forth, but it’s all worth it,” says Garcia-Anino poignantly. “Just looking at the weavers’ happy faces when I pick up the pandan boxes, and knowing that they have something to look forward to, is more than enough.”
Indeed, Racoma makes an effort to share the orders with other weavers in the village – all of whom learnt the art of pandan weaving as children. At last count, 15 families in Luisiana were helping to weave boxes for Maria’s Kitchen.
WIN-WIN PARTNERSHIP
The customers at Maria’s Kitchen have been supportive of the partnership with the pandan weavers. More orders also started pouring in after the bakery’s collaboration with Our Better World (OBW), Singapore International Foundation’s digital storytelling platform. The story, which generated more than 1.6 million online views and more than 4,000 engagements on social media, had a huge impact on business. Viewers realised that with every purchase of a box of bread placed in pandan packaging, they were also helping to feed the weavers’ community – and an estimated 1,500 basket orders were generated from that awareness alone.
“More people are shopping locally, and are nicer to each other. I hope this pandemic has taught everyone to be resilient, maintain positive energy, and offer a helping hand to their community.”
Kwin Garcia-Anino
The airing of the story on OBW in mid- 2021 was also timely, Garcia-Anino says, as it coincided with the upcoming Christmas season. “We received many enquiries for the bakery’s products, as well as pandan boxes, to be used as Christmas giveaways. Other business owners have also been encouraged by our efforts, and are also using pandan packaging for their products,” she says delightedly.
Garcia-Anino says that by the end of 2021, more than 10,000 pandan boxes of all shapes and sizes had been sold. Since then, Maria’s Kitchen has also expanded, with Porca heading up the Manila kitchen, and Garcia-Anino back in Laguna.
The pandan weavers, too, voice their gratefulness at being given this steady and much-needed source of income.
“We are incredibly thankful to have met Kwin. Not only does she order many of our products, she helps us to promote our livelihood and treats us like family,” shares Racoma. “Sometimes, if we require an advance even though there are no orders, she won’t hesitate to hand it to us first.”
But Garcia-Anino’s help extends even further. Besides bringing the skill of pandan weaving into the limelight, she has also introduced the weavers to other business owners, while encouraging them to try different styles and shapes to offer a wider selection of products to the market.
This has, in turn, opened doors for Garcia-Anino, who was recently elected as the president of the Rural Improvement Club in Santa Cruz, Laguna, under the Philippines’ Department of Agriculture.
Though a small organisation, its main purpose is to support mothers in the area by providing livelihood programmes and training to promote and enhance their businesses and products.
“It is nice that businesses are starting to open and things are slowly getting back to the way they were. More people are shopping locally, and are nicer to each other. I hope this pandemic has taught everyone to be resilient, maintain positive energy, and offer a helping hand to their community,” she concludes.
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