All-day Pinoy meals and more at TCB

Authentic Pinoy flavors. Nostalgia. Comfort foods. These best describe the Pinoy meals from the The Coffee Beanery, the sister company of Cravings. Known simply as TCB, the coffee chain veers away from the usual menu to the comforts of Filipino rice meals, savory
snacks, coffee and tea mixes and of course, desserts.

TCB’s Filipino menu was first introduced at its Shangri-La Plaza branch in Mandaluyong City. “We were targeting the young market but judging from the turnout of customers, our clientele covers all ages,” said Jheng Dacasin, marketing manager. Other branches with this reinvented menu are in Katipunan, West Avenue and Tomas Morato in Quezon City.

Fast-becoming bestsellers are the Calamansi Beef Steak and Garlic Bangus Steak. The beef strips are soft to the bite with a slight citrusy flavor of calamansi. Fish lovers would enjoy the Garlic Bangus Steak with the crispy meat cured with lots of garlic to do away with the fishy taste. You also get to choose from other meat dishes like the Star Anise Pork Hock, Chicken Pork Abodo, Sugar Glazed Tocino and Corned Beef Hash.

A must-try for vegetarians or foodie adventurers is the unique Barako Champorado. It is perfect for those who do not want any oil, meat or fish in their system. True to form, this rice porridge has the ample flavor of that famous Batangas brewed coffee that is sweetened just
right.

Complimenting these Pinoy meat dishes are large servings of garlic rice with fresh, sliced tomatoes placed on banana leaves in a large porcelain bowl. Big servings satisfy big appetites or can be shared by a couple of diet-watchers.

For hearty snacks, you can indulge on a Spanish Roll Brulee and Pan de Coco Croissant. These are local merienda staples with a twist of French and Hispanic cuisine. Or, load up on pastries that carry Spanish flavors with the likes of Ham and Cheese Ensaymada, Spicy Longganisa
Empanada and the Adobo Pot Pie. With these baked goodies, your merienda will always be something to look forward to.

To cap your meal, there are hot and cold drinks plus desserts. Coffee drinkers can have their caffeine fix with Café Americano, Barako, Espresso and the signature TCB Blend. For that cold coffee jolt, one get to choose from Frosted Java Java, Black Forest, Brownie Ala Mode and Almond Coffee Jelly.

Tea lovers get a special treat with serious tea upgrades. Your local ginger tea or salabat is laced with leaves of flavorful pandan. Another version is the Ginger tea with mint leaves that really perks up your palate. The truly, refreshing Lemon Grass tea is served with the local
calamansi.

Your everyday calamansi juice will never be the same again once you get a taste of Calamansi Mint and Calamansi Honey. Dalandan juice is an easy favorite of customers with the right amount of sweetness and pulp.

Not to be left behind, the line of desserts carries flavors from local fruits and ingredients sourced from the provinces. Customers are easily won over by the creamy and slight tang of the Laguna cheesecake. Topped with whipped cream and slices of kesong puti, a slice of this cake can easily bring one to mindless eating.

The Philippine Mango Shortcake is also a best seller. Sweet, mango preserve is sandwiched between layers of chiffon cake and is topped with mango syrup and slices. There is also the Cashew Durian Brownies for the lovers of durian, the favorite fruit of the South. A must-try for
the sweet tooth would be the Brittle Mantikilya Cake, Baked Hot Tsokolate and Chewy Coconut Ambrosia.

TCB’s new menu of homegrown flavors truly brings back memories of lola’s and nanay’s kitchen but aptly updated to suit today’s taste and demand. All these food creations are courtesy of master chef Menoy Gimenez of TCB.

Unsolicited

His message simply said, “love u”.

Now, I know how it feels like being hit on as a married woman.

I was stumped, completely confused on how to react. He was my friend and thought he regarded me as one too but his single line abruptly changed perceptions.

It is different when a single, young man comes up to you and flirts because he thought you were available. May kilig doon.
To a stretch, it is flattering and jolts up your self-esteem. After that, you reveal your status and that is the end of it.

This one, however, raises too many questions, possibilities and assumptions because you know you are very much tied up just like he is. And the timing could have not been more worse.

Nose clogged, temples throbbing and sneezing all over the place, I was really not up to it to respond to this at all. So up to now, I choose to ignore any of his attempts to communicate.

Feeling betrayed, I choose silence as my weapon and protection.

I know someday I would have to take his call, reply to his chat messages and face up to him but for now, I am not simply interested.

Blue Cow: A Comic Evolution

As a medium catering to the taste and standards of the masses, the comic book has evolved into an intellectual fodder for the upper class, offering more complex story lines in high quality print.

Along the way such changes have made the comic book an ideal collector’s item and even an artifact for mature readers.

While most publishing firms are shying away from costly production, independent artists are taking up the slack by producing and marketing their own works. The notable creators in this field are Arnold Arre (Mythology Class, Martial Law Babies), Carlo Vergara (Zsa Zsa Zaturrnah), Gerry Alanguilan (Elmer, Wasted), Manix Abrera (Kiko Machine, 12), Budjette Tan and Kajo Baldimoso (Trese).

In its desire to cut across conventional approaches to promotion and marketing, Blue Cow Co. Inc., a subsidiary of Pioneer Insurance, has joined the fray by tapping into the medium and shooting three birds with on stone: publishing, merchandising and insurance-saving scheme.

Its main arsenal is Private Iris, a glossy, full-color comic book for kids that is the brainchild of award-winning writer Jaime Bautista.

“Private Iris is not just a comic book,” says Jo-I Alvarez, Blue Cow’s assistant vice-president for marketing and sales. “The built-in saving tool in our comic book makes it the first and only comic book of its kind.”

This was the first time a comic book was linked to a financial product, presenting a totally new business model, according to Bautista. “We have shown that there is room for creativity in the business side of comics, and that creators should not only focus on the creative aspect of the product.”

Instead of focusing on competing with what was already out there, the company believed that the challenge was on introducing “this new proposition to the market,” said Alverez. “Considering the product, target market and possibilities offered by our distribution, we have decided to make the marketing approach highly interactive.”

Thus, Blue Cow, in cooperation with schools and bookstores, goes on tour to bring Private Iris directly to its consumers, with ten issues so far launched by visiting a combined 30 bookstore branches of Powerbooks, Fully-booked and National bookstore as well as over 80 schools in Metro Manila and nearby provinces, and recently in Bacolod and Cebu.

When the Blue Cow team visits a school or holds a launch in a bookstore, the members engage children and their parents in games and activities, like Dress Up Iris, that teaches kids how to manage and budget money. Kids are given a budget to buy the materials for Iris’ new costume. The best costume with the most savings wins. Apart from that, children get to join a book-reading session and animated clips are shown teaching money lessons in line with the detective-mystery theme of Private Iris.

The marketing team also interacts with readers through the Private Iris web site that feature games, tests and social networking.

The comic book also serves as a distribution package for Pioneer’s Sparx savings kit in the inside pages. Readers get to save 50 percent of Private Iris’ P200 retail price.

Children, with the help of parents, can enroll in the savings scheme by fax postal mail, or email, with the savings account and insurance coverage activated by a code on the Sparx card in the comic book. The account matures and is redeemable when the child reached 15 years old, including the average yield of 3 percent per year.

Visual artist Arnold Arre did the artwork for Private Iris until the sixth issue, after which the brothers Jim, Jay and Joy Jimenez, all accomplished artists and animators, took over the illustration works.

Bautista hatched the idea of a full comic book that gave kids financial lessons integrated in the storyline. Private Iris, the heroine, and her best friend, Danton, were developed for a wider readership within the comic book’s category. Iris could exude qualities even boys could easily relate to – action-oriented, analytical and logical. She even wore shirts and pants with hues of blue. In contrast, Danton is outspoken, emphatic and sensitive to other people’s feelings.

Private Iris as “a comic book with a deliberate and worthy purpose packaged in a non-threatening manner” has reached an estimated 60,000 readers since its maiden issue came out in June 2008 – not bad considering it is competing in a market cluttered with cable television, pirated movies, internet and hand-held game consoles.

Financial literacy may be one of the crucial lessons young Filipinos must be taught, says Bautista.

At the same time, Blue Cow is redefining comic book publishing by combining spending with a savings and insurance scheme, opening new possibilities to an industry rising from the ashes of its former mass appeal.

MySolid Technologies carves niche over foreign brands

Among the handful of Filipino mobile phone brands that emerged in the last two years, my[phone by MySolid Technologies Inc. stood out as a true-blue homegrown brand.

By tapping directly into the Filipino psyche via customized identifiers linked to the myphone brand consumers can easily identify with, that combined with affordability and the common features offered by foreign brands, Solid Broadband seemed sure of clinching the market in its favor.

The my[phone-Pinoyphone was launched last year with contents reflecting the Filipino culture, like the audio versions of the Holy Rosary, Stations of the Cross and Novenas, Pinoy jokes, bugtong, salawikain, alamat, and popular movie lines, original Pinoy music, food recipies and trivia.

Pinoyphone was the sub-concept of my[phone that delves into purely Pinoy matters, said Jingo Fermin, president of Mytel Mobility Solutions Inc., also a unit of Solid Group, that handles the sales and distribution of my[phone.

“We know Filipinos are very attached to foreign brand names when it comes to cell phones, according to Carlo Umali, business development manager of Solid Group Inc., the consumer electronics firm that brought such global brands such as Sony, Samsung and Aiwa in the local market.

The Ninoy and Cory collectors’ edition phones were also launched last year, loaded with audio trivia, biographies, famous speeches, life stories, inspirational messages, Ninoy’s letters and poems, Cory’s personal prayers and testimonials, and thumb nails of Cory’s paintings that could also be set as wallpaper.

When the movie New Moon of the Twilight saga was shown in local cinemas, my[phone was its official partner with specific interface, wallpapers, ring tones, SMS tones, animated icons, screen savers and actors’ profiles.

“The New Moon phones made good sales returns, but after the hype the sales also took a downturn,” said Fermin. “We regarded this move more of building a marketing image for us. This has proven that even though we are small, we are more flexible, unlike the big companies that turned down the opportunity.”

MySolid Technologies also created other ventures for my[phone through custom made content, like the my[phone-Pinoyphone of Taguig City Mayor Sigfrido Tinga, who ordered 1,000 phones for his constituents.

With unique content packed into my[phone, MySolid Technologies was able to carve non-traditional channels of distribution, including religious institutions like Caritas, Radio Veritas, Word of Joy, Family Land and Couples for Christ, with a percentage of the sales allotted to support their advocacies. Father Anton Pascual, executive director of Caritas and Radio Veritas also asked MySolid Technologies to supply the needs of priests of San Carlos Seminary’s Bahay Pari and the Caritas micro-finance group, Salve.

Efforts by the first Filipino mobile phone company that made the dual-SIM technology affordable are starting to pay off, as consumers are stopping in their tracks for practical reasons and added value offered by a homegrown brand.

Banking on its newfound strategic advantage, MySolid Technologies has made it a point to capture the qwerty phone market. Apparently, qwerty phones are emerging as the preferred choice among phone users because of the single-press typing mode in writing text messages, and is fast becoming the choice handset for the social networking addicts. Based on the appeal of the more expensive brands, the my[phone Qwerty has a full keypad and wide LCD for web viewing, and is Java-equipped for online applications.

In a swap challenge in Davao, consumers exchanged their handsets for a myphone Qwerty so they could surf, e-mail and chat. With hundreds joining the swap, over 2,000 handsets were taken for less than the P2,990 price tag.

The myphone Qwerty now accounts for 46 percent of the company’s monthly sales, according to Fermin. “With Qwerty models, we have hit the sweet spot that delivers safe margin where we could not only survive but also expand.”

Smart Toys for Smarter Kids

Shopping for toys with kids can be a real nightmare for parents. Major tantrums can erupt anytime when kids, teeming with curiosity, want to play with all the toys on shelves left and right that most toy stores discourages. So, where can you find a toy store where kids can play and enjoy the toys without having to buy one?

At Pocketful of Kids, children get to experience a one-stop toy store that encourages learning, socialization and exploration while having fun. “Play helps develop our children socially, physically, intellectually, and creatively. For example, a child can hone his or her concentration and attentiveness by knowing and remembering sequences of a certain game,” explains Natalie Tanchip, owner and founder of Pocketful of Kids, the very first toy village in the country.

Inspired by her life-long dream and love of children, Natalie Tanchip, with the support of her husband and family, conceptualized, created and opened this hands-on playground cum toy store last October 25. Every crook and cranny of Pocketful of Kids came out of Natalie’s imagination and was executed under her strict direction and design. Every room is visually stimulating by using colors, structures and textures right out of a children’s book. Even the rubber material for the floor is personally picked by Natalie to fit safety standards.

“The notion of bringing learning into playtime is really something that Pocketful of Kids wanted to push,” explains Natalie Tanchip. “Our vision is to provide high-quality toys that help children learn and ensure that these will aid significantly in developing a child’s mind.”

Hard to find elsewhere, Pocketful of Kids showcases top-of-the-line toy brands from the United States and Europe that promotes learning through play. From Melissa & Doug, there are puzzles and wooden educational toys. Learning Resources carries hands-on educational materials and teaching resources that aid parents and teachers in enhancing cognitive and motor skills of children. For scientifically-themed toys, Educational Insights with the famous Hot Dots pens, Playfoam and GeoSafari, teaches children to learn the fundamentals of geography, math, reading and science. For cute, novelty items, they offer the Italian brand Tatiri with their unique wooden toys, jewelry and accessories. If you want colorful wire and magnetic bead mazes that your child can manipulate, Educo from the Swiss company HaPe are also available. For older kids and tweeners, there is Alex crafts, arts and fashion.

Aside from toys, Pocketful of Kids also offers books for the pre-schoolers and young readers. Their creative team also oversees the daily kids’ workshops on music, dancing and personality development held at the toy village.

Pocketful of Kids toy village can be found at the 15th floor, Strata 2000 Building, Emerald Avenue, Ortigas.