Fortune in a delicacy

Friday, November 4, 2011

THE secret to success in business is filling a need. Cebu La Fortuna Bakery has found that need in their much-in-demand delicacies that satisfy the need not just for plain nourishment but also for eating pleasure.

Top in that list is its hopia (a pastry, flaky on the outside, creamy on the inside), followed closely by its masi, tikoy, jelly rolls and ampao, all of which have become Cebu favorites since La Fortuna opened its doors in 1953.

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It was founded by Sy Ting and Vicenta who came to Cebu from Manila in 1952, attracted by Cebu’s lower cost of living and its peaceful conditions. Being a baker in Manila, Sy Ting decided to open his own bakeshop in Borromeo St., a bakeshop that soon had its steady customers.

Mary, the second child of the Sy couple, took over the running of La Fortuna in 1972 when her father died. And she has made sure the products her father made would always be of the same quality. Not only that, she has constantly developed new products “in order to provide a wider choice of the good taste” of La Fortuna products. Among her new products are cho beco (sticky rice with filling), egg pie, pineapple pie, cakes for all occasions, puto camote, pastel bread with ube, and the Chinese equivalent of arroz ala Valenciana called bachang. This is better than our puso because it is sticky rice with meat and vegetables, wrapped in bamboo leaves, and therefore very filling, as well as portable.

Mary says the challenge has not only been to come up with new products but also to keep the prices affordable even to low income groups (when Sun.Star Cebu visited her, she was just sampling her latest hopia, with yellow squash filling).

That she has succeeded is evident in the much enlarged bakeshop facility in Borromeo St., a shop filled with all sorts of baked goodies some of which are much in demand for pasalubong. Here is also where one can have refreshments or even a whole meal because Cebu La Fortuna has expanded, with a hotel next door and a catering service, both of which started in 2006. And the company aim is to build at least three more bakery and hotel cum restaurant complexes, to go “with the country’s tourism development trend.”

The key to her success, says Mary is being “hands on” and putting her heart and mind into the business.