WHERE in Cebu can one find a high end store that wraps your purchases in recycled magazine pages? Only in Echostore, at the Streetscape by the entrance of Maria Luisa Subdivision. It is a store licensed to carry that name, following the Echostore concept that calls for sustainability, recycling and everything local; promoting what is Filipino.
Meyan Lim Young, the 30-year-old charmer behind this project with her husband Johann, said Echostore “gives access to markets for small and medium enterprises.”
The products are from all over the Philippines and the store has pure moringa oil and powder, pili and coconut nectar and coffee maiz (corn). Among the products from Cebu are coconut wrap from Argao (now available in the Philippines but previously available only abroad: the US and Europe), pusit (dried squid) and danggit (dried fish) from Bantayan (to help the fisher folk there after Yolanda), Compostela cheese, boquerones (anchovies) from San Remigio and peanut butter from an old lady in Talisay City.
Cebu, said Meyan, has a lot of products still undiscovered and she and Johann are always on the lookout for them. The idea is “to support local.” If there is a need, they help in the packaging, in the costing and in some cases, in the financing by paying for their order in advance so the producer can buy the ingredients for the ordered product like peanut butter.
As Johann said, “We try to help those who are starting up. We choose the ones with little expense. And when they grow and market elsewhere, we let them go and help someone else.”
People who go to the store go there sometimes out of curiosity. Others are those who want only “natural” for their use or for their food (and come back to drop their magazines to be reused as bulsitas). And Echostore has a lengthy menu for them using all the local, natural food and ingredients found in the store. For breakfast, there’s oyster mushroom, tocino, probiotic chicken tocino, poached eggs with organic jowl bacon, and poached eggs with sautéed mushrooms and wilted naturally grown spinach.
The store also has pita pies and malunggay pan de sal and sandwiches, whole wheat tortilla and fresh spring rolls, hearty pastas and Buddha bowls. For soups, it has spiced pumpkin and creamy sweet potato.
For lunch and dinner, the store uses meat only from organically grown pigs, poultry, cows, like buttered chops, pork humba, wild honey teriyaki chicken. And grass-fed bistek Bisaya. The ingredients in the store menu are all available from the store shelves including naturally grown pork, beef and poultry.
For drinks, there are no carbonated drinks but only smoothies, juices and iced teas, coffees including decaf kape maiz, tsokolates, honest herbs organic teas. It has vegan ice cream, cheesecakes, yogurt cups and banana loaf with cacao nibs.
In the spirit of the Christmas season, and still in line with Echostore’s mandate for sustainability, recycling and everything local, Meyan said it now carries, for the season’s last minute gift-givers, woven boxes and native baskets from marginalized sources which are handy and pretty containers for giveaways eliminating gift-wrapping chores.
Meyan, who is Cebuano born and bred, said she went to school in St. Benedict, then Sacred Heart for Girls and for college, the University of San Carlos where she took up management and accounting. Her first venture after school is Bubble Tea Station which, she revealed, is financially more rewarding than Echostore. But Echostore is more rewarding to the psyche for her and husband Johann in their discovery of new artisan products, in helping them to become commercially available and viable thus improving the marginalized sector by giving them a venue for selling their products, and in helping in the sustainability of planet Earth.
(Echostore is open from 9 a.m to 10 p.m. daily.)