It was a blockbuster night, an evening of tribute for Filipino families around the world as BDO Pay hosted the exclusive world premiere of ‘Meet, Greet & Bye’ at Cinema 2 at SM Megamall.
'Meet, Greet & Bye' tells the story of a mother (Baby Facundo), who loves watching KDramas. She decides to stop her chemo treatment after losing hope of getting better. Her only dream before dying is to meet her ultimate KDrama idol, who is visiting Manila for a series of events. Her four children agree to work together with the condition that once their mother meets their idol, she will undergo therapy before her time runs out.
Baby (played by Maricel Soriano) has three adult sons. The eldest is Christopher or Tupe (Piolo Pascual), who runs a restaurant in Los Angeles. The second is Brad (Joshua Garcia), a nursing graduate managing their lechon business. The third is Leo (Juan Karlos), a musician living with his girlfriend Jen (Kaori Oinuma) and 3-year-old son Charlie. Tupe had a college-graduate daughter Geri Anne (Belle Mariano), who grew up with Baby.
One day, the family found out that despite previous surgery and chemo, Baby's breast cancer has come back recurred and metastasized to the brain and liver. The doctor proposed to do chemo again, but Baby refused. Instead she bargained that she would only undergo chemo if she could somehow score VIP tickets to attend the meet-and-greet event of her favorite Korean actor Park Seo-joon. Her children disagreed on how to proceed with this dilemma.
Produced by Star Cinema, 'Meet, Greet & Bye' is a 2025 family drama directed by Cathy Garcia-Sampana from a screenplay she co-wrote with Jumbo A. Albano, and producer Patrick R. Valencia.
'Meet, Greet, & Bye' grossed P10.5 million on its first day in theaters, becoming the second highest opening day gross for a local film of 2025.
Aside from local cinemas in the Philippines, 'Meet, Greet & Bye' started its worldwide screenings on November 12 and November 13 in Australia, New Zealand, UAE, Qatar, Oman, and Bahrain; November 14 in the US, Canada, and Guam; November 15 in the UK, Ireland, and Austria; November 16 in Italy and France; and will be presented in Greece on November 22; and Spain on November 23, plus screenings in Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Brunei, and Papua New Guinea this month, and a showing in Cambodia on December 12.
"It is very meaningful for BDO to support a movie that honors Filipino families. Much like the film, BDO remains committed to bringing its products and services closer to every Filipino household—wherever they may be," shared Roy L. Villareal, Senior Vice President of BDO Digital Banking. (JTD/SunStar Pampanga)
DONUT FORGET ME!
"Donut forget me for I am your perfect circle of happiness.”
That's what Harold Alfonso had in mind when he set out to create and launched Donut Park, a Korean-inspired venture that’s now delighting customers across Luzon and other key areas in the country since opening its first outlet in July 2023, growing steadily to over 150 franchises.
Donut Park showed no signs of slowing down. With it, so did the complexity of managing franchise operations. Harold soon realized the need to boost operational efficiency and remembered BDO’s Cash Management Services (CMS).
Through BDO CMS, Donut Park can now monitor its cash flow, simplify payroll, and print checks directly from the office.
"I can easily track payments. Yung mga franchisee namin, yung mga ingredients nila, binibili sa amin Pero bago namin i-release, we need to check kung pumasok yung payments nila,” he said.
He shared that his staff used to visit the bank and have Donut Park’s passbook updated to confirm if franchisee payments went through. Now, with BDO’s Business Online Banking, payments can be verified in real-time—speeding up product releases to franchisees.
Payroll was another challenge. Like many SMEs, Donut Park handled salaries manually, placing cash into envelopes one by one. “We started small, but now we have around 50 employees. The BDO cash management payroll system, isa ’yun sa makakatulong sa amin talaga. Mapapabilis yung sweldo ng tao, and at the same time, less hassle.”
Happy wife, happy life
“When my wife Michelle goes to work, ang daming mga check request na naka-abang for our suppliers and operational expenses. Siyempre, there will be errors kapag manual ang check writing at sobrang dami ang ipapa-sign,” furthered Harold.
Through BDO, check preparation is easy, simple, and secure as all the important details can be entered online in the correct format, and the check is digitally signed with a verified signature before printing.
Freed from time-consuming tasks, Harold says he’ll now be able to focus more on expanding Donut Park—they have plans to open in South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore—and dedicate more attention to his young growing family.