Figaro: Putting Philippine Coffee Back on the Map

Figaro Coffee Company is a Filipino-owned coffee chain that has been in business for sixteen years. However, I only rediscovered Figaro this year—and my rediscovery coincides with my love story with coffee. So I ask your indulgence to let me recount my story.

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I love coffee. It’s in the blood. My dad is an avid coffee drinker (at his peak, he would drink 5 cups a day), and I learned to appreciate the joys of coffee from him. Even though I wasn’t llowed o drink coffee as a child (and quite rightly so—I don’t think stimulants like caffeine are good for growing children), I enjoyed the way it smelled, and the kind of ritual that went inot making a cup—regardless of whether it was instant coffee, or the barako coffee grounds that my mom put into our small drip coffee maker at home.

So it wasn’t a surprise that I embraced coffee wholeheartedly from college on. Coincidentally my college years were also those of the coffee shop boom at the start of this decade. Suddenly, coffee was no longer just a choice between instant and brewed. With espresso machines, coffee presses, and cappuccino came a rediscovery of the centuries-old global coffee culture.

I learned to taste the differences between different varieties of coffee beans, drank my coffee without sugar, and tried out different name-brand coffee shops to find which one served the best cappuccino. In coffee shops, I also found a new, multi-purpose place to study. As someone who lived away from home for the whole of college, coffee shops were where I could study until late in relative peace, without the distractions of my roommates’ chatter.

The main beneficiary of this was the branch of an American chain that was conveniently located across the street from my school. It was also less than a block away from my off-campus dormitory, a walkable, convenient distance.

Immediately after college, though, I went away to work in the mountains of Mindanao, farm from any coffee chain. Sure, I still loved my coffee, but the whole coffee shop culture and the 100-peso cups of coffee were far from my consciousness.

When I came back to Manila after a year and started working here, I became a lot more conscious of my money and where it went. Especially at my starting salary, I felt like I needed to bleed every little peso of all it was worth. (In short, naging kuripot ako.) Going to a coffee shop became a luxury. While I was away, it seemed like my mom and dad had gone on several trips, just the two of them—something that they hadn’t done ever since I was born. One of the trips that my mom told me about was some “coffee tour” that they took in the Batangas-Cavite-Tagaytay area. I didn’t really remember much of the details, though.

As my earnings increased, and I started my little business last year, I had more disposable income, and started going back to coffee shops again. I would still go to the big American chain, but I also started trying out less ubiquitous brands. Strangely, though, it was only after a Figaro stall opened near my work that I decided to try Figaro again (I last went to a Figaro store in my senior year of college), but it was initially for convenience’s sake. It was less than 50 meters away from my office building. :p

Earlier this year, I received Figaro gift checks. As I planned to spend a lot of time writing and reading for my thesis this summer, I decided to save it until my summer vacation and only use it then.

So this summer, I’ve spent several hours working at different Figaro branches, mainly at the Figaro in Gateway Mall, Cubao. Aside from rediscovering their coffees (my personal favorite is the cafe au lait), I also learned to appreciate the ambience of their stores. The marble-topped tables, graceful wood chairs, and wood panelling give their stores an old-world calm and simplicity, in contrast to the more frenetic, American-style interiors of many chain coffee shops.

And it was only recently that I remembered that the “coffee tour” that my parents went on a couple of years ago was a Figaro Coffee Company-organized tour. As I tried to recall the details of tour, it slowly dawned on me that Figaro wasn’t just a Filipino-owned coffee shop, but rather that Figaro was also and more importantly all about Filipino-grown and roasted coffee.

How so? Well, they use all Philippine-grown coffee beans for their stores, generating income for Filipino coffee farmers. But it’s not just about buying beans from farmers—Figaro is engaged with coffee farmers on so many levels: promoting organic farming methods, organizing co-ops for farmers, providing support…

…and most importantly in my eyes, Figaro has helped farmers to grow more Liberica beans. This is a very important achievement, because the Liberica bean is also what we more commonly call barako coffee—and the Philippines grows a special varietal found nowhere else in the world. Before Figaro and other groups stepped in, the barako variety was at risk of being lost forever, because coffee farmers in the Southern Tagalog (the traditional home of barako) were affected by coffee rust (a disease that affects coffee plants) in 1880, and by the the latter part of the 20th Century, they were being pressured to switch to growing Robusta and Arabica beans, beause the big companies and conglomerates bought those beans.

There are so many reasons to choose Figaro coffee–they’re putting Pinoy coffee back on the map.