A touch of home at The Giving Café’s new branch

WHILE The Giving Café opened its second branch — in Addition Hills, Mandaluyong — only on Nov. 15, this particular branch has a story reaching all the way back to the 1950s.

It is in a mid-century house built by the grandfather of The Giving Café founder Michael Harris Conlin, the Asian Games Bronze Medalist Juan Bautista Lee. It’s the same home where Mr. Conlin’s mother and her siblings grew up, and during the media tour on Nov. 22, guests were presented with vignettes of what the family could possibly have been doing in different parts of the house — an afternoon tea setup had tea, coffee, and chocolate, and their family’s lumpiang ubod (the spring roll filled with heart of palm was strongly garlicky); while the main living room and dining room boasted of feasts from childhood memory — kaldereta (goat meat stew), their pancit (a noodle dish), and a Chinese-style stuffed roast chicken (Mr. Conlin told us though that since the family favorite is Sweet and Sour Pork — they use this dish to test new cooks).

The Giving Café is the public face for the various coffee businesses under Mr. Conlin’s belt: he’s also the head of Henry & Sons, their roastery which sells coffee to industrial clients; his social enterprises, namely the Foundation for Sustainable Coffee Excellence which helps fund programs for farming communities including educational assistance, sustainable farming practices seminars, and basic health care access; and the Institute for Coffee Excellence, an educational component that trains baristas.

He has the credentials for the latter: he placed 15^th at the World Barista Championship Semifinals in 2019, and in 2022, he won a silver for the Latte category Signature Coffee Award, and a bronze for the Brewing category at the Global Coffee Championship. In both cases, he won using coffees from two Filipino farms: one in Benguet and another from Laguna.

GIVING VALUE
“One of my personal advocacies is to give more value to Philippine coffee. One of the best, fastest ways to give value to Philippine coffee is to bring it abroad, and compete with it; be confident in it,” he said in an interview.

By adding value to Philippine coffee, it could be priced correctly. He gives an example of coffee being priced low at P60 a cup: if everybody down the value chain gets a little something from the P60, “How much is the farmer, the first step, getting?” The Giving Café is more than a name: a portion of the proceeds goes towards the Foundation for Sustainable Coffee Excellence, and thus to the farmers.

It’s not all just lip service, too: one of the communities where they source their coffee, in Itogon, Benguet, started out with 60 families yielding five kilograms of coffee each. Now, collectively, the community yielded five tons of coffee. Mr. Conlin said that the coffee was priced at $43 a kilogram, a third of the harvest was bought by businesses in Australia; another third went to Montreal. The final third was bought by them. “It’s not just about indulging in food — it’s indulging in the stories: the people, the lives we touch,” he said.

“What we realized as a social enterprise is, we cannot adopt every community that comes to us,” he said, which is why they opened a second branch.

In the short time it has been open, they’ve got new regulars, and they have booked parties. There’s more giving in this café: while the first branch seats about 70, this one seats about 168 customers.

LOVE OF COFFEE
His love of coffee began when he started working for his family’s abaca export business. He had to wait for partners in different time zones to wake up, so he spent half the working day keeping himself up with coffee. “I loved coffee so much that I decided that since I was roasting my own coffee, I might as well make it into a business.”

More importantly, what’s there to love about coffee is the story. “Coffee has been around for generations. Centuries. It touches so many lives,” he said.

“Coffee contains over 1,000 volatile aroma compounds. Some are positive, some are negative. But like life, just like us, there is good in all. There is no bad coffee. It’s just how you brew it.”

The second branch of The Giving Café is at 858a A. Mabini St., Brgy. Addition Hills in Mandaluyong City. It’s open from Tuesday to Sunday, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. The first outlet is on the corner of Sheridan and Pines Streets, Highway Hills, Mandaluyong City. It is open from Monday to Sunday from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Follow @tgcsocialentrep on Facebook and Instagram; for reservations call 0927-247-1490, 0985-128-4751 or 8518-9291. — Joseph L. Garcia