Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jael Francisco. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Jael , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Are you happier as a business owner? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job?

As a business owner, I can honestly say that I am happier than I ever have been in my entire work life. There are definitely the pros and cons to working for yourself versus working at an established company, but ever since I’ve been a business owner the pros have definitely outweighed the cons. Before starting my business, I worked for several established companies. I had a set schedule each week, set hours, and set pay. I woke up to an alarm clock, sat in meetings, completed projects and reported to managers. The truth of the matter is, I hated all of it. Since my background revolved mainly around Sales and Marketing, my job was to help promote company products and initiate projects and goals to help increase brand awareness and increase company sales. The problem was there was no passion and sense of purpose in doing any and all of that. I wanted to put my work and my efforts into something I was truly passionate if I was going to have to commit those kind of sacrifices. Once I started my business I was immediately more motivated and happy. The progress over time, making mistakes and overcoming obstacles helped me learn so much and reaping the rewards keeps me going. My advice to anyone starting a business is this – Find and do something that you are truly passionate about, makes you happy and gives you the inspiration to be excited about working every day. Find something that you can see growing to what you want it to be, and something that you can make a living out of. To me, life is too short to not do something that you’re not passionate about. Envision your goals and desires and put in the work to make it happen.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m just a simple guy who used to work a standard 9-5. My background is in Sales and Marketing and part of my role was to help promote company products/services and work on projects to help increase brand awareness and boost company sales. I got into making Filipino shortbread cookies (polvoron) because I always wanted to start my own business, and I wanted to do something that made me happy and passionate about. I’m most proud of our product, because it is unique in its own right and has a variety of different and exciting flavors. Traditional polvoron can be found at your local Filipino bake shop or grocery store, but we put in the work to create new and exciting flavors. I am always happy and proud when folks come to me as well and tell me it’s the best ones they’ve ever had. Today we’re now in one of the largest Filipino grocery chain stores in the country, as well as providing wholesale options in several local stores. We actively promote our brand and sell in many local events and festivals around our hometown of San Diego. We hope to continue to scale our business, and introduce the world to the deliciousness of Filipino shortbread cookies (polvoron).

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.

Yes we manufacture our products. When we first started, we would mold all of our cookies manually with a polvoron cookie molder. We wanted to scale our business, so we sought out to purchase a polvoron cookie making machine that would be able to help us mold up to 36 pieces of shortbread at a time. We learned that in order to scale, we would need to stream line our work tasks and eliminate any manual processes as much as possible. The hand molding of our product took a ton of time, as well as the wrapping of our product. We are always looking for ways to streamline our work flow, and by doing so we are able to invest more of our time into other parts of the business.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I feel that our product quality and product options have helped us the most in building our reputation in the market. We are such a niche product that we knew we had to market and promote our product the best we could to build a reputation. Making sure we had a delicious shortbread with exciting flavors helped us separate from other manufacturers and actively being out and putting ourselves in front of our customers also helped our reputation. In order to create a name for ourselves, I knew we had to constantly put our product out there in as many platforms as possible. Whether it would be farmers markets, grocery stores, festivals, or catering parties we knew we needed to do so to get our name out. These are just a few of the avenues that helped us build our brand and reputation in our market.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.papaspolvoron.com
• Instagram: @papaspolvoron
• Facebook: /papaspolvoron
• Twitter: @papaspolvoron
• Yelp: Papa’s Polvoron

Image Credits
Junemy Pantig @gastronemy