BUSINESS BITS

Cookies cooks up big profit
Geraldine Bulaon-Ducusin

For Carmelita Rejano Reyes, 52, owner of Rejano’s Marinduque Deli, her decision to improve the packaging of her specialty arrowroot cookies – a delicacy made of the root crop locally known as uraro – has made all the difference in the business. Now enjoying a much wider distribution, her product is carried regularly by the snack exchange section of SM malls nationwide.

Making arrowroot cookies and those other native delicacies such as banana and chips and tamarind candies had actually been a family business of the Rejeanos in Marinduque since 1955. However, the business never really realized its full potential until Reyes took over the family bakeshop in 1978.

Determined to expand the business, Reyes enrolled in a baking course at the Technology and livelihood Resource Center (TLRC) and invested P100,000 in the bakeshop. But since the uraro flour used in making arrowroot cookies was in short supply at the time (uraro being a crop that’s harvesting only once a year), she initially made baking cakes her priority.

In 2001, when the Arrowroot Industry Council of Marinduque was established, the arrowroot flour supply became more abundant. Reyes was then able to produce arrowroot flour supply became more abundant. Reyes was then able to produce arrowroot cookies in volume, and two yeas later, she joined a trade fair in Manila to promote her product.

This was when she discovered how outdated the packaging of her arrowroot cookies was. She had been using the same package design from 1986 to 2002, and she had spent P60,000 for its development.

The problem, however, was that to identify her product, she still was using photocopied strips of her business name for intersection into the plastic packages of her cookies. She was so embarrassed by her old packaging that after the trade fair, she immediately sought the help of the Department of Science and Technology help her upgrade it.

Reyes invested P200,000 for the total packaging system designed for her by the DOST, but it was well worth the expense. It made her arrowroot cookies available not only in cans but also in boxes, each with an attractive design and label. What’s more, the packaging system lengthened the shelf life of her arrowroot cookies from just three months to a year and a half.

“We used to cater to the C and D market with our arrowroot cookies, but with the new packaging, we were able to reach out to the A and B markets as well,” Reyes says.

Their longer shelf life likewise liberated her arrowroot cookies from their seasonality. The Rejanos used to sell the product only during the Christmas season and Holy Week as well as during fiestas, but with the new packaging, it began selling all year round. Sales volumes thus increased from P30,000 a month to P70,000.

Today, Reyes is making really good money selling her arrowroot cookies not only in the malls but also in the family bakeshop – thanks in great measures to their more attractive and functional packaging.

Indeed, the importance of food packaging is now widely recognized. Not only can packaging help preserve the quality and lengthens the goods’ shelf life, it also enhances product handling and transport. In effect, packaging increase the value of the product and its marketability.

“Packaging shouldn’t be viewed as cost but as an investment,” says Daisy Tanafranca, program leader of the Packaging Research and Development Center (PRDC) of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST). She is also the project manager of a program called “Improvement of Packaging Technology for Philippine Food Products in the Regions,” which is sponsored by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

Since 1999. the PRDC has been tasked to make the local industries and their products globally competitive through world-class, innovative, and sustainable packaging technology. It has been providing small and medimum enterprises (SMEs) assistance on packaging technology, particularly to reduce the 20-50 per cent spoilage rate of local packaged food products.

“Packaging is a vehicle of trade and industry,” says Tanafranca. “One can gauge the extent of progress of a country by the degree of sophistication and by the number of packaging that’s available in its market.”

She adds: “Packaging cost is also relative to the cost of product to be packaged, minimum volume order, and type of packaging, such as, say, metal, paper, plastic, glass or composite. The main factors that need to be considered when designing a package for food products are the market destinations, consumer behavior, safety and regulations, shelf life and economic feasibility.”