Delicacies Center opens in time for Mandaue City May 8 fiesta

As a single mom, she prepared and sold bibingka or rice cakes, one of Mandaue City’s best known dishes.

This was how  Salvacion Soco supported herself and her five children in 1997 when she separated from her husband.

“I had to find a way to raise my family.  I saw the opportunity in the city’s delicacies,” said Soco, 56, said in Cebuano.

Soco is one of  several stall vendors clustered in  the Garbo sa Mandaue – Delicacy Center, which opened on Friday.

Visitors who come to Mandaue City can easily find the city’s special delicacies – bibingka, masareal bars made of crushed peanuts and sugar milk, and crunchy tagaktak – in one site.

The setup makes it easier for balikbayans and tourists to  buy pasalubong, said said  Lito Fruelda, president of the Taga Mandaue Inc.

The temporary site, which opened days ahead of Mandaue’s upcoming fiesta on May 8, occupies a private lot covered by a one-year agreement with the owner.

Mayor Jonas Cortes plans to build a permanent Delicacy Center later in the old Mandaue market as well as  a showroom for Mandaue-made furniture.

Starting out 15 years ago with P500 as capital, Soco would prepare the ingredients for bibingka from 10 p.m. to 12 midnight, then start cooking  from 1 a.m. to 3 a.m.

By dawn, she would get  ready to sell her bibingka at the Carbon market in Cebu City.  In the afternoon, she would sell unsold food items by going house to house in Cebu and Mandaue cities.

For variety, she later  bought  other Mandaue delicacies wholesale from  friends  –   budbod, tagaktak, masareal.

In  2009, she shifted to selling the goods at a sidewalk near the old Mandaue City public market, where more people passed by.  Soco said she earned at least P1,000 a day there.

All her children finished high school. Soco said she was happy with how their lives turned out.   One son works at a restaurant in Saudi Arabia . The youngest son, 21-year-old  Richard, helps in her small food vending business.

Richard said he chose to help his mother rather than pursue a college degree.

“We are not wealthy but we’re okay now unlike before when it was ‘one day-one eat’,  Richard said in Cebuano.

Soco was one of 100 ambulant vendors in Mandaue City who agreed to be relocated to the new public market after Mayor Cortes pushed for a clean market free of sidewalk obstructions and roving vendors.

In the meantime, food vendors   rent stalls at P1,875 a month in a private lot now called the Delicacy Center.

The site is located at the corner of Suson  and A. Del Rosario Street in front of a gasoline station in barangay Centro is   owned by national artist Caridad Sanchez.

Mandaue Vice Mayor Glenn Bercede said vendors and  the lot owner signed a one-year contract to sell their products in the space.