Ice candy supports family

It started as a dessert offering for customers who bought cooked food from them.

Food vendors Raymund and wife Joy Sevillano were selling food viands in 2006. As a sweetener, they offered mango float-flavored ice candy for P5.

“We saw it as a fast-moving product and very saleable. It was more saleable than the main viands we were selling,” Raymund said.

That’s when they saw ice candy could be a stand-alone business.

Raymund later heard about the Kapamilya Negosyo Na (KNN) contest, which coaches winners to grow their business, and submitted his business proposal for making special ice candy.

“For a start-up business, I thought this was more feasible,” he said, unlike selling cooked food that requires a bigger investment and a fixed place to display products.

Raymund won a consolation prize and used his P3,500 prize money to develop more ice candy flavors.

A former employee of a furniture company, Raymund said he poured his best effort in the new venture because he has six children to support.

“We have a small kiosk at Babag National High School and sell as many as 1,000 pieces there,” he said. He started out supplying half that volume.

Sevillano now supplies ice candy in a variety of flavors to other schools like Indiana Aerospace University and canteen operators in Cebu.

Customers have a choice of at least six flavors—leche flan, mango float, fruit salad, ube with mango, pumpkin and sweet corn.

“I have a supplier from Manila for the flavoring. I choose flavors I find tasty and think will be easy to sell,” he said.

With his wife and four children, the family starts making batches of ice candy at 4 p.m. and finish at about 10 p.m.

“They all help in making the ice candy because they know that this is where we get our income to send them to school. This is our lifeline,” he said.

“In the morning I deliver our products to different schools where we have displays and canteen operators in Mactan,” he said.

For transport, he uses a bicycle with a sidecar, which he acquired from KNN as expanded assistance.

Even with the sidecar and a hired male helper, sometimes deliveries are difficult on busy days with a lot of orders to service.

“We also plan to buy a multicab for easier delivery to far locations like Tabunok, Talisay City, where I have a customer who orders at least 500 pieces from us,” said Raymund.

On the average, the enterprise brings in P3,000 to P5,000 a day. Part of the income is used to buy ingredients for production.

“My wife is still very much hands-on in running our kiosk at Babag National High School because we think that we can sell more that way instead of hiring another helper,” said Raymund.

They used to have two trusted helpers at the kiosk but sales were so low so the couple decided to run it themselves.

“It’s different when you are running it yourself because you try hard to sell your products. If you hire someone who just watches the store, they don’t really do anything to sell more.”

Many food junctions in Cebu are potential customers, but the Sevillano family’s priority right now is a faster delivery vehicle to support expansion.

“That’s really the priority now because we know we can really increase production with our two freezers. The only problem is how we can accommodate all deliveries in one day,” said Raymund.