The Beginning
Ramon Dela Cruz was thirty-four years old when he started cooking for strangers.
It was early 2016 in Project 4, Quezon City. His wife, Lorna, had been preparing lunch pails for their three kids and his younger brother, who worked as a foreman at a construction site along Katipunan Avenue. One afternoon, a worker named Kuya Bert grabbed a container of sinigang na hipon from Lorna's pail and asked, "Kapatid, magkano isa?"
Ramon laughed. He hadn't planned to sell anything. But Lorna looked at him with that expression — the one that said we need the money and you already know how to cook.
The next morning, he woke up at 4:00 AM. By 6:30, he had three big aluminum pots on a rented two-burner stove in their garage: sinigang, adobo, and ginisang repolyo with ground pork. He packed two hundred containers at ₱40 each — rice, one viand, and a ladle of soup on the side. Total startup capital: ₱4,200 for ingredients, sourced from the Palengke ng Project 4 at dawn prices.
He sold out by 10:00 AM. Not because the food was extraordinary. Because it was hot, it was honest, and it cost less than a tricycle ride to the nearest eatery.
By the second month, he was feeding three hundred people daily. By the sixth month, workers from two other construction sites were calling him directly, asking if he could extend delivery. A guard at a nearby condominium complex asked about catering for the weekend. Ramon borrowed his brother's motorcycle and started delivering plastic containers stacked in a wooden crate tied with rubber bands.
He registered his name — Ramon's Carinderia — with the DTI for ₱500. His barangay clearance cost ₱300. He didn't register with the BIR until month eight, after a neighbor mentioned that a carinderia in their block got fined ₱5,000 for unregistered sales. The BIR registration itself cost him less than ₱1,000 in fees, but the real cost was his time: two full days of standing in line at the RDO office, filling out forms he barely understood, asking strangers for help with the BIR Form 1905.
The Struggle
By 2018, Ramon was running a small operation from a rented storefront in Project 4 — ₱8,000 per month for twenty square meters that fit a cooking station, a serving counter, and six plastic tables. He had three employees: two cooks and one helper. Daily revenue averaged ₱12,000 to ₱15,000. He paid SSS and PhilHealth for all three, which added roughly ₱4,500 monthly to his overhead.
That's when the franchise idea came — not from a business plan, but from his cousin Jun.
Jun had been laid off from a warehouse job in Cavite. He came to Ramon and said, "Pare, I want to do what you're doing. Let me open one in Bacoor."
Ramon hesitated. Not because he didn't trust Jun. Because he knew what quality control meant when you're not physically there to watch the pot. He also knew that family money fights are uglier than business money fights.
He said yes. Jun paid ₱35,000 as a one-time fee for the name, the recipe guide Ramon had written on a spiral notebook, and two days of hands-on training. No contract. No lawyer. Just a handshake and a prayer.
The first three months were rough. Jun's adobo came out too sweet. His rice was undercooked because he was using a cheaper gas brand that gave uneven flame. A customer posted a negative review on Facebook — just one, but it was enough. Jun called Ramon crying, not because of the review, but because he felt he was failing a family name.
Ramon took a jeepney to Bacoor the next day. He didn't lecture Jun. He cooked alongside him for a week, adjusting the salt ratio, showing him which rice brand held up under a heat lamp for four hours. He also sat down with Jun and his wife and laid out a simple agreement: Jun keeps 70% of profits, sends 30% to Ramon for brand support and periodic quality visits. They wrote it on a single page. No notarization. Ramon figured that if trust was the foundation, a document might actually weaken it.
The Turning Point
By 2020, there were four branches — Project 4, Bacoor, a second site in Marikina, and one in Antipolo. Ramon had hired a second cook at the main branch and promoted his eldest employee, Ate Tessie, to shift supervisor.
The flood of 2020 nearly ended everything. The Project 4 branch took three feet of water. Their rice stock was ruined. Gas lines were cut for six days. Ramon sat in the dark on the second floor of their rented space and thought about quitting. He had ₱18,000 left in his savings. His eldest was entering junior high. The younger two needed school supplies.
Lorna sold her last piece of jewelry — a small gold ring her mother had given her — for ₱9,000. That was their bridge.
They reopened in eleven days. The construction workers came back. So did the orders.
After the flood, Ramon did something he'd been avoiding: he formalized everything. He registered all branches under a single DTI name with a ₱3,000 annual renewal. He created a standard operating procedure — a laminated card for each station, printed for ₱2,500, detailing exactly how many tablespoons of soy sauce, how many minutes of simmering, what rice brand, what oil brand. He visited each branch once a week, unannounced.
He also stopped calling them "franchises." He called them "mates" — mates ng carinderia. The word felt less transactional, more like a family arrangement. The fee stayed at ₱35,000. No royalty. Just the 30% profit share and a commitment to the recipe.
The Business Today
Today, Ramon's Carinderia operates twelve branches across Metro Manila and Cavite. Total daily revenue sits around ₱145,000. Ramon's personal take-home from the profit-sharing is roughly ₱95,000 per month — not life-changing money, but it's his own. He employs thirty-one people directly and indirectly. His eldest, now nineteen, handles social media and delivery coordination through GrabFood and FoodPanda, adding a 20% revenue bump.
He doesn't advertise. Every new branch is a referral — someone who ate at an existing branch, liked what they tasted, and asked if they could run one. The waiting list has eleven names.
His kitchen still starts at 4:00 AM. His rice is still steamed, not boiled. His sinigang still uses real kamatis and sili from the morning market.
When I asked him if he considered himself a franchise owner, he laughed and said, "I just feed people. The word franchise sounds like something rich people do. I just have twelve kitchens and thirty-one people who need their salary on Fridays."
Lessons for the Rest of Us
Start smaller than you think you need to. Ramon started with ₱4,200. He didn't wait for a commercial space, a business plan, or a loan. He started with a pot, a stove, and a question someone asked him at a construction site. If you're asking yourself how to start a business in the Philippines with no capital, the answer is almost always: begin with what's already in front of you.
Family can be your asset or your liability — the difference is clarity. The 70-30 split with Jun wasn't complicated. It was written down, discussed openly, and reviewed quarterly. If you're building something with kapamilya, have the hard conversation before the first peso changes hands.
Quality control is not about control. It's about teaching. Ramon didn't send Jun a manual. He cooked beside him for a week. If you want someone to replicate your standard, show them — don't just tell them.
The flood will come. For some of us, it's a literal flood. For others, it's a pandemic, a layoff, a family emergency. The businesses that survive aren't the ones with the biggest savings — they're the ones with the people who refuse to let the name die. Lorna's ring bought eleven days of survival. Sometimes that's all you need.
You don't need a business degree to build something that feeds people — literally and otherwise. Ramon finished high school. He learned ratios by cooking, not by calculating. He learned management by showing up every day. Small business in the Philippines rewards consistency more than credentials.
Ramon Dela Cruz is not a startup founder. He will never be on a magazine cover. But twelve kitchens across two provinces are running because one man decided that honest food, delivered hot at a fair price, was enough. And for the thirty-one families who eat because of his work, that's more than enough.