It Always Come In Deuce

After months of waiting, a call from Pacific Mall finally arrived. And apparently, they have good news. They’re offering us a much better location than food plaza and they would like to discuss it further. Meeting on Monday then.

Finally, A Call

Finally got a call from SM. They were offering an affordable space, but there’s a catch. Yet another obscure location where everyone notices every stall but you. Not only that, they wanted us to revise our menu limiting us to a number of items, basically pasta and sandwiches, plus coffee and hot choco.

Pastas (L-R): Shrimp Farfalle, Baked Fetuccini. 

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Still Looking

Yesterday, my sister Nich and I went to Manila to look further for possible area(s) of business. We scoured several locations in Metro Manila—Quezon City (Commonwealth, Teacher’s Village, Quezon Ave., Kamias, Kamuning), Pasay (Libertad and Harrison), Manila (U-belt and Taft) to no avail. I wonder when we can finally purge this seemingly endless (and sometimes I think pointless) problem of ours? But we won’t cede. We know for a fact that location is crucial. Why would McDonalds or Jollibee cut each other’s throat just to get the prime locations anyway if it didn’t matter?
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The Right Spot

Our quest in finding the right spot for Isabel’s continues. This time, we went to the market area to look for a space. We also went to a park near capitol where a number of stalls are running business.
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Cheap Food, Anyone?

While some of our equipments are still in place, the cooks have been very busy concocting new items for the stall concept. The idea is to present customers with delicious food consisting of rice, pancit Lucban, and a number of main ulam which they can choose to their liking. Here are some of the items they made:

Top Row: Isabel's Sisig with Rice, Isabel's Stuffed Laing with Rice

Bottom Row: Lucban Langgonisa and Pancit Lucban with Rice, Isabel's Special Pancit Lucban 

Physical and Emotional

The remaining staff and I have been preparing for moving-out several days now. I always thought setting-up a restaurant is hard but I now believe that closing shop is even harder because it’s not only physically hard but emotionally hard as well. At this point, I don’t even want to elaborate.

Waiting in Vain

Early February this year, we got an invitation from the leasing department of Pacific Mall Lucena (Gaisano Mall) to set-up presence in their food plaza.   
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Isabel’s Restaurant

Isabel's Restaurant and Native Deli is one of the newest and coziest restaurants in Lucena City, Quezon Province. Established in 2006, the restaurant offers a selection of culinary delights suited to its customers’ discriminating palate, including a selection of pasta, roast and steak dishes.

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Isabel’s Mobile Carinderia?

I told you earlier that we might venture to other business model for Isabel’s like a stand-alone “kainan”/“carinderia” perhaps. Anyways, here’s a stall concept that I drew a while earlier. Tell me what you think.

What Now?

We have until July 15 to vacate our leased space. For now, we’re busy looking for new locations. We are also open in setting-up a new business model for Isabel’s. Instead of putting-up a new restaurant (which is really costly), we might just put up stalls which we can replicate in various locations, maybe several stalls at once.

For this I had to do some research, so off I went to Manila and two days ago, I inspected several stations at MRT for possible location(s) of the said stall(s). In this research, I was assisted by the station supervisors of Taft, Ayala, and Cubao MRT stations. They even gave me personal security guards while I was shooting photographs and asking people questions. Really they were all nice. It should have been difficult doing my research if not with the help of these people so thank you all. 

Later I’ll be drafting a letter of intent for the assistant secretary of the DOTC, Gen. Lastimoso, who also acts as the general manager of MRT. We chose Cubao station, by the way.

 MRT Stations: Taft, Ayala, and Cubao.

A Restaurant Life

Isabel’s Restaurant opened in Lucena City August 28 of last year. The restaurant business was incorporated by siblings whose backgrounds encompass varied professional experiences, except running a restaurant business. Two doctors, a communications researcher and a business management newly grad—all but seems a recipe for disaster. Yet we managed to survive… for nine months. End of May this year, we served our last customers. For good. Or maybe not.
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