By Draphny Olasiman
FIGARO Coffee Company held its Latte Art Competition on November 14 at its largest branch in DBP Building, Makati City. The competition started at 8 o’clock in the morning, with 16 finalists from different branches inLuzon.
Figaro Coffee Company was on track since 1993 and celebrated its 22nd anniversary in November.
It is not just a coffee shop that offers pastries and brewed coffee; it’s now serving rice meals, paninis, pizzas, pasta, muffins and sandwiches, with different kinds of beverages. It is currently more of a semirestaurant that you can visit anytime of the day, because it serves food for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It has a good mix of the continental and Filipino flavors.
People behind this concept thought that people can’t have coffee and pastries for lunch, that’s why they came up into providing more meals on its menu. They want to have people all throughout the day in the store not just for coffee but for other food, too. “It’s more of a semirestaurant na kasi, you have to innovate and enhance your services to cater to more markets. In Figaro, you can stay whenever you want, because we have different meals any time of the day na,” says Joan Cortez, marketing manager of Figaro Coffee Company.
The interior of the store is like a European setting, because owners, who were coffee enthusiasts, want to capture the ambiance of European places. Their first branch was in Glorietta. Today they have 25 corporate branches and around 60 franchisers. They also have branches in Papua New Guinea, Saudi Arabia, China, Guam and soon in Qatar.
The Latte Art Competition, which is their highlight event this year, started more than 10 years ago. According to Cortez, they tried organizing Barista Cup but latte is more appealing to people, because of its artsy look.
They held this kind of event to establish good sportsmanship, camaraderie, and to enhance the skills of their baristas. The contestants are always from different branches of Figaro, both company owned and franchised.
People behind this event also thought what if other baristas from different coffee shops want to join the competition. “We’ll think about it. We’ll invite other baristas if they want to join, but we will still let them undergo some screening if they are capable of doing the latte arts,” Cortez says.
Out of the 16 contestants, they were down to top 5 finalists. All of them showed their best latte creations but John Mark Trapani from Scout Magbanua in Quezon City branch bagged the title and pocketed the cash prize of P10,000 for this year’s Latte Art Competition. Congratulations!
