With a catchy name for their budding pandemic-era enterprise, Catchy-Pan business owners Homer Homires and Rhea Barawid are “fishing” for success in their part-time gig in these challenging times.
Catchy-Pan was born when the #feedthefrontliners initiative led by Homires was slowing down. Homeris was approached by a friend from Dagupan, who was looking for someone who could distribute bangus in Metro Manila.
“One of the first things we discussed was the brand name, wanting to separate themselves from the bangus business, Homer jokingly suggested “Catchy-Pan.” But the name also works because it alludes to catching a bangus, and cooking it on a pan. Plus, we thought that they will offer the bangus products cheap, hence “ka-cheapan”—as how some Pinoys would put it,” Barawid told the BusinessMirror in an e-mail interview.
With the catchy name (pun intended), the business was born. The duo used various social-media channels—those that have been engaged from Homires’ #feedthefrontliners posts—which had a following of thousands to tell the world of this great but cheap product. “We collaborated with social-media influencers and sought their feedback and endorsement for the product. And we are beyond happy that we are receiving nothing but positive feedbacks from them, most especially from our valued customers,” Homires said.
Barawid, who is based in the US, is the social-media manager and accountant and Homeris is in-charge of overall management and logistics. Meanwhile, Homeris’ friend Roma Paragas supplies the bangus from Dagupan.
Before his Catchy-Pan days, Homeris managed a small family-owned cafe near Our Lady of Fatima University in Greater Lagro named Cups and Plates. Covid-19 shut their business down. He was approached by Barawid, his best friend from grade school, who is now in the US, to be one of their vendors for #feedourfrontliners driven by her and her friends (Eat Girls) who want to support frontliners in the Metro Manila area.
Homeris’ work with Eat Girls exposed him to the power of social media for awareness and how there are a lot of people out there willing to help, and are basically looking for a conduit to make a difference. Furthermore, the program allowed Homeris to establish a robust distribution channel from which any online enterprise need to rely on. The initiative ended on June 12.
So far, Catchy-Pan is performing well since it opened about 10 weeks ago. Homeris pointed out Catchy-Pan has already achieved a steady profit the past couple of weeks and has a lot of repeat customers.
Homeris handles the logistics part of the business. Once orders are entered in the accounting software Quickbooks, Barawid makes the packing slips for each of the customer orders and send them to Homeris.
Meanwhile, Barawid also prepares a list of deliveries for the riders to look at (via Google sheet). From there, the riders plan their respective routes based on that week’s orders. Once the bangus products arrive from Dagupan on Saturday morning, Homeris, using the packing slips, personally prepare each of the orders for delivery by the riders on the same day. Deliveries are done every Saturday (and sometimes also Sunday—depending on the volume of deliveries).
Meanwhile, Barawid pointed out that logistics has been so far the biggest challenge of the business.
“The initial plan was to have Homer go to Dagupan weekly to pick up the bangus orders personally, which he did in the first two weeks but because of MECQ [modified enhanced community quarantine], Homer and I had to think of alternative ways of transporting the bangus. With the help of their Dagupan supplier, they were able to transport the bangus weekly via Victory Liner [chilled and sealed]. This has been going smoothly so far except for some instances of delays in transit due to weather and traffic. In the future, Homer and I still plan to revert back to the original idea of transporting the bangus products themselves,” Barawid explained.
As hardworking individuals, Homeris and Barawid still hold their full-time jobs. Homeris is working in the BPO industry in Manila. Barawid is a government audit/CPA in Los Angeles, California.
The duo cites the important role of technology in managing the business. “Through the help of technology [social media, google sheets/google drive, Quickbooks, etc.] we were able to run the business even though we are on different parts of the world,” Homeris said.
Aside from enabling Catchy-Pan to operate 24 by 7, social media provides the ease of communication because there is no need to print flyers or posters and distribute to customers by hand, or to pay advertisers to sell the brand. With just a click of a button, or by tapping your fingertips, Homeris said clients can already have access to everything that they need or want to buy without the need to go to a physical store.
Catchy-Pan delivers to customers all over Metro Manila and even in some parts of Rizal and Bulacan.
The research and development component is being handled by Paragas. She constantly informs Homeris and Barawid of the latest products and sends samples to Homeris for taste test.
The biggest sellers so far are rellenong bangus, marinated boneless bangus, tinapang bangus and belly.
Although Homeris and Barawid have observed that a lot of customers are senior citizens and health conscious individuals, they said Catchy-Pan does not have a specific target market since bangus is a staple dish in every Filipino household.
In line with their objective to offer exciting products to the market, Catchy-Pan will keep evolving and improving their products, especially now that there are several ways on how to prepare, or cook bangus. “So, we have new products that we plan to introduce in the near future—such as bangus sardines and baked bangus. Just watch out for our announcements on social media,” Homeris and Barawid said.