ARGILL Lance (LA) reaches atop the kitchen cupboard, foraging through piles of wooden chopping boards. He picks up one and handles it by the grip.
He returns to the lounge where Cali, a golden retriever, is playing with a tennis ball. LA picks up the ball from Cali while tightening his hold on the six-inch chopping board.
He throws the ball against the wall, then catches with the left hand, LA throws the ball again and catches it, until he finds the appropriate height to hit the ball.
Six bounces after, and a few barks from Cali, LA starts to hit the ball —pock!—with his make-do tennis racket.
The ball hits the white wall: The ball drops to the floor. Thwock! Tock! That’s a 30-minute audio delight for this tennis player, doing this routine, sometimes with partner Ethel.
Hitting makeshift tennis shots has been LA’s routine “every time Metro Manila is under lockdown,” LA says. His “tennis court” is not made of clay and is without a net; it’s a 60-square meter burger joint found in Manila that’s bereft of curious burger customers.
From serving tennis balls across 24-meter-long courts, LA’s hands have been full serving cheeseburgers, chicken wings and fries. But nobody’s receiving those servings of his, until some one or two drop by the Dropshot Burger.
LA Cañizares and Ethel Cabezas were part of a growing Filipino populace that built up food businesses online to make ends meet in this running Covid-19 pandemic. But in June, the couple put-up a physical place for Dropshot.
They named their venture Dropshot since this short, slow return of the ball near the net (forcing the opponent to rattle quickly to the net) is one of LA’s favorite shots. Today, LA and Ethel find backs against the wall as the country continues to reel from the economic wrath of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. They ponder: when will their burgers hit those aces and winners?
A night to remember
Initially, the couple wanted to put up a rice retail venture. But logistical requirements such as import contacts and warehousing, plus the slow return on investment, led them to scrap the idea.
Little did they know that the dream of running their venture would materialize on LA’s birthday two years ago. That night of November 12, Ethel served her homemade burgers inspired by recipes she watched online.
“They were damn good!” LA recalled, grinning ear-to-ear in glee.
Dropshot’s start-up capital was P10,000; tennis players, mostly LA’s club mates, became the initial patrons supplemented by some online orders from people that learned about it through word of mouth.
From two burger variants, Dropshot’s menu expanded to five, and then more food items came along such as fries and chicken wings as customers clamored for more. Everything was Ethel’s recipes, which she all learned from YouTube and TikTok.
At Dropshot, burgers are named after tennis terms: a dropshot is a cheeseburger; topspin has a barbeque “punch;” grandslam is a victorious quarter pounder; double fault means double cheeseburger.
What’s in the name
There’s another burger serving: Match Point, a one-inch-wide bacon, sandwiched between a slab of Spam and a patty topped with cheese. Match point sticks out a la Rafael Nadal to the bottom bun. Fresh lettuce, onion and tomatoes smash themselves between the sliced Spam and the top part of the Brioche bun.
The toasted buns hold the meaty goodness together, turning it to one radiating “tennis ball:” Match Point exudes smokey off-the-grill fragrance while juices of the medium-well 120-gram beef patty drip around the bottom bun.
Glancing at Match Point teeters you to victory (like in tennis, match point sees the player on the cusp—a point away—from winning the match). The first bite of Match Point yells victory: the grilled savory juices of the meat flushes around your mouth, just as the teeth grind through the crunchiness of the lettuce, the softness of the Spam slide, and tenderness of the Australian beef patty.
Add one more ingredient to Match Point, a fried egg (sunny side up), the burger becomes a new serving: Wimbledon.
These burgers range from P150 to P220. “We priced these burgers as competitively as possible for students. Some may say it is quite pricey, but I think it speaks of quality,” Ethel explained. “Everything here is made from scratch, even our sauces.”
The place to be
IN December, Dropshot sold 100 burgers after it tapped to cater to a tennis tournament. “We realized that this could really be a long-term business,” LA said.
“Everyone was saying your burgers are good. The next question always was where are we located, or if we have a physical place,” Ethel added.
Last summer, the couple scouted for a prospective place around the area of University of Santo Tomas. Fortunately, they found a 60-meter vacant space between an Italian pasta restaurant and a tapsilogan, right beside an 14-floor condorm (condominium-type dormitory). The place was also a pedestrian walk away from a soon-to-rise 36-storey condominium.
“Wala nang isip-isip, kinuha na namin. UST ito eh. Kahit saang sulok – harap, likod o gilid—may tao,” LA said.
The couple started the renovation in May and by June 8, Dropshot Burger in Laon-Laan Road opened to the public.
The place boasts minimalist and woody complexions, with ceiling lights caged in rattan while artificial vines clinging atop. The walls, painted white, provide a homey backdrop to jell with the woody texture of the tables and chairs.
“What we expected then was a possible rush in customers since we heard that physical classes would resume by August,” LA said. What happened was the contrary: Manila was put under the strictest lockdown anew to arrest the Delta variant surge, which was then beginning.
‘ECQ Season 2’
Dropshot never went into the red. At worse, they were breaking even in any given month. But the granular lockdown made them ponder about the future of their business.
The lockdown led to the cancellation of week-long reservations at Dropshot, which would have yielded about 15 to 20 customers a day. About 30 burger buns and kilograms of vegetables were spoiled as a result.
In recent months, a normal day in Dropshot looks like this: squeaky clean tables, on-point chair arrangement, chill millennial music booming out from the speakers, and a lovely couple tinkering how to boost sales, both offline and online.
Should there be a walk-in customer, they will just buy one piece of burger, or a couple would share one piece. No chicken wings, no fries. From time to time, a smartphone-like device would ping, notifying the couple that an order was made online.
For much of the days during lockdown, they were hopeful that online sales would salvage the day. It did, somehow, except for some days that they encountered “fake bookings” by bogus customers.
“I wanted to give up, especially since our sales dropped last month because of the ECQ. If our sales won’t improve in the next six months, we might as well close for good,” LA recalled telling Ethel.
“Don’t! We won’t fold because our food is great—and I believe we can tide over these challenges,” Ethel replied.
Back to match point
Both LA and Ethel admit that life at Dropshot is nowhere near their “usual lives.” Since June, the couple has been living inside the restaurant. They had to wash the dishes, mop the floor, clean the griller, and deal with leaky pipes.
LA, an only child, is only used to taking care of himself. In fact, he just learned to do house chores at Dropshot. For him, his life in Qatar as a tennis coach was easier since he just had to attend to himself while working within his comfort zone. Ethel says she was the same as him, being the youngest child and unica hija in their family—living like a princess.
“We told ourselves: is this adulting?” LA laughed.
But if adulting was that one October Saturday, then the two would embrace it to the fullest. The couple invited some friends over and expected that they would be just the customers for the day. But that day turned out differently: it was a sold-out kind of day. I was welcomed by an Air Supply song amplified by the chorus of patrons chugging beers and munching burgers when I entered Dropshot that Saturday night.
(Even the nights are better. Even the days are brighter. When someone you love’s beside ya)
I ordered a Wimbledon but LA hesitated to respond, seemingly trying to find the right words to tell a customer craving for some burger. “We do not have Spam anymore. Even bacon.”
He looked at Ethel, who was sitting in front of the cashier together with her friends. His eyes grew big and smiled: “We are sold out for today.”
“We still have some chicken wings though,” Ethel said.
That night they did not have any burgers left to offer by 8 p.m. And they have sold dozens of chicken wings and French fries. To top it all, three cases of beers were chugged down to emptiness, these scenes being a stark contrast of a barren burger joint two days earlier.
On to the next: Grandslam
AS it turned out, that Saturday night was not a one-off. They were able to sell at least 10 burgers daily in the succeeding days. They even stayed open beyond closing hours since customers followed the burger joint’s drop shots.
“It was exhausting but we are very happy,” Ethel told me three days after on a bright clear Wednesday night. It was also the first time that they slept peacefully at night, thanks to exhaustion and a good day’s profit.
“The past nights were different. We’re stone-cold sleeping not minding what to do tomorrow but [eagerly awaiting] pure excitement for the new day,” LA said.
The huge motivational boost that the couple got from the recent days had them regaining their hopes and setting sights 200 meters away from Dropshot: the doors of the UST home to over-40,000 enrollees.
“What more if there are students already? That’s what we are really looking forward to,” LA said. “We are much more excited.”
The country’s plans on resuming face-to-face classes are slowly becoming a reality, with the Commission on Higher Education announcing that areas under Alert Level 2 can operate on 50 percent capacity. Should UST suddenly buzz with people before the Christmas frenzy, the couple wants to smash their “grandslam”: multiple branches of Dropshot. “But first, we will get a nearby place to stay and buy a king-sized bed,” LA said while extending his arms wide open, showing how they have been longing to sleep on a proper cushion that they have been used to a year ago.
Beside a raging SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, entrepreneurs like LA and Ethel try to sneak in winners while confronting a brick wall that continues to slam Filipino entrepreneurship into oblivion. But LA and Ethel patiently await to reach their match point, the time when curious customers race to Dropshot and savor its “winners:” its burgers.