The Bread Bag Pandesal Bar

It all started with the famous "Casa Marcos Restaurant" and the freshly baked pandesal that was served with butter as an appetizer before each meal a customer would order. The restaurant was famous for the food it served but surprisingly the customers also liked the pandesal very much.

The bread was made the traditional way in a brick oven using wood as fuel. The brick oven itself had layers of salt and clay. This and the recipe gave the pandesal its unique taste and flavor that people loved. Because of the large demand for the bread, the owners decided to sell the bread in the morning as well. The bread was sold as early as 5am in the morning everyday. Lines of people could be seen in the morning buying the freshly baked Casa Marcos pandesal. The restaurant closed in 2000 but the bread business still remained.

A lot of other pandesal stores opened or what we call "pandesalans". We wanted to open a bread shop but wanted to be different from the other stores. We noticed a lot of sandwich bars that were open but none actually carried pandesal as their flagship product. We knew our pandesal was different and knew this would give us the edge among others. Eventually we came up with the concept of creating a "pandesal bar" instead of the usual sandwich bars. We would sell the usual regular pandesal and wheat pandesal as well for those who wanted a healthier alternative. Along with that, we would create pandesal meals that we would call pan de plato and sandwiches.

Pan De Plato would be your usual Filipino style viands or ulam usually eaten with rice. We wanted to educate the market to eat it with bread instead. The other part of the menu would be the sandwiches where we also offer Filipino Style dishes that would normally be eaten with bread. Since we believe pandesal is best eaten with coffee, we also improved our beverage side by offering home brewed coffee Extra Strong and Barako. Along with this, we also added Hot Chocolate made from native tablea that we get directly from Davao.