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A home-based enterprise of selling snacks to bank employees may be small time for hardcore businessmen.
But for Annabelle Lim, proprietor of Heavenly Grace Cakes and Pastries, her eight-year experience as a "peddler of cakes and pastries" is one of her greatest achievements.
"The experience taught me the value of humility, that you need to approach people, do sales talk just to sell your products," she said.
As a housewife, Lim learned how to cook from recipe books.
But one afternoon in 1989, her decision to bake date-walnut tarts paved the way for the business management graduate of the University of San Carlos to transform herself into an entrepreneur.
"My late husband Ruben, who had an electronics business in Manalili street (downtown Cebu), said the tarts were delicious. He kept prodding me to bake more and said we would sell it in the neighborhood," said Lim.
She wasn’t keen on the idea until a friend who tasted her tarts urged her to sell them. For less than a thousand pesos, Lim started baking cakes and pastries for sale.
"My friend had a business dealing with office supplies and ink cartridges. Most of her customers were bank employees so she helped me. I baked the tarts and she sold them," Lim said.
Her friends’ clients who were later sated with the tarts asked Lim if she could bake other goodies. This encouraged Lim to read more books and take up short courses in making cakes and pastry at Caro and Marie.
The arrangement with her friend lasted seven years until 1996 when Lim decided to sell her products herself to bank employees. She did the rounds everyday.
"It was better if I myself would sell the products to them because I would know their complaints immediately. Tam-is ra, mantikaon ba (Is it too sweet, too oily)? I can personally tell them about the products," she said.
But there were also difficult customers who made her cry with their harsh comments, mainly about the price of her wares.
She said she understood some of the adverse comments because her cakes and pastries' are priced higher than what people were used to since she used premium ingredients.
For instance, she sells bar cakes at P18 per piece when other bakeshops sell them for only P8 to P12.
Despite this, Lim still manages to smile and greet customers with a warm "good morning" or "good afternoon" and "God bless."
Selling baked goods from 1996 to 2004 taught her the value of staying humble, hard work and faith in God.
She said she also improved her communication skills and became more open to ideas from her customers.
"I owe it to my husband who encouraged me to pursue the business. If it were not for his support, this would not have happened," she told .
The business was doing well until May 2004 when her husband died.
“When I was baking, I would cry. It was too painful to let him go but God has his plans and I surrendered it all to him," she said.
With her husband's death, Lim also stopped making the rounds of banks. Her eldest son, Ryan, had to take over the family’s electronics business, while her three daughters Ruby, Rowena and Regina helped her in baking.
But when a door closes, a window opens. Such was the case for Lim. On October 2004, her brother, Emmanuel, offered to help finance the construction of Lim's small bakeshop.
"Our sala was converted into this store. When we opened in December 2004, it was the feast of the Immaculate Conception and there was a procession so people saw the bakeshop," she said.
Four years since the bakeshop in Andres Abellana St., barangay Guadalupe, Cebu City was put up, Lim said they have been blessed with good returns.
Her customers are mostly high-income individuals. The cakes have been displayed in prominent hotels, while some were even brought abroad.
Lim said she builds relationships with customers.
"I have customers whose wedding cake I baked and when their children celebrates birthdays I also baked their cakes."
Lim also sees to it that the personalized service she gave to customers when she was still peddling her goods from one employoee to another , still exists in the small bakeshop.
Today, she still welcomes customers with a smile and warmly greets them "Good morning," "good afternoon," and "God bless."
