9 questions for Toby’s Estate founder Toby Smith

MANILA, Philippines – “We will never run out of coffee.”

These words, by general manager Raoul Peralta, succinctly captured the celebratory mood at the launch of Toby’s Estate in Whitespace, Makati City on September 15.

Founder Toby Smith was present in the opening of the third wave coffee shop’s sixth store in Metro Manila, which also functions as the central facility for roasting, as warehouse, and as headquarters.

Since Toby’s Estate set up shop in the country in early 2014, it has been air-shipping roasted beans from Singapore. Now, it has 6,000 kilos of roasted beans right within the crew’s reach.

Between hosting a cupping session and celebrating this milestone with his local partners – Marco Antonio, Marcelo Crespo, Chut Cuerva, and Manny del Rosario – Smith sat down with Rappler to talk about expansion strategy, business sustainability, and the prospect of sourcing beans from Philippine farms.

Rappler: By January 2016, you will have opened 10 stores in Metro Manila. You’re aggressive. Tell us about your expansion strategy.

Toby Smith (TS): The strategy is to grow fast and healthily. Healthily in a way that we want to maintain a very high standard of quality. You have to control that when you grow. It isn’t easy. It takes a lot of effort. We need really good people. We need to have really good education and training, and spread that through the company and that be part of our culture.

So as much as we’ve expanded in the last year, hopefully, from the appearance of a consumer inside, what we’ve done very well is create a culture of high quality, a happy group of people who enjoy coming to work, and producing quality day after day.

Rappler: What were your initial observations of the coffee culture in the Philippines?

TS: The coffee culture, it’s changing every day. I’ve been coming here for 3 years, and visibly, the guys keep driving me around places and we keep running into new places.

It’s definitely a new way of real coffee appreciation, looking for a high-quality cup of coffee. The consumers demanding it, the consumer understands that it’s available now so they’re seeking it now. Once they’re seeking it, they’re looking for it, then you’ll see multiples happen. You’ll see people seize the opportunity for them to open a shop, which is great.

The Philippines is going to have a thriving, high-quality coffee industry very soon. There is already coffee quality here. We just want to expand on it and be a part of it.

Rappler: What gaps do you see and are hoping to fill?

TS: I guess there are a lot of locations we are currently looking at. When we build it, we could find [customers] a nice place there, make it accessible. Already by opening here, we are gaining the same customers who used to travel to us. They’re lucky that we’re closer to them.

But in reaching here, we reach out to more people. When they only came to us on the weekend, now they can come to us during the week at work.

But we are expanding further out in Manila. We are also potentially looking outside of
Manila altogether, in the Philippines. We’ll see how things go. But yeah, there is plenty of opportunity here.

Rappler: Which cities outside Manila are you currently looking at?

TS: The other cities we’re looking at are Cebu and Davao. One of the principal partners is from Davao. Recently, we’re in his hometown. I’m sure he would love to have one there. That’s definitely in the strategy.

Rappler: What is your timeline for the second-tier cities?

TS: You will have to ask my partners that.

Rappler: You source your beans globally, like Panama and other countries.

TS: Yes, specifically Panama because I personally have a farm there. But we also source throughout Indonesia. We also source Central America, South America like Brazil and Colombia, also Africa.

Ethiopia is one of our favorites. We buy a lot of Ethiopian coffee and Kenyan coffee. There’s also growing in Uganda, Congo, Rwanda, Tanzania. There’s plenty of countries growing very high-quality coffee.

What we like to do is seek out and find nice, high-quality small loads of coffee that we can really look after without roasting and develop a really nice flavor profile for the customers and make it sort of exclusive. We like to have something that’s rare and exciting.

Predominantly that, and then we have our mainstays of relationships. Our relationship with the farmers, between the farmers and ourselves, is very important. We like to deal in a sustainable business manner and also on the environment. We like to see that they are doing the right thing as farmers, to the environment, and the people who are working for them.

We have a school on the farm that educates young kids. We help them to grow and we pay them well. It’s all very sustainable. Relationship is strong. And we like to look after each other.

Rappler: Are you looking at sourcing Filipino beans?

TS: That would be marvelous. It would be fantastic to harvest and work with relationships with coffee farmers here.

I’ve started talking to some farmers. I’ve started planning on what they can do to improve their growing, how they process their coffee here, concentrate on processing coffee, which could develop even better flavor from the beans they already have.

These general farming practices, how they’re doing it, and also finding new land, I tell them and some more elevation would make a difference if they found maybe a different variety as well.

Hopefully, in the future, the Philippines can be one of our major suppliers. There are a lot of opportunities to look forward to.

It’s a long-term project. It’s very exciting. Nothing happens overnight. Cafés we can roll out in already a few months, but these relationships with farms, relationships with staff, producing a culture and maintaining it, really, it’s an ongoing thing. The local projects are long-term.

Yeah, we are pretty excited about being here, even for the long-term.

Rappler: Let’s talk about your being a lawyer then and being a coffee artisan now. Do you find any similarities?

TS: I think in business it’s nice to be able to read a contract – license agreements, contracts – and have a sense of what’s right and wrong. So I guess I have more to experience for something in life.

When I was young, law was a great experience for me, working with professionals in an environment, working with corporates, working with criminals. It’s all fruitful, a little dry at times, a little exciting at times.

I found my place in coffee. I love coffee. I love food. I love hospitality. I love looking for great coffee. I like the farming side. So it really suits me more.

Rappler: What is your favorite blend?

TS: My favorite blend without being biased with my own farm in Costa Trinidad, you know, I did create the Woollomoolo blend many years ago.

But my first blend was Espresso Rico. I love the Rico a lot. Some of my clients at work [make] my blends in the States and also in Australia, producing beautiful blends that I did not have any part of.

I just said, “Yeah, that’s beautiful.” And there are some really fine blends we have in the business.

So it’s hard because I favor one and then I go taste another one. My mind changes pretty quickly. – Rappler.com 

Shadz Loresco is a freelance business writer for both online and print. Follow her on Twitter: @shadzloresco.