All in the family
YOU and I are not quite the same as Alvin Reyes Lim. Our grandmothers’ faces, after all, are not found on bottles of sauce.
Mr. Lim, a grandchild of Teresita Reyes (known to her family and the whole country as Mama Sita), was asked what it was like to have a culinary icon supervising their Sunday lunches. With laughter, he says, “For us, she wasn’t a Filipino icon in the kitchen. She was just lola (grandmother).”
“It was just an environment of fun. Very informal. We’d be rushing to the dining table to get there ahead of our cousins.”
Mr. Lim serves as Communications Officer for the Mama Sita Foundation, which held a mango-picking picnic last week in a farm in Mexico, Pampanga. The picnic is reminiscent of Mr. Lim’s childhood, as Mama Sita used to take her family on trips just like that. While reminding the family of their roots, it served to remind media guests about the importance of heritage and ingredients through the foundation’s project, Mga Kwentong Pagkain (Stories of Food).
“The secret to good cooking is to have good ingredients.” Mr. Lim said that he’d heard that from both his grandmother and nouvelle cuisine proponent Paul Bocuse, who spoke at Mr. Lim’s graduation dinner after his culinary studies in France. “I don’t know where she got this,” he said of his grandmother, though he recalled that Mama Sita was used to going around markets to search for ingredients along with her mother (thus, his great-grandmother), The Aristocrat founder Engracia Cruz-Reyes. “Your output can only be as good as your ingredients. If you want the best food, then you need the best ingredients,” he said.
As we’ve mentioned, Mr. Lim comes from a long line of culinarians. His great-grandmother’s passion for food was passed to her descendants: while Mr. Lim’s Reyes line has Mama Sita, other cousins own Reyes Barbecue, Alex III, and Casa Reyes, among other food-related ventures. Mr. Lim spoke about the advantages of family-owned ventures. “I can speak for Mama Sita. Your brand is your family. In a way, you’re continuing the legacy. All you’re doing is just bringing back your memories of how it was while you were growing up. That way, the brand is very strong. It’s not contrived… it’s really who you are.
“When I got into the company, it was like second nature. I’m just talking about my family,” he said.
Going back to the Sunday lunches of his childhood (which continue to this day), he said, “It’s a fun environment, but we really enjoy eating, and being together. I guess those are the values of Mama Sita. We’re espousing Filipino food, because that’s the food that we grew up eating.”
In fact, he says that the reason for Mama Sita’s creation of the brand was due to her own concern for her family. Visiting a daughter in the United States, she was disappointed with the quality of the Filipino food found there back in the 1980s. “Kawawa naman iyong mga Filipino na nasa America. Hindi sila nakakain ng masarap (The Filipinos in America are so unfortunate. They don’t get to eat delicious food),” said Mr. Lim, quoting his grandmother. That was when she decided to develop her recipes for packed and dried sauces and marinades. “The reason why there’s Mama Sita in the first place is to share that experience.”
Mama Sita has just opened a new plant in Pasig, and is currently working on a line of sustainable packaging (through a subsidiary). One can say that they’re going strong, but not all family-owned corporations can say the same. An old adage goes that it takes three generations to make a fortune, and another three to lose it. Mr. Lim is currently in the third generation of the Mama Sita family.
Asked how to make a corporation last in the family, he said, “I think one way is to keep on doing these activities. We’re making people familiar with the taste of Mama Sita. Not just you, outside the family, but even among us.” He gestured to his son, seated at another table. “As long as the family is familiar with the experience — we try to expose our children to the same — then that’s how the brand will be perpetuated.”
As we’ve mentioned, few of us can say that our own lolas’ faces were on sauce packs. We wonder what it’s like to share someone so important with the rest of the world. “If you use it (the sauces), you get a taste of what we had during our Sunday lunches,” said Mr. Lim.
“It makes us proud, siempre (of course). We’re proud of our heritage. We feel privileged that we grew up in that environment of family fun. Not everybody had that. We were able to try out good food,” he said. “Sometimes, you take it for granted… but we’re realizing that okay pala iyong mga nab-contribute ni Lola (what Lola contributed was ok).” — Joseph L. Garcia
