Cacao Culture: The Story of Successfully Growing Cacao even without Owning a Farm

From working in the Information Technology (IT) industry as tech-entrepreneurs in Manila to moving to Davao to start their cacao business, husband and wife Kenneth and Shiela Reyes-Lao have successfully built up Cacao Culture from the ground. The couple admitted to having no experience in agriculture but found themselves attending and participating in agriculture workshops organized by local organizations. They were eager to learn its way and along with that, developed a love for cacao and dreamed of starting their own chocolate business.

Image from Kenneth Reyes-Lao

“We were searching for something that we wanted to do and agriculture was something that was always in the periphery,” Kenneth shared in his interview with Agriculture Monthly Magazine in 2020. “People say that when they retire, they’ll run a farm. That’s when we decided, why wait until retirement age to go into agriculture?”

Kenneth graduated from Ateneo De Manila University with an MBA from the Asian Institute of Management and is the oldest child of two entrepreneurs. He grew up witnessing his parents’ tireless efforts to expand the business and later, he would come to understand that being an entrepreneur runs in his family. Before becoming a founder of Cacao Culture, he started his career as a Plant Manager and became an Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW) in China, then came home and had a career in IT Operations Management and Sales. To this day, he still finds the advice and practices he received from his parents beneficial.

Shiela, on the other hand, graduated from De La Salle University-Manila and is from a family of OFWs. Back then, she thought that becoming an OFW was also where her path was going. However, she decided to stay and explore her opportunities in the country. Shiela has a broad experience in project management, business process analysis, and strategic planning and has over 10 years of experience working in the IT industry. She started her career with Transnational Diversified Group and has worked with companies in Davao as an IT project manager.

The husband and wife had initially intended to buy farmland, but once land prices rose during President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration, this ambition was postponed. However, that did not prevent them from starting a cacao farm. Instead, they decided to lease agricultural land in Davao, where doing so is usual.

Kenneth acknowledged that the path had not been simple, because it can be expensive to study every facet of the cacao value chain.

The pair eventually managed to establish a cocoa seedling nursery in Dumoy, Toril, Davao City on a half-hectare plot of land they had long-term rent. With the assistance of experts in the field, they were able to set up the nursery in approximately a month. Understanding the state of the cacao industry, the couple developed Cacao Culture as a social enterprise that offered cacao farmers and their families a means of subsistence for their livelihood.

Cacao Culture currently produces the standard tablea, cocoa butter, cocoa powder, cacao nibs, as well as some cutting-edge items like cacao tea and cacao soaps. They are also working on additional goods. Their hard work paid off as their sales over the past years have been rising significantly. They owed it to the nation’s thriving tourism sector and the desire of consumers to support small businesses, nonprofit organizations, and goods that were produced in a healthy and sustainable way.

All of this was accomplished by Cacao Culture Farms without having a factory of their own. So how did they succeed? They worked with toll manufacturers for some of their products. A toll manufacturer is a business that uses specialized machinery to turn raw materials into finished goods for customers. The Reyes-Laos could perfect their products and test their markets by working with toll producers instead of committing to equipment purchases.

After leaving their IT jobs, farming gives the pair a reliable source of income through the establishment of a cacao seedling nursery, a cacao farm, and the production of their own goods including cacao tea and roasted cacao nibs.