Build trust, have partners

She never planned to be an entrepreneur. But as luck would have it, she was offered a job to be a buyer’s representative for furniture after working for a seafood company. This took her to Indonesia where she met someone who asked her to also get into flavored syrups from Italy. The syrups business took her to Italy to learn how to use and sell the product. Guess what beverage also used a lot of these syrups? Coffee. Besides Italian soda which Italians love during the hot summer, syrups also were used to create fancy coffee concoctions – such as Hazelnut Lattes and flavored brewed coffees.

Cherry Cruz, whose parents were not business people, found herself establishing a distribution company for Italian syrups and later, roasted coffee as well as equipment like espresso machines and grinders. She built a distribution network across the country and this also became her window to connect to different sources of local coffee, which farmers or their traders would offer her regional offices. What follows is a real “connecting the dots” story because one business would open a door to yet another related business.

Since coffee was now taking center stage, she studied for two months in the United States to learn roasting and eventually acquired a 16-kilo Probat roaster, a used 1965 model that would serve her needs. She started to roast the beans to serve her clients who bought her coffee machines. Little did she know she would soon outgrow this micro roaster and move on to a bigger 60-kilo capacity as the business grew.

First challenge in business: the big roaster came during the pandemic lockdown year. But not to be defeated, she conquered the challenge and developed the business despite the lockdown, the time when home-brewing actually prospered and created new markets for her. Challenge unlocked.

She also continued to learn from other experts even traveling to Thailand to attend courses in coffee processing, so she could teach the farmers supplying her how to make the coffee better. She is one of the first Q graders in the country and one of very few Q instructors in the region and shares all she knows in her school, the Barista Coffee Academy of Asia (BCAA).

Today, her business is 28 years old and who would have thought coffee would be front and center of her enterprise? From being a buyer’s rep for furniture to following her inner voice to try new things and explore other options, Cherry now even has her own coffee farm in Bukidnon. This is where she happily enjoys being with coffee farmers and tasting her very own produce. She has also mastered the art of processing coffee to better its quality, even for our Robustas which used to be just of commercial quality.

Cherry is the classic natural-born entrepreneur who just had a feel of business watching over her mother’s store during summer breaks. But entrepreneurship must be in her gut because she dares try other paths many business graduates would take time to analyze and then refuse to pursue. As soon as she worked with foreign principals, she did her homework. She now has contacts from Italy, USA, India and even South America and all for the coffee value chain.

What lessons can we get from a Business Economics graduate? Have grit and sense of purpose. Grit is what entrepreneurs develop over time. As you venture into new business the bolder you get to try even more new ideas. The other important thing to remember is your sense of purpose. And helping the coffee industry is what Cherry has always had in her mind. From selling to café owners to now selling her own coffee from her very own farm, Cherry has connected the dots the Universe has laid out for her.

The other apparent trait or value that Cherry has earned all these two decades is trust. She has earned the trust of foreign principals, which is something money cannot buy. This trust is built over time, over many deals, over many challenges. Trust is not earned overnight. While most distribution businesses are mostly led by men, Cherry stands tall as a woman who has conquered the coffee value chain – not just owning it, but being an active coffee educator in the classroom and at the farm. And it all started with selling a simple product like syrups. And then roasted coffee. And the rest, as they say, is “herstory” or history.

Twenty or so years ago when she started, one had to go abroad to seek out principals as coffee trade shows were few and far between. And that is what she did – a pioneer in seeking out connections to build on what she thought was just a distribution business.

What lessons can entrepreneurs take from this journey of Cherry Cruz? Be honest, be real, authentic and earn the trust of partners and principals. Further, she has kept good relations with everyone in the industry, earning her the respect and admiration of her peers.

Cherry listened to the inner voice telling her, guiding her and trusting the process. Prayers included, this export manager saw a road not taken and took the challenge to discover new things and be good at it. Distribution may be a common business model, but Cherry made it oh-so-interesting by connecting the café to the farm and being there every step of the way for her customers. She also kept her options open for relationships with more principals and a little luck surely helped her along the way. But trust is the currency. Build it and they will come.