Bakers Journal - Goldilocks Bakeshop
Goldilocks Bakeshop
By
Tuija Seipell 
In the Philippines, people greet each other in the Tagalog
language by saying “Kumain ka na ba?” It does not mean “Hi! How are you?”, it means “Hi! Have you eaten?”
“Food is an important part of the Filipino culture,” says Maj Yee,
owner
of Goldilocks Bakeshop in Vancouver. “Filipinos like to eat five
meals a day. And people thank with food; they celebrate with food,
and they give food if someone is sick or has had a baby. Food is a
huge part of every gathering and celebration.”
The other cornerstone of Filipino society is family and loyalty to family members. Food, family and
loyalty are also the reasons why the Goldilocks bakery emporium
originally started in the Philippines in 1966 and why it continues
its unrivalled success today with more than 110 stores in the
Philippines, 14 in California and one in Canada, in Vancouver.
Two young women, sisters Milagros Leelin Yee and Clarita Leelin Go,
now affectionately known by everyone else in the business as “The
Two Moms,” started the original Filipino Goldilocks, buoyed by the
compliments they received on their home baking, particularly the
fabulous cakes they took to their friends and relatives on every
occasion.
In the mid-’70s, as family members moved to North America, they
transplanted the Goldilocks business here. By that time, the
Goldilocks brand had become hugely successful in the Philippines.
With a name so well known, Goldilocks has enjoyed great success in
North America by serving the needs of its mainly Filipino client
base.
Goldilocks opened its first North American store in southern
California in 1976. Currently, in addition to 14 retail stores,
there are also two large manufacturing plants or commissaries in
California.
Canadian Base in Vancouver
“Goldilocks is a respected household name in the Philippines,” says Maj Yee with apparent pride. Maj is the daughter of Milagros Leelin
Yee, and runs the Vancouver-based Canadian operation that opened in
1984.
The 5,000-square-foot premises on a highly visible street corner of
Vancouver’s busy Broadway include a full-scale retail bakery, a
50-seat restaurant and a large manufacturing facility. The
distinctive handwritten Goldilocks logo and the massive wedding
cakes in the window form an eye-catching display that for the past
two decades has drawn the attention of not only the Filipino
customers and tourists who make this their regular destination, but
also many others who may not otherwise have paid any attention to a
“Filipino” bakery. Goldilocks Vancouver is the company’s only retail
store in Canada, but it supplies Goldilocks products to Asian food
stores across the country.
Filipino baked goods have names that sound yummy and friendly, such
as monay and pandesiosa (sweet milk and egg breads), ensaymada
(sweet and light muffin-shaped brioche) and mamon (light and fluffy
sponge cakes). These baked goods don’t taste overtly exotic, even to
the most unadventurous sweet tooth. Many of the Filipino favourites
– including breads, sweets and cakes – are light, fluffy and spongy,
and have mild and sweet tastes similar to a basic egg bread, sponge
cake or shortbread.
At Goldilocks, to help the uninitiated, the ingredients of all of
the more than 100 different bakery products and another 100
restaurant items (savoury baked goods and Asian-inspired meals) are
explained in detailed product cards placed on the trays in the
display cases.
Some of the most popular bakery items at Goldilocks include the
little (about 2.5-inches in length and 1-inch in width) boat-shaped
thin tarts filled with macapuno (young coconut), langka (jackfruit),
ube (purple yam), cheese, mango, pineapple or almond.
Goldilocks’ “native cakes” or kakanin are also huge sellers. They
include biko – a glutinous rice pudding cooked in coconut milk and
brown sugar, garnished with latik (extracted coconut) – also
available in the ube-flavoured variety. Cassava native cakes are
made from the yucca plant (kamoteng-kahoy) and coconut milk, and
topped with macapuno and cheese. Cutchinta cakes are steamed and
chewy rice cakes either light brown or deep orange in colour.
Another popular Filipino delight is polvoron or “Manila shortbread,”
a sweet mixture of toasted flour, milk, butter and sugar cooked and
then molded, and
available plain or flavoured with cashew, pinipig (a special roasted
rice crisp), ube, peanut and chocolate-honey-almond. The name is
derived from the Tagalog word pulbos, which means a powdery candy.
Some of the polvoron has a halvah-like taste and lightness.
Goldilocks is also well known for the specialty Filipino cake rolls
that look like jelly rolls decorated yule-log fashion. One of the
most popular rolls is the purple Ube Macapuno Roll made of purple
yam (ube) sponge cake with a layer of butter cream icing, rolled and
iced with ube-flavoured butter icing and topped with a layer of
sweetened macapuno.
Another Goldilocks favourite is special event cakes, particularly
wedding cakes and kids’ party cakes.
“Kids’ party cakes are huge,” says Anne Ilagan, manager of the
Goldilocks Vancouver store. “It is not unusual (in Filipino culture)
to have 200 people at a child’s first birthday party with a huge,
elaborately decorated, themed cake costing $400 as the centrepiece
of the event. The first, seventh and 18th birthdays are big events.”
Wider Appeal
Maj Yee says that, although most of Goldilocks’ clientele is of
Filipino origin, the store attracts a mix of people.
“We have the advantage of offering something different, something
you cannot get at a Safeway,” says Maj Yee. “And that interests
people more and more these days.”
Ilagan adds that Goldilocks’ customers in the Vancouver area behave
differently from Goldilocks’ customers in California or the
Philippines.
“Here, people have smaller households, so we package the products
differently,” she says. “It is easy to tell an American visitor in
our store. When they come in, they buy a dozen of this and two dozen
of that to take home, but our regular customers buy less at a time.”
What started as a hobby for two women is now an international
conglomerate with more than 3,500 employees. The Vancouver operation
employs 50 people, and while growing the business in Canada has not
been a major goal, Maj Yee is currently looking at four different
locations in the Surrey area near Vancouver with the idea of opening
another store there in the near future. Although when asked if
stores elsewhere in Canada are a consideration, Maj Yee is quick to
respond.
“No, we don’t have any family members elsewhere.”
Family ties remain the glue that keeps the company going. For
example, all of Milagros Leelin Yee’s five children are involved in
the company. And at age 72, Milagros herself still shows up at the
California operation every day, doing whatever it takes, from
sweeping floors to serving customers.
One does not need to talk with Maj Yee and Anne Ilagan for long to
realize there is a rich cache of “The Two Moms” stories within the
corporate lore. The stories are told with affection and respect, but
with a distinct twinkle in the eye. Says Maj Yee: “If Mom arrives
later one morning, everybody knows that she’s already been on the
phone talking to all of the stores and asking if they need anything.
She has absolutely no intention of stopping.”
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