Hello mga kababayan, hive pinoys! It's me PegasusX and I'm gonna share our little achievement with you all.

Let me give you all a brief context as to why this idea of starting a homemade business grew in my mind.
As of today, I'm taking up a Bachelor of Secondary Education Major in Filipino and am currently in 3rd year, as a college student who didn't have all the means to enroll in college and even survive all 4 years to graduate, I decided to have a part-time work like every other college students who doesn't have a family who are financially stable.

Until one day when I was given an opportunity to work in a bakery, I haven't any or even one idea how it worked and how pieces of bread are made, so because I was literally an intern and training how to do this kind of work I was paid a small amount every day. Until years have passed of doing this kind of work, I learned all the skills and recipes on how to make different kinds of breads, cookies, and even pastries. This work helped me financially to finally enroll in college and it was in 1st year of college when I met my partner.

The idea behind our plan

It was when in pandemic that we decided to stop for 1 year in college due to some personal reasons and that was the time when we had so many things we wanted to achieve, we would like to take the opportunity that we had so much time in our hands now so we had different plans in mind that we like to try and one of them was starting our own small business, and the two top business ideas that we came up with were either an online thrift store, where we would sell thrift dry goods like clothes and shoes or what we call here in the Philippines an "Ukay-ukay" or a homemade bakeshop.

Why Thrift store is our first choice?

My partner/girlfriend is working as a saleslady and she mostly deals with clothes and shoes so it is an advantage to us because she knows different trends and kinds of clothes. So she can manage the online shop well and knows the likings of the customers.
BUT...
Here is the dilemma that we faced when we plan to execute and open the online thrift shop.
The "COMPETITORS"
There are so many online thrift shops that are open and selling here in our place and some of them even have a physical store and some of them are people that I know of (past elementary and high school classmates) so we think that this kind of business is saturated here in our place so we felt discouraged to open one ourselves.

The birth of Al'mond Bakeshop

After the idea and the plan of opening an online thrift shop failed, we thought of another business that we could try to open and why not do something that I trained and worked for almost 4 years, MAKING BREADS! and the good thing is it's not saturated, there are no online bakeshops that I know of or have seen here in our place.

Opening a bakeshop requires a decent capital to begin with, so the money that we provided for the thrift shop became the stepping stone that started our new business. After its all been said and done we finally decided, "OPEN AN ONLINE BAKESHOP" that customers can order online.

So we looked for the types of equipment that we needed especially the oven.
After a week of waiting to complete the equipments, whats the next step. Buying the ingredients.

I finally started my first batch of bread, and it's the famous "ensaymada".
To be different from other bakeries, I made 4 variants of my ensaymada.
Cheese Overload, Cheesy Ube, Chocolate Mocha, and Salted Caramel with nuts.

4 variants ensaymada

All mocha chocolate

So far we have a decent number of customers who have ordered from us and I make sure to deliver the bread freshly made to them, I only make bread based on the orders pending because they can choose what variant of ensaymada they want or can order.
I plan to add cookies and other pastries this Christmas season.

Orders made

Where did Al'mond's name come from

When I was thinking of the name of the bakeshop, I made different names like combining the initials of our name and surname but in the end, I was not satisfied with the names that I came up with. Until I remembered, what if I combined the letters of my dog's name Ali, and my girlfriend's surname Monda, and came up with Al'mond! and Almond is a kind of chocolate that can be connected to baking, cakes, cookies and pastries. To be honest, I am kinda proud of myself that I came up with that name.

Our baby Ali

Final Thoughts

Starting a business like any other business requires a lot from you, your money, your time and energy, ideas, and your very own mental health but most especially starting a business is a risk, there is no sure result, maybe it will succeed or maybe it will fail and before starting one be sure you always prepare yourself for the worst case scenario.
Have successful people inspire you to continue the things you want to do.
What works for them may not work for you and what works for you might not work for them so trust your instincts and I hope and pray that we all succeed in the future.

Thank you for your time HivePH and Kababayans!

All images are mine unless stated otherwise.