Eye on Entrepreneurs: Living green is satisfying

Dolores Reyes-Aspiras thinks that more people today are snubbing animal products and are shifting to vegetable-based diets. “Being health conscious is the way to go," she says. Aspiras — the owner of Green Wok Deli & Café along Kamuning Road in Quezon City — is a proof of how beneficial a green diet can be. Aspiras turned vegetarian in 2007 to help manage her asthma. “My health really improved a lot," she says. This experience bolstered her plan to establish Green Wok. “This very experience is my way of showing to anyone that living green is satisfying," she tells. Her husband Joe and one of her maternal uncles assisted her in raising the initial investment of P150,000 for the restaurant’s facilities and the renovation of what used to be an overcrowded dining area. When the business was just starting, the five of them switched turns as cook, driver, delivery person, shopkeeper, and marketing person, Aspiras recalls. Green Wok serves Filipino food that uses meat alternatives — like veggie sisig, dinuguan, barbeque, and sinigang. The restaurant sells textured vegetable protein and frozen vegetarian deli items like ham, salami, hotdogs, spare ribs, nuggets, and gluten. Green Wok also offers coffee with a unique blend of bee pollen, guava extract, pandan, mushroom, and gotu kola or Asiatic pennywort, a medicinal herb. Aspiras said that since the store’s space is small, Green Wok functions primarily as a takeout point — through phone-in or over-the-counter orders. Aspiras says she is motivated to make the business even more profitable “by improving our service, our menu plans, our interpersonal relationship with customers, and our cash flows." To grow its client base, Green Wok also offers nutritional counseling and conducts health symposiums in some medical institutions. “Most doctors tell their patients to lessen from eating meat, but they don’t know where to go after that. That’s where Green Wok comes into play." -- OMG, GMANews.TV