There’s Money in Rice Coffee - 3

Letty is not content, however, with just her rice coffee. Lately she has ventured into the manufacture of other products that she sells together with her rice coffee. One of her most promising new products is malunggay tea. She now processes about 300 kilos of malunggay leaves a month. As more people come to know about this, she could easily increase her production. The teabag machine has been instrumental in enabling Letty to process other tea products.

Among the new products are ginger-apple tea, squash tea, lemon grass tea, turmeric tea, ginger chips and salabat. Aside from reaping financial returns from these new products, Letty is helping growers of raw materials. She is making several families happy in Brgy. Linglingay in Munoz. They are supplying her with fresh malunggay leaves which she makes into tea. She buys the leaves at R10 per kilo.

Meantime, she is also paying attention to a three-hectare farm in Munoz where she grows rice organically. Another farm is a 10-hectare property in Cauayan, Isabela, which she and her husband are managing. Her husband is a bank employee in Cauayan. They don’t use any chemical fertilizers and pesticides in growing their rice. Thus, they can claim that their rice coffee is made from organic rice.Meanwhile, Letty does not stop looking for new products she could add to her product lines. And it would not be surprising if she will come up soon with other products from readily available indigenous raw materials.