Café Yagam wins global competition

Baguio City’s Café Yagam is hailed as one of the winners of the Google Business Group (GBG) Success Stories 2017.

Among the nine finalists, the local café is noted as the first in the Cordillera region to win the prestigious competition which recognizes inspiring stories by entrepreneurs around the world, maximizing the use of Google technologies to create impact in their business and

community.

Google takes notice of the story of the café in using ‘Google my business’ in effectively emphasizing Cordilleran culture through food and coffee.

Poleen Carla Rosito-Dulnuan, founder and owner of the café said the win was much unexpected and they are thankful for the continuous amount of support of people in the community and around the world.

“Overwhelming jay support at the same time adu ti umay ditoy,” said Dulnuan, an anthropologist.

The Kalinga native said they will continue to work on finding more ways for the café to grow, improve the consistency of the food, and despite the three year struggle in the past, they are now on the verge of devising ways to operate the business.

“Importantly nu kasanu mi nga masustain jay café, interest ti tao, advocacy, continue ti kapi ken jay food ti Cordillera, look for more ways nga adadu ti maka experience ditoy,” Dulnuan said.

GBG manager Vincent Tabor said a team from Google will keep in touch with the winners which will be filming their stories and will join the Google I/O tech conference in San Francisco, California next year.

This year’s GBG Success Stories winners include the Riliv.co from Indonesia, an online platform for people to overcome the stigma against accessing mental health care; Virtualahan from Davao, Philippines, a social enterprise that trains and employs people experiencing employment discrimination and Khalti.com from Nepal the People’s Choice winner, composed of a team empowering people in financially by driving the country towards a cashless economy.

Tabor said entrepreneurs should be hungry for information and always be on a look out.

“Always look for ways para ma - improve iyong business. Dulnuan got curious on what is GBG all about and ever since she attended, umakyat iyong kanyang business,” added Tabor.

“Entrepreneurs sometimes go out of the restaurant and from their business and look for help from other through events or other people,” Tabor quipped.