Paco Magsaysay looks back on Carmen’s Best journey in new book

Paco Magsaysay turned surplus fresh milk from a dairy farm into Carmen’s Best, building an artisanal ice cream business that even caught the attention of Pope Francis. But four years ago, he sold 49% of the company’s shares to Metro Pacific and stepped away from its operations.

Now, Magsaysay is revisiting the highs and lows of that journey in “Beyond the Scoop,” a book that chronicles how the business began, the challenges it faced and the lessons he learned along the way.

Starting an ice cream business was not an obvious move for Magsaysay, who had previously run the family’s cable business. The idea came about after his father, Ramon Magsaysay Jr., and his friends established a dairy farm in Bay, Laguna, initially intending to sell fresh milk.

But sales were slow, leaving the group with more milk than it could sell. “We were throwing away a lot of fresh milk. My father’s group was not able to sell the milk fast enough. I knew we had to do something with that milk,” he recalled.

The surplus milk became the foundation of Carmen’s Best, giving the brand what Magsaysay considered its unique selling proposition: fresh milk sourced directly from its own dairy farm.

“We had the cows and we were using fresh milk. That was our vertical integration. That made our product different from other brands available locally. Mass market-produced ice cream does not use fresh milk. They use powdered milk,” he said.

“The product would be a lot cheaper and a lot easier, for handling and logistics, if we use powdered milk. That’s why our ice cream is expensive because we use fresh milk. We really wanted to make our product very different. We want to make it taste the best way.”

Magsaysay began selling Carmen’s Best, which he named after his only daughter and youngest child, in February 2011, two years after the company was incorporated with the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2009.

“We just kept on selling from my house in Alabang,” he said. “Pero mabagal ang benta, so we decided to look for selling locations outside Alabang,”

The brand found its first reseller in Chit Juan, who had just opened ECHOstore in Serendra. Juan also operated another eco-store at Centris, along EDSA near the corner of Quezon Avenue.

“She was the first one who helped us out. She knew my dad from the Senate. She was active in agriculture. That was her background,” Magsaysay said.

Carmen’s Best began expanding gradually in late 2011, as it reached more customers through Juan’s stores. For the first four years, Carmen’s Best was sold to community resellers, small shops, and a few restaurants. 

Then the brand got a major boost in 2015 when Pope Francis was served two flavors of the artisanal ice cream — pistachio and brown butter almond brittle — aboard a Philippine Airlines flight back to Rome. News of the papal connection helped put the brand in the spotlight.

“That became the turning point for Carmen’s Best,” Magsaysay said. “It was served to the Pope. We were just so happy to have been picked as the dessert supplier for the Pope.”

Another unexpected advantage was the name of PAL owner Lucio Tan’s wife, Carmen, which led some people to mistakenly believe she was behind the ice cream brand.

“It also helped that the wife of PAL owner, Lucio Tan, is named Carmen. That’s a big help to us. Some people think our ice cream was made by the wife of the PAL owner. I didn’t mind that. I was totally fine with that,” Magsaysay said.

By then, the company was already working with PAL’s catering and purchasing teams.

Magsaysay credits his business education at Asian Institute of Management, where he completed his Masters in Entrepreneurship course that prompted him to write the book, “Beyond the Scoop, The Carmen’s Best Story.” 

“We were kind of just playing around,” Magsaysay recalled. “Prof. Andy [Ferreria] taught the first part of our master’s course called Self Mastery or Understanding Yourself, understanding your strengths and weaknesses.

“From there, I went straight to the Coleman Store at Alabang Town Center and I bought a Kitchen Air mixer. I started baking with me kids that night. Then we started making ice cream. That was in 2009. We started baking cookies, making fudge. That sort of started my journey for Carmen’s Best.”

When Magsaysay got into ice cream-making in 2010, he was not anymore “intimidated” anymore in the kitchen. “I had been baking a few years,” he said. “I didn’t have a food tech then, but I was the one who conceptualized and came out with the first four flavors of Carmen’s Best – salted caramel, butter pecan, Brazilian coffee and malted milk.

Salted caramel turned out to be the best-selling flavor of Carmen’s Best. “In the US, that was the equivalent of vanilla,” said Magsaysay. “To Filipinos, we made salted caramel.”

Today, there are about 50 flavors of Carmen’s Best. “But we are not launching all flavors,” informed Magsaysay. “We would rotate the flavors. The usual sellers and the slow sellers, we move them around.”

Carmen is the youngest among three children of Magsaysay. He also has two boys Jaime and Mikey.

Magsaysay said people around him encouraged him to document the story of Carmen’s Best in a book, believing others would be interested in learning about his journey.

“It was just me sharing my journey or telling stories,” he said.

After 15 years of building the brand, Magsaysay decided to self-publish “Beyond the Scoop.” The process proved more challenging and expensive than he had anticipated, requiring him to hire his own editor and artist.

He had initially considered working with a publisher but eventually opted to do things his way.

“Three years ago, I really wanted to do it my way. So, when I was initially working with a publisher, there were restraints that I didn’t want to work with. So, I decided to do self-publishing. I didn’t realize that was very hard and very costly. But this book is more like a legacy thing,” he said.

More than a business memoir, Magsaysay sees the book as something he can leave behind for his children.

“This is not just for me but even for my kids, when I’m no longer around. The book is something that they can look at and remember me,” he said.

“Beyond the Scoop” is Magsaysay’s second book. In 2021, he published “The Only Son,” about his father, former senator Ramon Magsaysay Jr., the only son of former Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay.

The journey behind Carmen’s Best was not without setbacks. During the pandemic, sales plunged by 80%, forcing Magsaysay and his partners to dig into their own pockets to keep the business afloat.

“We were pulling money right from our own pockets,” he said. “We considered closing down and it was not that easy.”

Magsaysay also faced a personal battle when he was diagnosed with early-stage cancer. He underwent eight chemotherapy sessions, each lasting six hours, and emerged from the experience with a more positive outlook on life.

“When that happens to you, you can either look at it in a positive way or a negative way,” he said. “I chose to look at it in a positive way, learned from it and be a better person.”

Magsaysay likens the 34-chapter “Beyond the Scoop” to “Chicken Soup for the Soul,” with each chapter offering a bite-sized story that draw on different experiences from his entrepreneurial journey.

He hopes his experience of building Carmen’s Best will resonate with readers and perhaps inspire them to pursue their own ambitions. 

“I think if you’re motivated not because of money but because you wanted to prove something, the drive is much stronger. When the business started to grow, it just fueled my desire to make it really work,” he said.