For Steffi Santana, co-founder of Lola Nena’s, the lessons from failure were as valuable as the eventual success. After growing up in the restaurant industry in the U.S., Steffi returned to the Philippines with her family and opened her first restaurant with her dad in a mall setting in Ever Gotesco in 2011. It didn’t last long.
Despite their experience, the restaurant shut down within a year. The loss hit hard—emotionally and financially. But rather than give up, Steffi looked back to understand what went wrong. One of the key insights? The high cost of mall operations was draining their resources too quickly.
“We learned last time na hindi muna tayo mag mo-mall… there’s so many fees and it costs really a lot to open in a mall,” Steffi explains.
From rent and association dues to marketing charges and fit-out requirements, the mall model left little room for experimentation—especially for a young entrepreneur just getting her footing. So when she and her dad decided to launch another venture in 2012, they flipped the script entirely.
With a family recipe for pichi-pichi in hand and a determination to keep costs low, they opened the first Lola Nena’s on Quezon Avenue—not in a mall, but in a humble, street-side space. The initial capital was under ₱100,000. They had just one employee. It was a bare-bones operation, but it allowed them to control costs, test the market, and grow organically.
And it worked.
Without the pressure of sky-high mall expenses, they focused on quality and word-of-mouth marketing. The pichi-pichi became a hit. Later, their triple cheese donuts took social media by storm. Lola Nena’s quickly grew a cult following—all without a single mall location in its early years.
By going against the grain, Steffi proved that profitability doesn’t always come from premium spaces—it can come from strategic, street-smart decisions grounded in experience.
This article includes quotes from an interview originally published by Esquire Philippines, authored by Henry Ong.
