Conti’s: Of Sisters & Salmon

This trio of sisters began their phenomenal restaurant and bakeshop chain 16 years ago in a makeshift kitchen in the backyard of a house on Ramona Tirona St. in BF Homes in Parañaque City. The eldest Cecille (Marañon) and the youngest Angie (Martinez) were the “tasters” and “order-takers” while the middle sister Carole (Sumulong), who owned the house, was the chef.

Upon the suggestion of Carole’s husband Quintin, the sisters decided to name their food business, “Conti’s,” after their maiden name. (Their father was Vicente Conti of Batangas.)

Carole’s very first product offering was her Chocolate Cake, followed by her Baked Salmon (which she first tasted while in Vancouver, Canada) and Garlic Sotanghon (a recipe the sisters inherited from their mother Naida). The Conti sisters say they had no capital, only “talent and sweat.” The rest, recalls Carole, they charged to their credit cards.

Sixteen years after their food-order business was launched and 14 years (they celebrate their anniversary next week) after their very first restaurant was built, the sisters now boast 10 Conti’s restaurants (BF Homes, Greenhills, Serendra, TriNoma, Nuvali, Greenbelt, Katipunan, Alabang Town Center, Westgate and Robinsons Magnolia) all over Metro Manila. From an initial seven employees (including the sisters themselves and Carole’s husband Quintin), Conti’s now counts 850 people on its payroll.

And to think the sisters used to take down phoned-in orders themselves on small scraps of scratch paper, and keep the day’s earnings in a small tickler box. Carole would bring home in her luggage frozen salmon from North America because salmon wasn’t readily available in the Philippines in the mid- to late ‘90s. (Asked how many kilos of Norwegian salmon Conti’s now consumes in a month, Carole tries to hide a smile. “No, not kilos,” she discloses. “Tons. Two to three tons.”)

Conti’s has indeed gone a long way, and we’re not just talking about the distance from BF Parañaque to TriNoma in Quezon City (their biggest branch in terms of volume of sales).

And the best part of it, according to the sisters, is that the quality of their relationship, just like the bestselling Baked Salmon on the Conti’s menu, remains as solid and consistent as ever, passing the test of time.

“We are proud that we are all still working happily together as a family,” says Carole.  “Our long-time employees are still with us and we are still able to make our customers happy with the food that we serve.”

“We are proud of the loyalty of employees and customers,” beams Cecille. “We always attend to them. We never let them leave the restaurant displeased. We pacify them. We go out of our way to please them.”

 â€œUp to now, we have kept the joy that we have in our hearts, we have kept the joy in our employees belonging in this organization. And we have kept our customers happy through Conti’s food and service,” adds Angie.

Through word of mouth, Conti’s fame spread and in 2005, there was a clamor to open a branch in Greenhills.

“The secret of Conti’s success is that we give our best. When we create a dish, it has to be at its best because by being successful we are looking after the welfare of not just people working for us but even our suppliers,” believes Carole.

Cecille believes Conti’s success comes from the sisters’ determination to remain grounded. They remain low-key and self-effacing. You actually can’t tell them apart from their customers.

“We don’t float,” Cecille smiles.

 â€˜The Notebook’

Cecille and Carole took up Accounting at St. Paul’s, while Angie majored in Communications. Though a Certified Public Accountant, Carole found herself drawn to cooking and baking classes. She would amaze guests with her cooking, and soon, her friends and her sisters’ friends in the BF Homes community (where they all once lived)  started asking if they could order from her kitchen.

Carole’s most prized possession until now is a recipe notebook she has kept since the ‘90s. She would write down the recipes of dishes that she enjoyed and kitchen-test them. Among the prized entries in the notebook, a steno notebook actually, are the recipes of Baked Salmon (Conti’s signature dish), their mother’s sotanghon, the Seafood Linguine in Pesto Sauce and many others.

When she was living in the US, Carole almost lost that grease-stained notebook when she was moving houses. A day after settling in her new apartment, Carole, then heavy with child, realized she was missing something. The notebook!

So she immediately went back to her former apartment to search for it and, after a futile search, realized there was only one place where she hadn’t looked. The dumpster.

With the help of a niece, the pregnant Carole mounted a ladder on the side of a dumpster and searched for the trash bag that came from her former home. Not easy, for most trash bags looked  alike. Finally, she spotted HER trash bag, and with the help of her niece, pulled it out of the dumpster. And lo and behold, the notebook was there, and she found it in the nick of time.

An hour after Carole “rescued” her notebook, the garbage truck arrived.

That notebook is still with Carole, kept in a vault somewhere.

The future

In the beginning, the sisters (they have one brother) had qualms about calling their restaurant business, “Conti’s,” because a relative was worried that it sounded like “konti,” the Filipino word for “not much.”

Some concerned friends also told the sisters that they picked the wrong spot for their very first restaurant, which was at the so-called “tumbok” (the spot right smack at the end of a road) of a main avenue in BF Homes.

But Cecille, Carole and Angie believed in their faith, their product and in themselves more than in other factors, and so they persevered. They disproved the “konti” fear by being generous with their portions and they pacified feng shui believers by putting a water feature inside their BF restaurant.

And look where they are now. The sisters are looking with confidence into the future, into “passing the business to the next generation with the same spirit that we believe is the secret to the success of Conti’s,” says Carole.

They are also looking forward to presenting the latest item on their menu: Macadamia Madness, a torte that will simply drive you crazy.

Though they’re not saying if it’s another prized recipe from Carole’s notebook, the sisters are happy to reveal that much of Conti’s success is really no secret.

Just step into their restaurant — and you will know.

(You may e-mail me at [email protected].)