In the old days before the Covid pandemic, Suzette Tieng Yu—now 50 and a mother of two boys who are currently in university—owned and managed the Sunny Skies Learning Center for 20 years, a school in Quezon City, providing cognitive, physical, social, emotional, language and musical development to preschool-age children.
The school was doing well, with an average of 300 students enrolled annually in four learning levels: The Baby Class, The Toddler Group, The Preschoolers, and The Big Kids. Basic Mandarin was incorporated in all classes in Sunny Skies and everyone, including the adults who attended the classes with their children, learned Mandarin via music and movement. In fact, Teacher Suzette was such a respected educator that a famous milk company hired her to speak on child development in tandem with several developmental pediatricians nationwide.
One rainy afternoon in August 2019, Teacher Suzette sat at home, missing her students, as classes had been called off due to inclement weather. Being a practicing, US-licensed Maestro educator (ranked in the top 1% worldwide by the US educational system and the first Filipina to receive the Ruth Anderson Award), the Chinese-Canadian-Filipina was not one used to inactivity. Out of boredom, she began whipping up gluten-free, organic, artisanal cinnamon rolls for the families enrolled in her classes, recalling an old recipe that she learned (together with culinary input from her two sons) during her university days in Vancouver where the famous UBC (University of British Columbia) cinnamon rolls were all the rage.
Fast forward to March 2020, when the great pandemic hit: Teacher Suzette had to shutdown her baby/toddler/pre-school as per DOH protocols. Lo and behold, families began ordering her organic cinnamon rolls by the tray (each tray consists of 24 pieces) and her then teenage sons were helping her perfect the recipe. Thanks to ingenuity, word of mouth from loyal clients, social media marketing and hard work, Suzette’s Gluten-Free Artisanal Pastries became a thriving online business, catering to diabetics, seniors, vegetarians and the health-conscious. In an unforeseen stroke of luck, too, Teacher Suzette registered her bakery with the DTI just a few months before Covid struck. It was also around this time she had the “Suzette’s” red-and-white logo created by Lech Velasco, founder and chief designer of hot branding studio Together We Design, and vetted by feng shui expert Tony Suvega.
With much passion for excellence, Suzette treats her business not simply as a business. “This is an advocacy for health. I want Pinoys to realize that being healthy doesn’t mean that food has to be boring. Each roll I create is artisanal, made with no machines and mixers, by the hands of a working mother to her countrymen with love, with absolutely zero preservatives, chemical additives, improvers, bromates or emulsifiers. I use gluten-free flour, extra-virgin coconut oil, gourmet sea salt, clover honey, low-glycemic index coco sugar and Saigon cinnamon. I create low-GI food. This is important for my customers. And I use the traditional method of creating dough in order to pass on positive vibes to each client,” she declared, as she believes in using only high-quality, natural ingredients. “Everything is handmade with love, thus, production takes longer as no machines are used. I accept only limited orders per day.
“When my dad was diagnosed with cancer 15 years ago, and eventually died a year later, I realized that a plant-based diet devoid of refined and processed food was extremely important,” the baker-entrepreneur said.
Being a child advocate, Suzette is currently involved in several feeding programs for various charities. Proceeds of her business go to Metro Manila hospitals as well; each purchase of her rolls contributes to the well-being of local farmers, too.
Suzette’s Gluten-Free Artisanal Pastries has been featured in another leading newspaper, ABS-CBN, GMA 7 and UNTV. The enterprise has received several awards for branding and business excellence, namely: Q-Asia for Brand Excellence, Elite Awards for New Businesses, the Asian Sterling Awards and Brand-Asia Awards.
As someone who believes in constant learning and growth no matter how old one is, She Who Cannot Be Idle is now working towards her degree in Applied Nutrition and Nutritional Counseling in British Columbia as part of her dream of making more organic food for fellow Pinoys. Unlike other bakers, Suzette makes sure that she is studying and continuously learning a lot about vegetarianism and whole foods. The course, which is open only to Canadian citizens, isn’t easy, as evidenced by the high drop out rate because of the hard work and discipline needed to complete it. The degree the entrepreneur will receive within the year is recognized by theInternational Organization of Nutritional Consultants (IONC), Private Career Training Institutions Agency (PCTIA), Canadian Association of Natural Nutritional Practitioners (CANNP) and the National Association of Nutrition Professionals (NANP).
