Guelph’s first Filipino restaurant opened its doors on Saturday and saw a constant flow of customers delighted to try food samples.
‘Lovely Pao’ which translates to 'lovely bread,' manufactures fresh-baked Filipino Pao, lomi (stew), mami (soup), lovely rice, (chicken rice) pork adobo (a tangy-sweet dish), papaiton (cooked beef innards), chicken apritada (chicken cooked with tomato sauce and vegetables) and rice with pork chicken or beef.
With a dining hall and a massive kitchen that produces large quantities of food ready to be delivered to restaurants in neighbouring cities, the restaurant also has a small section that sells Filipino groceries.
With a location in Toronto, the opening of the restaurant on 355 Elmira Rd. was nothing less than a powerful journey for the family.
Owner of the restaurant Shahraz Khan, 25, says his mother, Connie Laoyan founded Lovely Pao when she was at home after a hip replacement surgery in 2014 and was unable to return to her dentistry profession while Khan was in college pursuing a police foundation program.
“We were about to get evicted, we couldn’t get by that month,” says Khan of their rental apartment in Toronto.
And so with her last paycheck, Laoyan purchased some cooking ingredients and with the company of her sister, made authentic Filipino siopao, a steamed hot bun with minced meat and egg inside
Khan says the two sisters first sold it to their friends and family who understood the difficult time the family was going through. However, the word of the authentic Filipino dish travelled fast and the siopao began generating enough revenue to the point where the family began to profit off of their sales of the homemade dish by selling it to customers from their apartment.
“Eventually, it came to the point where the smell of the food was going to the hallways so our neighbours actually signed a petition to get us evicted,” says Khan.
“That forced us to go out and look for a restaurant.”
Khan says in 2014, Laoyan, her boyfriend and Khan opened a temporary location in Toronto and then opened a location beside Yorkdale Mall where the first Lovely Pao has been in business for five years.
After establishing their first restaurant, the mother, son and her boyfriend began selling siopao to selected Filipino restaurants and grocery stores in Toronto, furthering their business and eventually becoming a recognized Filipino brand in Toronto.
“In Filipino culture, when you invite guests over, you offer them food, it’s usually the first thing you do,” said Khan.
He says for the first few years, the restaurant only sold siopao. As time progressed, the three added a few additional authentic Filipino dishes while focusing on the quality of the products.
“When people try it, they’re like ‘oh wow, that’s so good,’ they ask ‘where do you buy it from? And they give our address, they come, they buy one and the effect continues and it's an upwards spiral,” says Khan adding that for four years, the business spent zero dollars on marketing its brand and only relied on word of mouth.
“We hear all these inspiring stories on how people travel to come to us,” says Khan.
He says when people visit other Filipino restaurants searching for their products, it benefits those store owners as well by drawing customers to their stores.
He says the philosophy of ‘helping others’ is what Lovely Pao operates by.
“The core was to help people from the very beginning,” says Khan who dropped out of his police foundations program in the hopes of starting a successful company.
“Even when facing adversity or when we’re not doing so well, when you help people, you, in turn, help yourself in a way.”
He says he’s doing exactly what he always aspired to do by helping people build lives by providing jobs and creating opportunities for people in a ‘lovely’ environment that values its workers.
Khan says he read several books educating himself on successful entrepreneurs, finance, business, while also building his physique to improve his confidence and learning how to cook to improve his skill set.
“My physique went up, my strength went up, and as the business grew and the groceries increased and we needed to carry more flour, I was strong enough to carry the flour as the business grew,” says Khan.
“The business grew with me,” he says about the positive work environment that had a ripple effect on the other workers. He says every time someone slacked, the others would push the individual towards success.
He says when the restaurant reached a certain reach that Toronto has to offer, they opened a branch in Guelph so they could be easily accessible to neighbouring cities such as Windsor, Hamilton, London and Kitchener.
“We can manufacture the siopao here and deliver it to other cities,” says Khan.
He says the hope of the restaurant is to continue to grow as people recognize the high quality of their products.
He says the name Lovely Pao derives from their effort of putting love in their products.
“You will just know by the taste and everything,” says Khan.
Lovely Pao operates from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. from Tuesday to Fridays and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on the weekends.
