DECENA'S PUTO CALASIAO. The puto ube cheese is the bestseller of Decena's puto Calasiao. Puto is a well-known product of Calasiao town in Pangasinan. (Photo courtesy of Decena's Puto Calasiao Instagram account)
CALASIAO, Pangasinan – The famous bite-sized native rice cake (puto) here continues to thrive amid the pandemic as one of its original producers uses social media to market the product.
In a phone interview on Thursday, Raquel Decena-Balisi, one of the Decena’s puto Calasiao siblings, said they still continue to make an average of 100 to 200 kilos of puto daily amid the quarantine.
“Our market is really in Metro Manila. Although, we produce the puto in Calasiao and ship it through cargo to Metro Manila,” Balisi said.
She admitted that while their stalls in Pangasinan have just recently opened following the shift from enhanced community quarantine to general community quarantine of the province, their sales in Metro Manila remained.
The market of their product grew during the quarantine, especially with the attention it is getting from celebrities and vloggers, she added.
“We have our Instagram account where orders are being placed. Even celebrities and vloggers have noticed our product and are patronizing our puto,” she said.
Decena’s puto Calasiao offers a variety of flavored puto, such as puto pandan with cheese, puto white with cheese, classic puto, kutsinta and puto ube with cheese, which is the bestseller.
Balisi said their product’s price in Metro Manila ranges from PHP50 per pack for plain puto and kutsinta and PHP75 per pack for other flavors, while puto is sold per kilogram in the province.
Some of the celebrities are also posting about the product on their social media accounts.
In a recent interview, Dominador “Ador” Decena, together with his wife Mary, the owners of Decena’s puto Calasiao, said their family is among the original puto producers in the town.
“My parents are already producing puto for as long as I can remember. I grew up with this as our family business, later on, passed on to us by my parents,” he said.
Decena said he was the one who suggested to his mother to add cheese to the plain puto that made it even more delectable.
“We tried adding margarine to it at first but margarine, after some time, melted and became oily, making the puto’s texture and appearance unattractive so I told my mother why don’t we try cheese instead, and more flavors soon followed,” he said.
Decena’s puto has market stalls in Calasiao and Malasiqui towns, while they also accept online orders via their Instagram account. (PNA)
