This blue boy sells green

Ricardo Lim III’s Matcha Green Tea

by Ryan Edward Chua  

QUEZON CITY, Philippines—When he was a freshman, Ricardo Lim III asked his father to buy him a car. The response, as usual, was a no.

“Instead of giving you a car, I will give you this money, these equipment,” Ricardo recalls his father saying. “Start your own business.”

What was given to him instead of a car was the capital and equipment that would pave the way for Matcha Green Tea, one of the biggest and probably most popular stalls at the Ateneo de Manila University’s John Gokongwei Student Enterprise Center (JSEC) or the SOM Mall.

A computer enthusiast, Ricardo never imagined himself becoming a businessman. Today, however, this Management junior who has just turned 18 already earns an average of P30,000 weekly, and has ten employees working for him.

Having no car, it now seems to him, wasn’t so bad after all.

Green tea and frappe

The store sells pure green tea from Japanese-grown matcha leaves topped with frappe made of different fruit flavors. Among their customers’ favorites, Ricardo says, is the mango frappe, the baseline flavor he himself developed before starting the business.

The idea came from a matcha expo in Japan which he and his father attended. The add-ons like frappe, however, were all Ricardo’s ideas.

“I decided, maybe this one will work on tea,” he says. “You don’t need to really switch in between a hot cup of tea and a cold frappuccino.”

Now on its second year, Matcha, which has another branch at Pearl Drive, Pasig City attracts many customers, from health buffs to those who are simply curious to try green tea without the bitter taste.

Pulling them in

Ricardo says that one of his biggest challenges is to attract more people to patronize green tea, especially in a culture which he observes is so tied to coffee.

But, like a true entrepreneur, he faces the challenge through innovation. For instance, the store now sells cafe matcha—coffee and tea in one. Matcha, he says, has also been promoting a healthy image through promotional ads that his sister made.

His sister, a Management Economics major, now owns the business with him.

“It’s the curiosity that pulled [our customers] in, but I don’t want to pull them in just because of curiosity. I want them to stay because this is healthy,” he says.

Not easy

The experience has thus far taught Ricardo not just the nitty-gritty of running a business, but the value of being one’s own boss.

“I’ve been taught, because I come from a Chinese background, that family is the most important thing,” he says. “If you’re your own boss just like my father, you dictate your own time and you have time for your family as well.”

Thus, Ricardo plans to continue the business and expand it even after graduating from college. A third branch, he says, is coming soon.

For what he has accomplished so far, this Atenean entrepreneur must be really proud.

“If I was not blue,” he says, chuckling, “there would be no green.”