Paco shares life lessons from cool venture
Addressing the 2026 graduating class of the University of Batangas (UB), Francisco “Paco” Magsaysay had one lesson to share with the young people who would be leaving the comfort and relative predictability of the academe for the uncertainty of the real and wider world.
Resilience, said Magsaysay, the third in his family to be the university’s commencement speaker (after his grandfather Ramon Sr., the beloved seventh President of the Philippines, and his father Ramon Jr., former senator), was the most important lesson he learned from creating the world-class Carmen’s Best Ice Cream.
Magsaysay is now bringing the message of resilience to a broader audience through his book “Beyond the Scoop,” the story of how the premium frozen dessert named after his daughter came to be.
“Beyond the Scoop,” almost three years in the making and will soon be available in all Fully Booked outlets nationwide and later on Amazon, Lazada and Shopee, can be both a training manual and a reference material on entrepreneurship.
It is more than just the story of building an ice cream brand. It is about overcoming challenges through perseverance, flexibility, integrity and an unwavering commitment to quality.
Magsaysay farm
Carmen’s Best, usually arrayed with imported brands in supermarkets, started as a way to make the most of the fresh milk produced by the model dairy farm Magsaysay’s father established in Bay, Laguna, with the help of experts at the University of the Philippines Los Baños Dairy Training and Research Institute.
But Magsaysay was not going to do things in half measures.
While he could hire experts and veterans in the business, he decided he had to learn ice cream making himself.
He took the Penn State Ice Cream Short Course and also went to Scoop School.
Despite the extensive and intensive preparation, Magsaysay admitted he had to deal with rejection, failure and mistakes. There were nights when he wondered if he was doing the right thing.
The obstacles made him realize the “most important ingredient wasn’t in the ice cream. It was resilience.”
In his foreword to the book, Manuel V. Pangilinan, whose Metro Pacific Investments Corp. (MPIC) and its agri-food subsidiary Metro Pacific Agro Ventures, Inc., have invested in Carmen’s Best, cites other factors that helped Magsaysay succeed in his business venture: “The triumph in this book, however, is Paco’s constant return to values. Honesty. Quality. Heart.”
He added, “If you are an entrepreneur you will find lessons here (book). If you are not, you may still find comfort in knowing the business can be conducted with sincerity—that a company can grow while remaining human.”
Professor Andy Ferreira of the Ateneo de Manila University said Carmen’s Best and Magsaysay’s entrepreneurial accomplishments were now part of the study program on entrepreneurship.
Relying on his own experience as chronicled in his book, Magsaysay advises his young audience at UB not to fear challenges and adversities as they often provide the best lessons.
“Success is not about never failing. Success is about refusing to quit,” he declared.
