DAVAO CITY: The Library Café by Coop Cups opened recently at the City Library and Information Center here.

The library cafe will offer local coffee with additional products such as pastries and rice meals for library-goers. The café will also become a venue for coffee appreciation as well as a space for local cooperatives to promote their products and services.

Agripino Torres, president of Manuel Guianga and Sirib Growers and Employees Multi-purpose Cooperative (Magsige MPC), said the purpose of the shop is to showcase the 'local flavors of Davao and the taste of the region to library-goers.'

He said that the cafe also showcases the 'communities and individuals who would greatly benefit from the cooperative-run coffee shop, such as the men and women cooperative members who will be trained and employed in the coffee shop and the Indigenous coffee growers/farmers situated in Marilog and Toril District and near communities who will primarily supply the coffee beans.'

Model Cooperative Network CEO Rhoda Ruth Pillerin also said that currently, the shop sources its coffee beans from local producers such as the Balutakay Coffee Farmers Association (Bacofa), one cooperative from New Leyte, Maco in Davao de Oro, and another coop in Maragusan, Davao del Norte.

Bacofa is the producer of the award-winning Arabica coffee grown on the foothills of Mount Apo in Bansalan, Davao del Sur.

Torres added that the yield from the Marilog and Toril coffee planted and tilled by the members of Magsige will soon add to the beans used in the shop.

This is the first coop-run coffee shop in the Philippines and, according to Torres and Pillerin, there is a possibility of Coop Cups opening for franchising shortly to other areas, even outside the city.

Pillerin said that Library Café, as it is now known, will not only become an area where local products are sold but also an area for appreciation of the taste of local coffee.

'We will be holding coffee appreciation series ... and also similar events like that and we are also planning to make this as a venue where cooperatives can promote their products and services,' Pillerin said.

She said that aside from library-goers, employees from the nearby establishments are also becoming regulars at the café and with its full operation.