Why Every Gen Z Small Business in Manila Sells the Same Three Things
Coffee, thrift clothes, and baked goods. The formula works until everyone's using it.
Walk around Marikina, QC, or anywhere near a university district and you'll see it: another coffee cart with minimalist branding. Another Instagram shop selling preloved streetwear. Another small bakery doing Korean-style garlic bread or ube cookies shipped via Lalamove.
By Miguel Torres
It's not a coincidence. It's a survival pattern. These three categories—coffee, thrift, baked goods—dominate Gen Z small business because they require low capital, can operate from home or a pushcart, and people actually buy them daily. You don't need a commissary permit for cookies. You don't need a storefront for thrifted Carhartt. You can start a pour-over setup with ₱15,000 and a folding table.
The problem is everyone else figured this out too.
By 2024, Metro Manila had thousands of these micro-businesses, most launched during or right after the pandemic. The Instagram aesthetic is identical: earth tones, sans-serif fonts, the word "collective" or "local" somewhere in the bio. The menu is identical: iced Spanish latte, sea salt cookies, maybe a vegan option. The sourcing is identical: ukay suppliers in Bambang, beans from the same three Benguet roasters, Shopee packaging materials.
What started as entrepreneurial hustle has become a template, and the template is now saturated. Profit margins were always thin. Now they're thinner. A cookie side hustle that made ₱8,000 a month in 2021 might make ₱3,000 now, competing with 47 other bakers in the same barangay.
Some adapt. They add catering. They go full online and skip rent. They partner with other small sellers and split a booth at a weekend market. Others just keep going, because this business—even at ₱3,000 a month—still pays more than what they'd make waiting for a corporate job that requires two years of experience for an entry-level role.
The real tell is when someone closes their small business and the announcement post gets more engagement than the business ever did. It's always the same caption: "Thank you for the support. This isn't goodbye, just see you soon." And sometimes they do come back, selling the same things, because there aren't a lot of other options that let you work for yourself with ₱15,000 and a folding table.
The formula works until everyone's using it. Right now in Manila, everyone is.
