OM EVENTS
Our Market Holds Third Chocolate-Making Workshop at General Santos City
For the third leg of its nationwide roadshow, Our Market brought Build-A-Bar: The Art of Chocolate-Making to General Santos City — a city known for its seafood but now, for a day, smelled of rich roasted cacao. The event became a meeting hub of local food business owners, culinary students, and chocolate makers who came ready to learn from Metro Manila-based Executive Chocolatier Chef Christian Valdes of CMV Txokolat.
Our Market’s outreach to business owners across the country continues as they land in General Santos City to host third chocolate-making demo.
Before Our Market’s active development as a publishing platform, community efforts such as free online and physical workshops had been initiated by Iskaparate —- including the first two chocolate-making demos which took place in January and June of this year — the first one having been held at All About Baking in SM North EDSA for randomly selected newsletter subscribers, and the second having been held at BuyersLink Distribution Inc. in Davao City.
This roadshow, titled Build-A-Bar: The Art of Chocolate-Making, carries on in partnership with Unox Philippines, BuyersLink Distribution Inc., and CMV Txokolat with Owner and Head Chocolatier Christian Valdes. It took place on August 23, 2025, with participants comprising a mix of local food business owners, some of whom were chocolate business owners themselves, and the students of Gerardo’s School of Culinary, where the demo was held. This was a lucky opportunity for culinary students to learn from a master chocolatier with long years of experience and apply new techniques to their very own cooking.
Like the previous Davao chocolate-making class, participants were able to learn how to make chocolates that are unique and will truly sell in the market. Chocolate recipes included the Fruit & Nut Mendiant, Sweet, Salty, and Spicy Nib Bar, and Dark Chocolate Truffle.
Each has its own distinct flavor: the third is the classic rich, pure chocolate that’s almost oozing inside your mouth, the second is a surprising take on chocolate that almost introduces an alter ego, and the first one, your ultimate proof that chocolate can be a lot more than cacao.
Backed by years of refining chocolates that are well-loved in the capital, the session was not only a means of sharing expert-made recipes but was practically a free tutorial on detailing and techniques that create real premium chocolates, giving attendees that extra edge.
Unox Bakerlux Shop.Pro Commercial Oven for Food Businesses
Of course, accompanying these techniques is good equipment that makes the impossible possible. Unox’s Bakerlux oven models allow not only convenient, but also excellent roasting processes which prepare your cacao beans as the perfect base for rich chocolates.
The Bakerlux Shop.Pro specializes in baking a wide variety of pastry and bakery products, such as artisan bakery, confectionery, frozen bakery, and biscuits and cookies. This line features optimized convection technology for consistent, high-quality baking, precise humidity control for perfect crust and crumb, and customizable fan speeds for all kinds of baking.
And to make those controls easier? They feature user-friendly digital touch panels with numerous programs for consistent batch quality, as well as smart features like internet connectivity and data-driven cooking for remote management and process optimization. This might just be the best oven for bakery businesses.
Unox has over 15 oven lines to provide guaranteed solutions to problems faced by majority of food businesses, such as food spoilage, time consumption, ensuring food safety, and more. Our Market and Unox’s partnership is rooted in bringing these solutions to food businesses across the country and make commercial food production more manageable.
For interested buyers in Mindanao, Unox ovens are available at BuyersLink Distribution Inc., which is also a major element in this roadshow.
BuyersLink Distribution Incorporated
With a great network around the area and the same burning passion for spreading learning opportunities through knowledge and skills training, BuyersLink effectively gathered target participants who would benefit from this class and generously served as one of the event sponsors — raffling off useful kitchen items which can be found in their store shelves as well, such as Kewpie Japanese mayonnaise, Piece O’ Cake, refined pinto beans, Chlerito Chamoy Flavor Sauce, Chlerito seasoning, and even notebooks and foldable fans from Emborg.
Aside from offering trusted culinary items, BuyersLink’s desire to build expertise in individuals in the food industry is exhibited by regular training sessions held in their very own kitchen studio. They cover topics like Asian cuisine, baking techniques, and commercial recipe development. These classes help food business owners, kitchen staff, and serious hobbyists improve their methods and decision-making. The idea is simple but often overlooked: access to knowledge should be as local as access to ingredients.
With BuyersLink, organizer and marketing firm DTC Promos Inc. also generously sponsored a variety of raffle prizes which would interest the variety of attendees — providing items such as foot massagers, body care sets, foot care sets, and tech gadgets — all of which had ignited excitement in the audience.
Key representatives from each partner brand include Marissa Dames, President and COO of DTC Promos Inc. and Our Market, Chef Alphie Azarias, Marketing Development Specialist of Unox Philippines, Oliver Lee, President of BuyersLink Distribution Inc., and Gerry Arbis, President of Gerardo’s School of Culinary.
Our Market: The Launch of the Publishing Platform
This will be the last chocolate-making workshop of the year for the roadshow, but the team is set to travel to other parts of Mindanao by next year in continuous pursuit of reaching businesses across the nation and bringing learning opportunities directly to them.
Separate from the campaign, the next chocolate-making class was held on October 17, 2025, at De La Salle University College of Saint Benilde to softly launch Our Market as a new online magazine for business, culture, lifestyle, and food topics. Primarily teaching the bean-to-bar process, the launch touched base with entrepreneurship students and imparted key insights on how to create profitable products from raw materials available.
The event took place at the Augusto Rosario Gonzales Theatre and was filled with over 500 business students and over 20 partners from the traditional media. Supportive partners include ARDA Media Solutions Corporation, Unilever, Selecta, Barilla, Tulip, Search Commercial Incorporated, Mayani, Mo & Bear, Iskaparate, and Nayong Kalikasan.
About the Instructor: Chef Christian Valdes
Born and raised in California. Christian grew up with a ravenous appetite for chocolates, like one would assume most kids do. But Christian had always been eager for more; he was curious about the complexities of making them.
Once he graduated from high school, he went to the Philippines to learn more about his Filipino heritage. He settled in Manila and eventually graduated from Enderun Colleges. This was when he met a friend who taught him the basics of chocolate-making. From there, he taught himself the more complex processes, making unique creations that are far from the plain chocolate bars he once munched on as a child.
Today, he’s the talented owner and head chocolatier of CMV Txokolat, a premium chocolate brand that he founded in 2012.
CMV Txokolat specializes in creating chocolates that feature unique flavor combinations that complement its rich chocolate base sourced from high-quality cacao. They offer custom creations, corporate catering, B2B gift solutions, and even weddings, events, and party favors. It has several branches in Metro Manila such as in Rockwell, Bonifacio Global City, and Podium.
Ever since founding the brand in 2012, Christian has devoted himself to making chocolates the best way he knew how: by hand. And now, he offers the most exquisitely handcrafted chocolates, featuring one-of-a-kind flavors that can be described as truly Filipino.
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