Burning with a passion for creative arts, Panu Yu has all the skills of a modern entrepreneur.
From graphic design to strategy planning, campaign statistics up to website design, it makes sense for Panu to make a beeline for an entrepreneurial career.
Today, Panu is the proud owner of The Weekend Burger, the burger place in Cebu that serves up hefty portions of juicy and meaty hamburgers perfect for lunch, dinner, or snacks. They have two operating branches and have been around since December 2017.
On paper, everything sounds like a dream for Panu. But Panu is humble about it all.
“It wasn’t at all smooth sailing, as we had to sacrifice a lot personally, mentally, and financially even up to this day,” she tells g.spot PH.
But hard work and determination see her through every day. With a steadfast work ethic and a passion for doing her best, here’s Panu’s story to the success she’s created for herself today.
We’ve heard that you’re somewhat of a burger connoisseur, being The Weekend Burger owner. To backtrack a little, how did you get into the food business industry?
I’m flattered by the compliment, but I am far from being a burger connoisseur by all means. I believe the right way of saying it is I know what I like in a burger and analyze what’s in it or if it’s anything different — my partner is the chef and is the mastermind in terms of putting flavors together and I am the taste tester.
Starting out was funny and challenging. I remember working at a start-up web agency, and my partner was still a call center agent. Even at that time, we’d go to different places to eat, do cook-outs with friends, to the point we would travel just to eat. My partner and I know and love to cook.
It just so happened that one time, my partner and I were chatting over a beer, expressing that he had a wake-up call about his career path — wondering if he’ll stay as a call center agent forever. Time and time, as we talked about it, we decided he’d end that path and start anew and that we’d build a burger business together. This was around 2015.
We came up with the concept of flavors, slowly bought all the equipment we could every salary pay, squeezed out each of our savings, sacrificed our social life to save every peso we had.
Difficult is an understatement, at least for us, as we were noobs in starting a business. I was struggling between my day job and sustaining both of us financially. There was a moment when we felt defeated as if what we did and what we had put together wasn’t enough to start.
Long story short, we regrouped our plans, and my partner decided to gamble the remaining amount of his savings with the help of his father. He studied culinary to learn more about cooking and what it means to work in a restaurant. I continued with my day job, financially sustaining both of us and planning how to go about the operations and the finances for our planned business.
This went on for another two years. My partner wanted to work first to earn back his earnings while gaining experiences from different restaurants — from No. 9, to, Marco Polo Plaza Cebu, from Waterfront [Hotel] to being the prep-chef at Denny’s.
How did The Weekend Burger come to be, and why burgers?
My partner and I have always been into food — cooking and eating burgers have always been one of our go-to’s.
The name ‘The Weekend Burger’ was not the first choice. We decided on it while we were still planning on naming the place ‘Burger Disorder’ because it sounded funny at the time.
The name came into play as a metaphor for having a good time, and usually good, if not great things, happens during the weekend. Eating burgers, to us, seem to always be a good time, hence, The Weekend Burger.
It takes guts to venture into the burger business, especially in a country that prioritizes rice over sandwiches. But what makes a good burger?
Rice is rice, and even with that, we even choose the best rice grains to eat our meals with; they are the supporting characters to our meals.
It’s the same with burgers, and to me, at least, it always has to be about the bun. Yes, the patties and sauces are the heroes in the burgers, but I think buns are the unsung heroes. It must always have that ‘smush’ factor, not paste-like, sticking to the top of your hard palate. It must be firm enough to put all the ingredients together.
Not going to lie, even if you browse through our old photos on our Facebook page to how our burgers were and what they are now, a lot has changed, and you’ll see that the most visible change is our buns. It was a long journey — finding the right supplier who knew and created what we wanted in a bun and knocked it out of the park.
What do you think it takes to go down the path less traveled?
Patience and hard work — being in our fourth year in the business, needless to say, we still have a lot of work to do and many things to improve. It has challenged us so much, and we’ve even reached a point that we almost gave up because of how hard it is, but we always take it back.
Because even if our progress has been slow, progress is progress. It takes a huge stretch of patience for the business to grow and, not to sugarcoat things, but for-profit to come in.
Panu Yu
Human as we are, we can’t help but dream of starting a business and being financially stable overnight. But even choosing the “path less traveled,” we learned how to improve, settle our differences in personal matters and the business, communicate with our customers for their honest feedback, and see what we can innovate. As much as we’d love to have it all easier, the “path less traveled” is undoubtedly more rewarding.
When it comes to a good burger, it’s all about fire and heat. In your personal life, what fires you up to be the best version of yourself?
It also comes with patience and hard work. Cause if there’s fire and heat, you’re going to get burned [laughs]. It’s not always a constant fiery pit; we have mundane moments like the trial and error of creating something new on the menu, differentiating our business from other competitors, and staying sane throughout the process, whether it’ll be flipping burgers, innovating the business, or working on my day job to stay afloat, which is the truth.
Was there ever a time when you felt lost or lost the spark to do things in your life?
Yes, of course — sometimes and if not all the time. I’ve delved into work early in my life, even before meeting my partner, and I sometimes forget to remind myself of the value of rest and not take life too seriously. It’s easier said than done, but slowly but surely, I am working on it.
What advice would you give to those who feel they have lost the spark to do the things they love in life?
We’ve all had those moments at least once in our lives, and that’s okay. It’s normal, and it is a way of reminding us to pause and take a step back and observe our surroundings. Sometimes, it’s not always a good idea to deal with things head-on, 100% of the time. We need to take breaks and not put a deadline on your progress if possible.
Try to allocate some time to think and even do nothing. Don’t treat everything if it were a task or a chore. Try to detach ourselves from the stressors or the work we put forward — whether personal, business, or work-related. Make yourself miss it, and it will slowly remind you of what purpose it brings you.
The pandemic has hit us all very hard, some more than others. Can you tell us about how you’re handling this pandemic in terms of it affecting your business and also your personal life?
It may sound cheesy, but it’s not just you but for me, too. It’s a collective struggle from either the personal, professional, and business side.
I had to sustain two day jobs, some freelance work for my sanity while handling the operations and finances of The Weekend Burger, all of which resulted in burnout. I decided to work twice or thrice as hard to keep moving as personal bills, rent payments, and taxes had no stops. I sustained, all throughout.
But of course, all efforts come with a bargain, so it has affected my physical and mental health quite a lot. Still, I’m now in a phase of working and building myself up again to counter the burnout.
It’s a struggle indeed, especially when we had to close for six months in 2020 because of the constant changes of the ‘Q’s,’ which resulted in us operating from our respective households. My partner and I weren’t living together at that time, so it was twice as hard. The demand has changed, and the foot traffic coming in our stores has dropped drastically.
Despite the course of the pandemic, we had to adapt to the ‘new normal’ as many of us had to; we pushed to move up to a goal and relocated our second branch to Yellocube in Lahug. We took a pause, yes, but we continued to move forward.
After nearly two years of hardships for everyone, what is something you look forward to in the future when things are better?
In the future, whenever that would be, we plan on innovating a new menu and maybe expanding. Nothing grand, as we’ve always gravitated to quaint or pop-up-like locations — something like a hole in the wall. Hopefully, the business will be self-sustaining by that time, and we can move on to the next steps.
As for myself, I am certainly planning on a new venture aside from The Weekend Burger. I’ve always wanted to do something more community-based and maybe within the creative spectrum, as that’s what motivates me the most. I’m currently in the planning phase with a couple of my closest friends on materializing it.
The Weekend Burger is open Mondays to Saturdays from 11:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Visit them at Tres de Abril Street, Labangon (across Veterinare Animale), and at Yellocube in Lahug. You may also order via foodpanda and follow them on Facebook.