After living the “American dream” in the US for over two decades, pedigreed Marie Cavosora returned to the Philippines to live the “Filipino dream” through CalaBoo Creamery, a social enterprise that supports local dairy farmers and creates dairy products from grass-fed carabaos through social public-private partnerships.
Her pedigreed background comes from many years of corporate marketing and advertising experiences in firms like Pepsi, Disney, IBM while traveling the world for business and as a one-time scholar while attending studies at Mount Holyoke in New York.
Background
Her enterprise’s name, Calaboo, is a fun wordplay of “kalabaw,” the Filipino word for carabao or water buffalos, the domesticated workhorse used by Filipino farmers to till land for rice and crops throughout the country. The Philippines has 2.8 million such animals in the country, a well-developed industry could provide a vital means of additional income for farmers across the country.
Calaboo makes probiotic-rich butters (Boo la la Boo-tter, or European-style cultured butter; and the American-style cultured butter Simply Boo-tter), yogurts (Yogi Boo, with three flavors: Perfectly Plain, Coco Sweet, Honey Love), and cheeses (Keso Cariño, or the fresh cheeses, and Gourmet Keso, the aged variety), from fresh carabao’s milk, with no additives, preservatives or refined sugar, has less cholesterol and more calcium than cows. The carabaos are raised sustainably and fed a diet rich in nutrients and locally sourced food.
Calaboo aims to penetrate a local market (see 2014 chart) that has been monopolized by imported dairy manufacturers, where imported milk volumes vastly exceed those that are exported, and using the talented founder’s words, “end poverty for Filipino farmers.”
