When stores could open again, the owners of Jim’s Recipe wondered how their employees could safely get back to work. They started out by driving their employees to work and back, but as more mall stores opened, they needed to find another way. With public transport hard to come by, bicycles became a popular way to ride. And so they had the idea of giving bicycles to Jim’s Recipe employees. “It makes us feel warm inside to see how happy they are from receiving such a simple gesture, sometimes your people just need to know you care,” says Sean, Managing Director at Jim’s Recipe. (For employees that don’t know how to cycle, Jim’s Recipe’s owners still drives them to work.)
Sean and his family have always believed that business isn’t just about profit. “We want to give something worthwhile, so we can make our employees and our customers happy,” he says. “Laking pasasalamat namin sa bikes na binigay sa amin dahil mas madali at ligtas kaming nakakapasok sa trabaho,” Harry Otilan, a staff member at Jim’s Recipe, says. To support mall-goers and employees who come in by bicycle, SM Supermalls has welcomed them with sufficient bike parking, bike repair stations, and has started on programs to make bicycling much more convenient.
“During this pandemic, SM was also very supportive of our reopening, making sure that we could operate as cleanly as possible. It felt like we were one family helping each other in any way we can to weather this storm,” Sean says.
