Two years ago, in May 2022, Eric and Diane Cabrera opened PCH Shave Ice and Boba in Pismo Beach. Soon, they will open Lumpia Bros Café at 1187 West Grand Avenue in Grover Beach, a coffee shop paired with Filipino cuisine made from Eric’s childhood, using his late mother’s recipe.
“We can’t wait to hear how other people feel about my personal recipes that I got from my mother,” Cabrera said about the Lumpia café. “We’re excited for people to experience the kind of food that I grew up experiencing. We are excited to meet new customers and new people from the community that we haven’t met yet. We’re happy to provide the community with variety, with something that nobody else has yet.”
Lumpia is not a food many people have heard of. “Lumpia is one of the more popular foods in the Philippines. It’s a Filipino-style egg roll,” Cabrera said. “I grew up with my mom cooking her style of Lumpia, and everyone, friends and family were like ‘Man, you guys should sell this stuff.’ My mom taught me how to cook from a young age. I’m kind of a chef by heart, and we’ve been blessed to have this place, so let’s do something different. We have a little bit of extra money, let’s invest in something else. Give people something they don’t have here.”
Currently, they make lumpia on the weekends at their Shave Ice and Boba shop.
The plan started with opening a shaved ice shop, but came to the obstacle of needing something to go with it. So, after their friend’s recommendation, they decided to add boba, heading to learn how to make it in a “boba college”.
PCH Shaved Ice is known for customer service and community involvement. They sponsor the Southern SLO Boys and Girls club as well as elementary and high school sports. They also hold toy runs and toy drives. “Whatever we can do, if it looks like it helps people, we are all in,” Cabrera said. They also host men’s bible study every Monday night and women’s bible study every Wednesday night.
“[Hawaiian shaved ice] can be confused with a snowcone. To a lot of people, it might appear to be the same thing, but it’s not,” Cabrera said. “The type of machine we have, and the way we shave it, it’s soft and without crunch, close to being a sorbet but it’s not.”
Hawaiian shaved ice is indeed much different from a normal snow cone. It’s a melt-in-your-mouth kind of treat.
“And then, if you want it Hawaiian style, it has ice cream in the middle and then we put shaved ice around it with the flavor of your choice, and then we do this thing in Hawaii we a ‘snow cap’ where we drizzle sweet condensed milk, and it makes it that much softer,” Cabrera said.
Cabrera said he wants to expand to franchising, allowing people to pay to use the PCH Shave Ice and Boba name, to give people in other states and places the opportunity to use their name and way of making shaved ice and boba. But first, they’re looking into expanding their shops to nearby cities. As for the Lumpia cafe, the same hopes are applied– to franchise and experience the same success as they have with their shaved ice boba shop.
Cindy • Oct 27, 2024 at 2:38 pm
It’s a great place and great family. Know them personally and their awesome, so is their business!!!!!!!