It was in 1993 when two families, the Hernandezes and the Escalonas, set up the first Fruit Magic cart in SM Megamall in Mandaluyong City. After enjoying steady success, by 1997 revenues began to dip and the owner decided to sell out. Two years later, Alan Escalona, now Fruit Magic CEO, acquired the company and set out to turn it around.

16 years and more than 35 branches later, Fruit Magic has become the leader in the juicing industry in the Philippines and is currently enjoying its popularity as the leading source of the freshest fruit juices in the country. And now, riding the trend of establishments offering lounge areas, they’ve launched their newest concept, the Fruit Magic Lounge.

Conceptualization started in January of 2009. In May of the same year they opened the first Fruit Magic Lounge at the ground floor of Victoria Towers in Quezon City. According to company Brand Manager Martin Escalona, Fruit Magic wanted to graduate from their popular cart and kiosk set up and venture into a more challenging concept. “We wanted a place that [would] really enhance our food since our shakes are bestsellers. The lounge can showcase how our food can be great. We also wanted to promote a relaxing place where they can enjoy meetings, Wi-Fi, and simply hang out instead of the usual café.”

With their luxurious purple sofas, leather ottomans, padded booths, a chill-out music playlist, and free wireless internet, it’s easy to mistake the lounge for your run-of-the-mill coffee shop. According to Escalona, “We wanted to make sure that we get all the components of a lounge: nice music, comfy seats, nice ambiance…we wanted a more lively, colorful place, very pleasing to the eyes and still [has] that café feel.” The result is a space where one can spend hours relaxing in a cozy chair, however instead of sipping a cup of espresso with a sugar-glazed donut, you can get a shot of wheatgrass or a strawberry kiwi shake with a tuna melt sandwich. They’ve managed to make lounging healthy.

Their number one customer remains to be the growing community of health-buffs. “They partner their work-outs with our drinks,” says Escalona, and have been there since they began. But despite the launch of this new concept, Fruit Magic still goes back to its original set up: their carts and kiosks. “It’s still the bread and butter of the company,” says Escalona. And that’s exactly how it all began 16 years ago.

It’s every child’s dream to jump into a pool of foam. I didn’t get to do it, but the experience I had was close enough.

Together with other people from the press, I was recently invited to visit the 60,00 square-meter factory of Uratex in Muntinlupa City. Uratex is the leading foam manufacturer in the Philippines. They started making foam in 1968 and have since grown and expanded. Today, Uratex’s world-class foam products—from really comfortable mattresses and pillows, to kitchen sponges and car seats—have permeated almost every Filipino home and have thus become a successful local brand.

The plant tour was especially interesting as they showed us how they made foam. It was, in a word, magic.

This is their research and development department. I know this because they’re wearing stereotypical pristine white lab coats. Here they formulate the specific foam mixtures to create specific foam products. I never thought foam was this complicated.

Here they burn the foam to test its flammability (or lack thereof). It’s important because a burning bed or pillow in your house is simply unacceptable. In another station they pull foam apart to test its strength. One girl’s job is to bounce a metal ball all day to test the foam’s “bounciness.” They’re serious about their foam.

After getting the perfect foam formula, they proceed to create the foam. And it all starts out in liquid form. The Hennecke–the foam-making machine they imported from Germany–is the source of everything. Streams of chemicals are sprayed using computer controlled metering pumps on a paper-covered conveyor belt. The smell is awesome, like permanent marker and candy.

As the belt and the paper move along the length of the machine, the liquid spreads and forms into a thin layer. Through an exothermic process, the less than one centimeter of liquid slowly rises as it goes through the machine. And this is the magic part–in less than two minutes all that turns into this…

A warm block of foam about a meter high emerges at the end of the line. It’s already safe to touch, but on the surface it’s still a bit moist.

The foam is then cut into 30-meter blocks for easy handling. At this point the outside of the foam block is already dry, but the inside is still warm and wet. The foam, i mean.

A giant crane then picks up the 30-meter block of foam and lays it down in a warehouse for curing. The foam block sits there for 24 hours until it cools down. After that they proceed to cutting the foam into the specific product it was designed to be. It can become a mattress,  a piece of kitchen sponge, or even the 1mm foam disk you see inside a hard drive. Uratex makes those as well.

Foam! They make bra padding too. So the next time you see a bra, imagine that a worker at Uratex had, at one point, his hands all over your underwear.

Babies are known to be adorable, cuddly, and cute. But husband and wife team, AJ and Audrey Dimarucot wanted their child to have a little bit something more: attitude. With the creation of their baby clothing brand googoo&gaga, they now want to give other babies some spunk as well.

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