From a field in Bohol to your 4 pm.
Gabi is one root, grown by family farms in the Philippines, sipped in your kitchen and planted again on your windowsill. Nothing in the loop goes to waste.
Hi, I’m Gabi.
“I didn’t want another health drink. I wanted my lola’s ube, at 4 pm, without the coffee.”
I grew up between Manila and my lola’s kitchen in Bohol, where ube was never a trend. It was halaya on Sundays, purple fingers and the smell of coconut milk.
In 2022 I was working in LA and living on three coffees a day. Shaky hands at 11, a crash at 4, staring at the ceiling at midnight. I tried matcha. Three times. I quit three times.
So I went back to what I knew: one spoon of pure ube, warm milk, nothing else. My afternoons changed, my skin changed, I slept again. Friends asked for a jar. Then their friends did.
Today Gabi works with family farms in Bohol, and every tin is still made the way I made the first one: one ingredient, nothing hidden.
- 1998Lola’s kitchen, Bohol
Ube halaya every Sunday. The color I never forgot.
- 2022Three coffees a day
LA, jitters at 11 am, crash at 4 pm, awake at midnight.
- 2024The first jar
Pure ube and warm milk in my kitchen. Friends asked for more.
- 2025Back to Bohol
Met the families who grow our ube. Fixed price, every harvest.
- 2026Gabi is born
One tin, one ingredient, a flower to plant inside.
Grown, sipped, planted again.
We built Gabi as a loop, not a line. This is where every part of the root, the tin and the flower ends up.
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Grown by families Twelve family farms grow our ube between rice seasons. We agree the price before they plant, every harvest.
1Bohol, Philippines -
The whole root The violet flesh becomes your powder. The peels are sun-dried on bamboo trays and go back to the fields as compost.
2Nothing wasted -
Sipped by you One ingredient, in a printed metal tin you keep. No plastic pouch, no paper label to peel off.
31 tin, 30 cups -
Planted again The seed-paper butterfly goes into the empty tin. A few weeks later, something blooms where your latte was.
4Plant me
We know the hands behind every tin.
Our ube comes from twelve family farms around Bohol, the island where Gabi’s lola made halaya every Sunday. We visit every harvest, we agree the price before planting, and we buy the whole crop, not just the prettiest roots.
Ube grows between rice seasons, on the same small plots, so it brings families a second income without clearing a single new field.
Nothing goes to waste.
A purple yam is more than its powder. The violet flesh is sliced, air-dried and stone-milled for your tin. The peels are sun-dried on bamboo trays and go back to the fields as compost, feeding the next harvest.
Offcuts too small to mill go to bakers in Tagbilaran, who turn them into halaya. The root ends where it started: in the soil, or in a dessert.
Don’t toss it. Grow it.
What we believe.
One ingredient
If it needs a list, it isn’t ours. Purple yam, dried and milled.
Pleasure, not punishment
A drink should taste like a treat. Cutting back on coffee shouldn’t feel like a diet.
Nothing to throw away
The whole root is used, the metal tin is kept or recycled forever, the flower is planted. That is the deal.
