CONVENIENCE STøre Truths

Our kasambahay once walked 15 minutes to the nearest supermarket just to buy Yakult.

- RICARDO T. PAMINTUAN

The village store had it, but at a predictably higher price. She came home soaking wet from the rain, yet glowing with warmth as she clutched that prized pack of probiotic goodness like it was a marathon finisher medal.

This scene brought me back to my childhood in Tondo, Manila, where sari-sari stores were practically part of the scenery. They were on street corners, literal holes in walls, front yards, carports, and sidewalks-all offering the same goods to the same neighbors at the same price, a 21st-century nod to Adam Smith's "invisible hand." I had an enterprising friend who set up a cardboard stall under the stairs of a pedestrian overpass; he was the boy who lived from selling candies, newspapers, cigarettes, and whatnot.

For my part, I occasionally manned a store that catered to players at our makeshift basketball court in the middle of the road. To paraphrase Doc Emmett Brown, "Road? Where we're playing, we don't need roads." But everyone needed the benches at Aling Mercy's sari-sari store, as long as they bought something. Anything.

The popularity of a sari-sari store, then and now, depends on the diversity of its products. Business will generally be good as long as the store has sweet and salty snacks; canned fish and meat; instant noodles and other instant whatever; detergents, soaps, shampoos, and feminine care; condiments, flavored mixes and bouillons, and spreads; rice and dried noodles; matches and candles (for those summer power outages); ice water, ice cream, ice candy, and ice-cold Yakult; cigarettes and liquor (available even to minors, thank you); in recent times, mobile phone load and GCash transfers.